Nathaniel Colley Sr.; Lawyer, NAACP Activist

Nathaniel Colley Sr., a prominent NAACP activist who endorsed U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy despite Kennedy’s questionable views on civil rights, has died of brain cancer. He was 74.

Colley died Wednesday at his Elk Grove ranch near Sacramento.

Kennedy, who taught with Colley at the McGeorge School of Law, described him as a “fascinating and brilliant trial lawyer who knew and taught that the law could be an instrument not only for justice, but for compassion.”

Colley testified on Kennedy’s behalf at his U.S. Senate confirmation hearings in 1987, but lived to regret it when Kennedy began making decisions curbing civil rights.

“I wish I could take back that endorsement,” he told the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper, two years later.

Although he had helped persuade the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights groups not to oppose Kennedy, Colley later criticized the conservative justice’s rulings that made it harder for minorities to challenge employment practices and on-the-job racial harassment.

“I’m embarrassed by Kennedy,” he said in the 1989 interview. “He never showed any signs of harboring any views that would be a result of racism.”

Colley, the Sacramento regional counsel for the NAACP and a McGeorge professor, had known and befriended Kennedy for several years. Kennedy’s father had assisted Colley in combatting racism in the legal community of the state capital.

After graduating from the Tuskegee Institute, Colley had been rejected by the University of Alabama Law School because he was black. He later earned his law degree from Yale University.

“I can’t say being black has hindered me in California courtrooms,” he told the legal newspaper in 1989. “My own powers of persuasion had more to do with winning than the color of my skin.”

Colley and his wife, Jerlean, had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary earlier this month.

In addition to his wife, Colley is survived by five children, two brothers and nine grandchildren.