The great-grandson of a slave, and a man who worked his way through high school as a train porter and through college as a janitor, was remembered by the state’s highest judicial leaders, relatives, friends and hundreds of people he touched in some way on Monday.
The Honorable Theodore McMillian’s funeral was Monday morning before a packed sanctuary at St. Alphonsus Church on the city’s near north side.
McMillian was remembered as a “beacon of light” in civil rights law.
He was the first African-American to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, and before taking that seat he accrued many other “first positions,” including first in his Saint Louis University law class.
But McMillian said he hoped to be remembered for extending a hand to help others participate in the American dream.
“It’s more important to be human than it is to be important.”