May 17, 1954

Christopher Columbus Mercer Jr., who served as an advisor to civil rights leader Daisy Bates during the 1957 desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock (Pulaski County), was issued his license to practice law on the very date of the United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. With his legal background, Mercer helped Bates understand and respond to the flood of litigation against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).