Derrick Albert Bell Jr. (November 6, 1930 – October 5, 2011) was an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. Bell worked for first the U.S. Justice Department, then the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases in Mississippi. After a decade as a civil rights lawyer, Bell moved into academia where he spent the second half of his life. He started teaching at USC Law School, then moved to Harvard Law School where he became the first tenured African-American professor of law in 1971. From 1991 until his death in 2011, Bell was a visiting professor at New York University School of Law, and a dean of the University of Oregon School of Law. Bell developed important scholarship, writing many articles and multiple books, using his practical legal experience and his academic research to examine racism, particularly in the legal system. Bell questioned civil rights advocacy approaches, partially stemming from frustrations in his own experiences as a lawyer. Bell is often credited as one of the originators of critical race theory. Early life Born to a working-class family in the Hill District of Pittsburgh in 1930, Bell was the eldest of four children by Derrick A. Bell Sr. and Ada Elizabeth Bell. Bell was offered a scholarship to Lincoln University, however, could not attend due to the lack of financial aid. Bell would go on to receive a B.A. from Duquesne University making him the first of his family to go to college. In 1952, he would go on to enlist becoming a member of the Duquesne Reserve Officers' Training Corps and later served as an Air Force officer for two years (stationed in Korea for one of those years). In 1957, he received a LL.B. from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law where he was the only Black graduate of his class. In 1960, Bell married Jewel Hairston who was also a Civil Rights activist and educator and they would go on to have three sons: Derrick, Douglas, and Carter. They were married until Jewel's death in 1990 and then he later remarried Janet Dewart. Law career After graduation and a recommendation from then United States associate attorney general William P. Rogers, Bell took a position with the newly formed Department of Justice in the Honor Graduate Recruitment Program. Due to his interests in racial issues, he transferred to the Civil Rights