Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, D-Virginia, have introduced legislation to rename the federal courthouse in Roanoke after the late civil rights attorney Reuben Lawson.
The Poff Federal Building is currently named after Richard Poff, a former congressman and later member of the Virginia Supreme Court.
In their statement, Kaine and Warner noted that Poff “opposed integration and voted against the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”
The push to rename the courthouse has been led by former U.S. Attorney John Fishwick of Roanoke. He began pushing in 2022 for the name change after coming across Lawson’s name in old court cases he was researching.
Lawson was an attorney in Roanoke in the 1950s and ’60s who figured in the lawsuits that integrated no fewer than six school districts in that part of the state.
Lawson filed the first desegregation lawsuit in Southwest Virginia, in Pulaski County. He went on to go to court in Floyd County, Grayson County, Lynchburg, Roanoke and Roanoke County to force the school systems to integrate — and eventually won them all.
He also figured in a case of national importance. In 1961, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Colts played a preseason game in Roanoke’s Victory Stadium (at a time when there were no NFL teams between Washington and Dallas, so the league often played preseason games in the South). Virginia law at the time required that seating be segregated. The Roanoke NAACP, which Lawson represented, filed suit but it sat in court, unheard. With the game approaching, the NAACP tried another tack: It sent telegrams to all the Black players and asked them to boycott the game if Victory Stadium wasn’t integrated. That precipitated a crisis that went all the way to the NFL’s new commissioner, Pete Rozelle. The resolution: Roanoke agreed to look the other way and ignore state law, and the NFL never again played before a segregated crowd.
In Fishwick’s view, Lawson is a “forgotten civil rights titan” who has been overlooked because he worked in the shadow of another legal titan in the civil rights field, Oliver Hill, and also died young, at age 43. Fishwick has produced a YouTube video on Lawson’s career, which includes archival footage from WSLS-TV that he found at the University of Virginia of Lawson filing some of his cases.
“Reuben Lawson dedicated his life and career to fighting against segregation and paving the way for historic civil rights action,” Kaine and Warner said in a statement. “We are proud to introduce this legislation, which would ensure Mr. Lawson’s relentless pursuit of social justice is cemented in Roanoke and remembered across Virginia.” The bill was introduced on what would have been Lawson’s 103rd birthday.
Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt County, whose district includes the courthouse, did not respond to a request for comment.