"Loren-Miller"{January 20,1903-July 14,1967}

Born in Pender,Nebraska to John Miller,a former slave,and Nora Herbaugh,a white Midwesterner.In 1929,Loren set out for Los Angeles from Kansas,he preferred political activism over the law.In 1930,he worked as editor of the California Eagle,the oldest African American newspaper in Los Angeles,which in 1951,he purchased.By 1935,he lived for a time in New York working as an editor of the New Masses and assistant editor of the Crusader News Agency,alongside Cyril Briggs and Benjamin Davis,Jr.,well known African American communists.Earlier,in 1932,Loren and prominent writer Langston Hughes made a historic adventure to the Soviet Union along with 20 other African Americans to make a film on African American life in the U.S. Loren saw himself as a fiery radical writer,he was eventually persuaded that he should take on cases that ignited his sense of social justice.


He,alongside Thurgood Marshall,argued two landmark ruling before the U.S.Supreme Court that effectively abolished restrictive racial housing convenants.As a member of the legal team of the NAACP,Loren helped change American law and history by forever by writing the majority of appellate briefs in Brown v.Board of education of Topeka,Kansas.An advocate of complete equality,Loren was one of the two lawyers to join American Civil Librities Union (ACLU) counsel to challenge the constitutionality of the evacuation and internment of West Coast Japanese citizens and foreign nationals during World War II.With his trademark keen wit and incisive rhetorical courtroom style he won hundreds of restrictive housing cases,including that of African American actresses Hattie McDaniel and Ethel Waters,co-plaintiffs against hostile white Los Angeles property owners in 1945.


In addition to ousting Los Angeles' racist fire chief or directing his attention to the passage of the Rumford Fair Housing Act and the enforcement of Fair Enforcement Practices in California,he represented,at the request of Malcolm X,14 African American Muslims in the aftermath of a 1962 street battle where six unarmed muslims had been shot down " in cold blood"by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department.


In 1964,Loren was appointed to the Los Angeles County Municipal Court,In his honor,the State Bar of California annually awards the Loren Miller Legal Services Award to attorneys providing legal services to the poor.