May 30, 2007

Andree Layton Roaf, who was distinguished as the first African-American woman to serve on the Arkansas Supreme Court, was appointed to serve as director of the federal Office of Desegregation Monitoring to oversee desegregation in Pulaski County. Roaf, who was born in Tennessee and raised in Ohio and Michigan, had worked in biological research before deciding to go to law school. Roaf participated in various professional and service organizations, including the Pulaski County, Jefferson County, and Arkansas bar associations and the W. Harold Flowers Law Society, and received the 1996 Gayle Pettus Pontz Outstanding Arkansas Woman Attorney award. She held an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from her undergraduate alma mater, Michigan State University. Roaf died on July 1, 2009, in Little Rock (Pulaski County).