Law
Wade H. McCree
1920–1987 · judge, U.S. solicitor general, law professor
Harvard-trained lawyer who made his career in Detroit, becoming the first Black judge on the Wayne County Circuit Court and the Sixth Circuit, then U.S. solicitor general.
- Born
Des Moines, Iowa- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 67- Birth name
- Wade Hampton McCree Jr.
- Also known as
- Wade Hampton McCree Jr.
- Detroit years
- 1948–1987
- Field
- Law
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Wade H. McCree grew up mainly in Boston, attended Boston Latin School and Fisk University, served as an Army captain in World War II and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1948. He then moved with his wife Dores to her hometown of Detroit, where they raised three children. He practiced at the Black law firm of Bledsoe & Taylor until Governor G. Mennen Williams named him to the state Workmen's Compensation Commission in 1953, and in 1954 he became the first African American judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court. President Kennedy appointed him to the federal district court in Detroit in 1961, and President Johnson elevated him in 1966 to the Sixth Circuit, its first Black judge. As President Carter's solicitor general from 1977 to 1981 he argued 25 cases before the Supreme Court, including Bakke. He then taught at the University of Michigan Law School until his death at Henry Ford Hospital in 1987, and is buried at Woodlawn.
Highlights
- First African American judge of the Wayne County Circuit Court (1954)
- U.S. District Judge, Eastern District of Michigan, 1961–1966
- First Black judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals (1966)
- U.S. solicitor general, 1977–1981
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1961–1977
Theodore Levin United States Courthouse
Detroit's federal courthouse, seat of the Eastern District of Michigan, where he served as district judge.
Buried here · 1987
Woodlawn Cemetery
He is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery.