Donald Hollowell, 87; Civil Rights Attorney, Desegregation Activist

Donald L. Hollowell, 87, a civil rights attorney who once helped free the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from jail and worked to desegregate Atlanta’s public schools, died Monday of heart failure in Atlanta.

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Hollowell served as one of the lead lawyers in the desegregation of Atlanta’s public schools. He represented King in 1960 after the civil rights leader was jailed on a traffic charge.

He also was the attorney for Charlayne Hunter (now Hunter-Gault) and Hamilton Holmes Jr. when they integrated the University of Georgia in 1961. Hollowell’s firm also worked to desegregate buses in Augusta, Ga., and schools in Macon, Ga., and won a landmark case requiring Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital to admit black doctors and dentists to its staff.

A native of Wichita, Kan., Hollowell earned his bachelor’s degree and played quarterback on the football team at Lane College in Jackson, Tenn. He served in the U.S. Army before and during World War II. After the war, he earned his law degree at Loyola University of Chicago.