Clyde E. Murphy, a crusading civil rights attorney who won a Supreme Court case on behalf of African-American firefighter applicants, passed away on Aug. 17 at Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago. Services have been held.

In his 35-year legal career, first with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and more recently as executive director of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Mr. Murphy handled employment discrimination, affirmative-action, police misconduct and housing bias cases. His pivotal achievement came this year when the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a federal judge's ruling that the city of Chicago discriminated against a group of more than 6,000 African-American applicants who took the 1995 firefighter entrance exam.

Read the full obituary in the Chicago Tribune