William T. Mason Jr.

William T. Mason Jr.

William T. Mason Jr. was a groundbreaking attorney who made a huge impact on the University. In 1947, he graduated with an undergraduate degree from Waterville, Maine Colby College. After that, Mr. Mason, Jr. attended Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C., where he graduated in 1950. In 1951, he joined the Virginia State Bar and started a real estate-focused legal business in Norfolk, Virginia. In addition, on the recommendation of President John F. Kennedy's brother, U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Mason was selected as the first African-American Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia in 1963. He was assigned to the Norfolk, Virginia, office to handle both criminal and civil cases. Up until July 1972, he was employed there. From 1969 until 1973, Attorney Mason was named to the inaugural Board of Visitors at Norfolk State University. He thereafter became a member of the NSU Foundation Board of Directors, where he remained for 46 years with very few absences. He later contributed to the founding of Mason, Robinson, Eichler, and Zaleskie, Norfolk, Virginia's first sizable interracial law firm. Attorney Jon Eichler, Attorney Alan Zaleskie, and Delegate William P. Robinson, Jr. were the other principals. The firm also employed a large number of other attorneys. Oliver Hill and Samuel Tucker, two renowned civil rights attorneys in Richmond, Virginia, were briefed on cases by Mason, an exceptional civil rights lawyer. Before his selection as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967, he also worked as a cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., a civil rights litigation firm established in New York in 1940 by Thurgood Marshall.