Samuel W. Tucker

School named after civil rights attorney for advancing integration

Samuel W. Tucker Elementary School opened in 2000 and is named after Samuel Wilbert Tucker (1913–1990), a lawyer, whose civil rights career began as he organized a 1939 sit-in at the then-segregated Alexandria public library. Tucker argued and won several civil rights cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, including Green v. County School Board of New Kent County, which according to The Encyclopedia of Civil Rights In America, “did more to advance school integration than any other Supreme Court decision since Brown.”