Nathaniel Colley Sculpture Fund
We Need Your Help
Preserving the Legacy of Nathaniel Colley:
A Champion of Civil Rights
Five years before Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, there was Nathaniel Colley. Colley was Sacramento's first practicing African-American attorney. As the pioneering civil rights advocate of the west during the last half of the 20th century, Attorney Colley made a profound and lasting impact on the nation in joining California Governor and Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Thurgood Marshall, and President John F. Kennedy in the struggle to end Jim Crow in California and throughout the United States.
President John F. Kennedy meets with members of the Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces. Left to right: Laurence I. Hewes; Nathaniel S. Colley; Benjamin Muse; Gerhard Gesell; President Kennedy; Whitney M. Young; John H. Sengstacke; Abe Fortas. Photograph by Robert Knudsen, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Nathaniel Colley's landmark legal victories in the 1952 New Helvetia housing case (on Broadway by the Old City Cemetery) and the 1954 Ming vs. Horgan federal funding case (“follow the money”), convinced President Kennedy to end racial discrimination in all housing involving federal funds. Mr. Colley continued his fight against housing discrimination ten years later, in 1964, when Californians voted by a 2-to-1 margin to reinstitute Jim Crow housing in our state through Proposition 14. In the aftermath, Nathaniel Colley filed the first case that led the California Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court to declare Prop 14 unconstitutional and make fair housing the law of the land. In 1968, he was hailed as "Mr. Civil Rights of California."
Mr. Colley's extensive work to protect the civil rights of all people is awe-inspiring. To preserve and honor his memory, the Colley family, in association with SHS, have selected nationally renowned sculptor Ronald Scott McDowell to create a sculpture of Colley that will be placed in Sacramento’s premier statuary showcase in the Robert T. Matsui Courthouse. Numerous celebrities and political figureheads including Michael Jackson, Spike Lee, and Jimmy Carter, have all commissioned artwork by McDowell throughout the nation. We are honored to be working with him on this momentous project with the full support of the Colley family.
The Colley maquette model already completed.
To celebrate Colley's life and work, we are fundraising for the creation of the 7 foot Colley sculpture. The total amount to be raised is $130,000. As supporters of SHS, we need your help to reach this goal and preserve and honor the memory of this dynamic, iconic Sacramento and California figure!
If you would like to donate online, please complete the form below.
If you would prefer to mail your donation, please address any donations with a check made payable to:
Sacramento Historical Society
1081 38th Street
Sacramento, CA 95816
We thank you in advance for your generous contributions!
“I had a mission to make the world a better place
through law!”
Nathaniel Colley