Jack Robertson, 85; Attorney in Palo Alto School Integration Suit
Jack Robertson, 85, a Menlo Park lawyer who fought a decade-long battle to integrate schools across district boundaries on the San Francisco Peninsula, died of complications from a stroke Tuesday in Palo Alto.
Robertson was one of three lawyers who represented Margaret Tinsley and 33 other parents in a landmark 1976 lawsuit against 10 districts, including the Palo Alto Unified School District.
A decade after filing the suit, Robertson and fellow lawyers Jerry Marer and Sid Berlin won a settlement that allowed several hundred minority students who would have attended schools in East Palo Alto to attend schools in Palo Alto and other nearby affluent communities.
Born in 1916, Robertson graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1938.
During World War II, he served as an officer in the Naval Air Transport Service.
Robertson, who studied law at Stanford University after the war, was appointed to the school board in the Las Lomitas School District in the 1950s.
In 1969, he was elected to the Sequoia High School District board of trustees.
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