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Z. Alexander Looby

Zephaniah Alexander Looby (April 8, 1899–March 24, 1972) was a lawyer active in the American Civil Rights Movement. He was born in Antigua, and moved to the United States in 1914.

In May, 1951, he was elected to the Nashville, Tennessee City Council, along with another lawyer, Robert Lillard, the first African Americans to be elected since 1911.

He helped found the Kent College of Law in Nashville, and he defended the students arrested in the Nashville sit-ins. As a result of his support of the students, his house was dynamited on April 19, 1960. Neither he nor his wife were harmed in the bombing.

In 1982, the Nashville Bar Association posthumously awarded him membership, which had been refused him in the 1950s.

References

• Sarvis, Will. (2003). "Leaders in the Court and the Community: Z. Alexander Looby, Avon N. Williams, Jr., and the Legal Fight for Civil Rights in Tennessee, 1940-1970", Journal of African American History 88:1 (Winter 2003): 42-58.