Christopher Columbus "C.C." Mercer (March 27, 1924 – November 20, 2012) was an African-American attorney from

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

. He was one of the "six pioneers" who integrated the University of Arkansas Law School. As an attorney, he served as an NAACP field representative to advise Daisy Bates, who spearheaded the efforts of the

Little Rock Nine The Little Rock Nine were a group of nine African American students enrolled in Little Rock Central High School in 1957. Their enrollment was followed by the Little Rock Crisis, in which the students were initially prevented from entering ...

who integrated

Little Rock Central High School Little Rock Central High School (LRCHS) is an accredited comprehensive public high school in Little Rock, Arkansas, United States. The school was the site of forced desegregation in 1957 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that segregation by ...

Biography

Mercer was born in 1924

Pine Bluff, Arkansas Pine Bluff is the eleventh-largest city in the state of Arkansas and the county seat of Jefferson County. It is the principal city of the Pine Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area and part of the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Pine Bluff Combin ...

where he graduated from Merrill High School and AM&N college. He served as principal of Conway Training School in Menifee, Arkansas. In 1949, Mercer and George W. B. Haley entered the University of Law School, one year after Silas Hunt became the first black student at a white southern University since reconstruction. OF the "six pioneers", he was the only one who did not serve in the army during World War II, and therefore frequently had to spend time off school to earn the money to pay for his education, serving in various jobs including teaching math at Carver High School in Marked Tree. In 1954, Mercer passed the bar with the highest score in the state. Mercer was the first African American in the South to serve as a deputy state prosecutor. He practiced law for 58 years, frequently taking cases for clients with little of no means to pay for his services. In 1957, when Little Rock Central was integrated, Mercer served as an advisor to one of the nine black students, Daisy Bates. Mercer died November 20, 2012 at the age of 88.

References

American civil rights activists People from Pine Bluff, Arkansas Merrill High School alumni 1924 births 2012 deaths {{civil-rights-movement-stub