"It was his soul that made J. Skelly Wright a hero"

Homage to Judge Wright, from Susan Estrich: My Hero

J. Skelly Wright, a self-described "good Catholic boy" from New Orleans, a night-law-school graduate, a working-class kid who took seriously what he learned in school and in church, had been appointed to the federal district court by Harry Truman while still in his 30s because he was the only guy around who thought every ballot was supposed to be counted, once. But no one expected this good ole boy to decide that if separate but equal was inherently unequal, it was his job as a federal judge to order the first blacks to attend LSU Law School, to integrate the New Orleans school systems...

He didn't set out to be a hero. He just believed it was his job to do what was right, to enforce the law... He never got rich... As the Supreme Court changed, he got reversed more and more often. But he never stopped fighting...

Now you know just a tad more about this blog's patron saint.
(shown here with his wife Helen Patton Wright)