Belford Vance Lawson Jr. (July 9, 1901 – February 23, 1985) was an American attorney and civil rights activist who made at least eight appearances before the U.S. Supreme Court. He was the first African-American man to win a case before the Supreme Court and the first African-American president of YMCA. His wife, Marjorie McKenzie Lawson, was also an attorney who served as the first African-American judge in Washington, D.C. Early life Belford Lawson was born and grew up in Roanoke, Virginia. He attended the University of Michigan and was the school's second African-American varsity football player (having been preceded by George Jewett in the 1890s). He was the only African American on the varsity during Fielding H. Yost's coaching tenure. In 1924, after graduating from Michigan, Lawson was hired as the head football coach and athletic director at Jackson College (now known as Jackson State University), a historically black college in Jackson, Mississippi, the state capital. He also served as a professor of social science and the director of the Teachers' Professional Department. In Lawson's three years as the head football coach at Jackson College, the team compiled a record of 0–3 and was outscored 54 to 0. Lawson was reported to have held a position as a professor of economics at Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia. The college's president John Lewis, a Yale University graduate, was instrumental in Lawson being accepted to Yale Law School. Lawson completed his degree at Howard University School of Law, where he received his J.D. in 1932. Career In 1933, Lawson founded the New Negro Alliance (NNA) in Washington, D.C., along with John A. Davis Sr. and M. Franklin Thorne, to challenge white-owned businesses in black neighborhoods that would not hire black employees. The NNA instituted a Don't Buy Where You Can't Work campaign, considered radical at the time, and organized or threatened boycotts against white-owned businesses that did not hire blacks. In response, some businesses arranged for an injunction to stop the picketing. Lawson, the lead attorney, with assistance by Thurgood Marshall, fought back – all the way to the United States Supreme Court in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. (1938). The court ruled that the organization and residents had a right to boycott. This became a landmark case in the struggle by African Americans against discriminatory hiring practices. Don't Buy Where You Can't Work groups multiplied throughout the