Chauncey Eskridge was an American attorney and judge.
15 Facts About Chauncey Eskridge
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Chauncey Eskridge provided legal counseling for activist Martin Luther King Jr.
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Chauncey Eskridge served on the legal team of world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, and argued the Clay v United States case in which the Supreme Court of the United States overturned Ali's conviction for refusing to serve in the United States Army during the Vietnam War.
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Chauncey Eskridge grew up in Homewood, a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Chauncey Eskridge advised the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an African-American civil rights organization, in the late 1960s.
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Chauncey Eskridge was the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Foundation.
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Chauncey Eskridge was present at the Memphis hotel where King was assassinated in April 1968.
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Chauncey Eskridge helped place King on a stretcher at the hotel and accompanied him to the hospital.
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Chauncey Eskridge argued that Ali satisfied the three tenets for conscientious objector status: that his objection to war was religiously-based, that he was sincere, and that he was opposed to all wars.
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Chauncey Eskridge became a judge in 1981 and served as an associate judge on the Cook County Circuit Court until 1986.
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Chauncey Eskridge was portrayed by Joe Morton in the 2001 biopic Ali about Muhammad Ali.
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Chauncey Eskridge was portrayed by Chuck Cooper in the film Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight about the Clay v United States case in the Supreme Court.
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Chauncey Eskridge died in January 1988 at Oak Forest Hospital after spending eleven months in a coma.
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Chauncey Eskridge had been residing in Avalon Park at the time.
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Chauncey Eskridge served on the board of directors for the Amalgamated Trust and Savings Bank beginning in 1968, making him the first African-American director of a bank in Chicago.