Charles Morgan Jr.; Lawyer Championed Civil, Voting Rights

He was born March 11, 1930, in Cincinnati, and his family moved to Kentucky when he was an infant. He later moved to Birmingham, Ala., and graduated from the University of Alabama, where he also received a law degree in 1955.

Early in his career, he publicly deplored racial injustice and represented indigent blacks for free in his spare time from his practice at a corporate law firm in Birmingham. Then, in September 1963, the day after four young black girls died in the firebombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Mr. Morgan took the podium at the Young Men's Business Club.

"We are a mass of intolerance and bigotry, and stand indicted before our young," he said. "We are cursed by the failure of each of us to accept responsibility, by our defense of an already dead institution. . . . Every person in this community who has in any way contributed during the past several years to the popularity of hatred is at least as guilty as the demented fool who threw the bomb. . . .

"Who did it? Who threw that bomb? The answer should be, 'We all did it.' "

The community reaction was swift and brutal. Crosses were burned on his lawn, polite society shunned him and he received multiple anonymous death threats. He eventually moved his family out of the city.

He had worked briefly for the NAACP and the American Association of University Professors before joining the ACLU in 1964.

In his prime, he was described as a man who "looks like an Alabama sheriff" because he was overweight, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and his voice carried the sound of the Deep South.

He closed his law office in Washington in 1992 and retired to Destin.

He wrote "A Time to Speak" (1964) about his early years and "One Man, One Voice" (1979) about his experiences from 1964 to 1976.

Survivors include his wife of 55 years, Camille Walpole Morgan of Destin; a son, Charles Morgan III of Destin; and four grandchildren.