Community College of Philadelphia Presents Second Annual Judge Edward R. Becker Citizenship Award to William T. Coleman, Jr., ESQ.

PHILADELPHIA, February 19, 2008 - Community College of Philadelphia will present the Judge Edward R. Becker Citizenship Award to former U.S. Secretary of Transportation and nationally known civil rights attorney William T. Coleman, Jr., Esq., as part of the College’s Law and Society Week. The ceremony will take place at 2 p.m., Tuesday, Feb. 26, in Room C3-5 at the College’s Center for Business and Industry, 18th and Callowhill streets.

The award recognizes Coleman’s lifelong commitment to active citizenship and his distinguished career in law, business and public service. The award is named in honor of Judge Edward R. Becker who died in May 2006 and was known as a brilliant scholar and one of America’s most respected judges.

A Philadelphia native, Coleman was appointed the nation’s fourth Secretary of Transportation in 1975 by President Gerald R. Ford. He has had a distinguished career in law, business and public service, including advisory and consultant positions to seven presidents. Coleman has held several national-level public service positions and was one of the authors of the legal brief that, in 1954, persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education to end segregation in public schools. President Clinton presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, in 1995. He also received the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in November 1997.

Coleman was born in the Germantown section of Philadelphia and attended local public schools before graduating summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in 1941 and magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1946, where he was a member of the board of editors of the Harvard Law Review.

Coleman is the second recipient of the Judge Edward T. Becker Citizenship Award. The first award recipient was U.S. Senator Arlen Specter in 2007.

Judge Becker graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Pennsylvania in 1954. After graduating from Yale Law School in 1957, he became a partner in his father’s law practice. President Richard M. Nixon named him to the federal bench in 1970 at the age of 37. President Ronald Reagan elevated him to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 1981. Judge Becker served as chief judge from 1998 to 2003 and served as senior judge until 2006.

For more information about the College’s Law and Society Week, see http://www.ccp.edu/site/law_center/law_week.html.