Frankie Muse Freeman to receive 2014 ABA Spirit of Excellence Award

Civil rights pioneer Frankie Muse Freeman will receive the 2014 Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Bar Association Commission on Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Profession.

The award, which celebrates the accomplishments of lawyers who promote a more racially and ethnically diverse legal profession, will be presented at the 2014 Spirit of Excellence Awards Luncheon on Feb. 8 at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago during the ABA Midyear Meeting.

“Frankie Muse Freeman is the kind of lawyer that you read about in history books,” said Reginald M. Turner Jr., chair of the ABA diversity commission. “Like Thurgood Marshall, Ms. Freeman devoted her considerable intellect and work ethic to the work of equal justice under law. We are all better off as a result. It is an honor to present her with the ABA Spirit of Excellence Award.”

Freeman, now in her 90s, decided at a young age that she would work to battle the “Jim Crow” laws that predominated in her native Danville, Va. After graduating second in her class from Howard Law School, she opened a law office in St Louis, Mo., where she has spent more than six decades working to advance civil rights.

Among her many accomplishments, Freeman was the first woman on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where she served for 16 years. She also served as the lead attorney in a 1952 landmark case that led to a ruling that declared segregation in public housing illegal.

In 1999, together with former Washington University Chancellor William H. Danforth, Freeman led a task force to oversee a landmark settlement that ended segregation in the St. Louis-area public schools. In 2006, Freeman and Danforth were asked to lead an advisory committee to analyze and improve the St. Louis schools.

Freeman has received many honors for her storied career, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Spingarn Medal, the NAACP’s highest honor. In 2007, she was inducted into the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame. In 2011, she was named St. Louis’ Citizen of the Year by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Freeman is a member of the ABA and the National Bar Association, where she was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990. She is the author of her memoir, “A Song of Faith and Hope: The Life of Frankie Muse Freeman.”