Landmark Milwaukee attorney James Hall Jr. dies

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James H. Hall Jr., a longtime Milwaukee attorney who served as co-lead in a class-action redlining suit the Milwaukee NAACP brought against American Family Insurance, has died from cancer in Milwaukee. He was 69.

Hall was an attorney at former Milwaukee firm Charne, Clancy & Taitelman. While at the firm, he helped defend appeals of desegregation orders and devised a plan to enforce them. He ultimately made partner and stayed with the firm until it dissolved in 1991, according to an obituary on the University of Virginia Law School website.

He and others then co-founded Hall, Burce & Olson in Milwaukee, where he continued to practice as a partner until his retirement in October 2022.

In the 1990s, Hall served as co-lead in a landmark class-action redlining suit the Milwaukee NAACP brought against American Family Insurance, which resulted in a $16 million settlement, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

His clients included a group of Black firefighters who sued the Milwaukee Fire Department for discrimination, the Milwaukee Area Technical College, City of Milwaukee Ethics Board, City of Milwaukee Pension Board and the Milwaukee County Social Development Commission.

Hall was a founding member of 100 Black Men of Milwaukee, which mentors disadvantaged youth to promote academic and economic achievement, according to the obituary on UVA’s site. And through his affiliation with Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, he connected high school students interested in law with law school tours and insight into the admissions process and professional expectations, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

He was additionally the former president of both the NAACP Milwaukee branch and the Wisconsin Association of African-American Lawyers, and he served on the Wisconsin ACLU board of directors and the national board of directors of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

As a board member of the Tanzanian Economic Development Initiative, the Haggerty Museum of Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum’s Fine Arts Society, he was a dedicated fundraiser.

He taught as an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, including courses on race and public policy in urban America, local policy analysis, community organizing and the civil rights movement in the South.

Hall is survived by his spouse, Pauline, and his brother, Warren, and numerous cousins and other relatives. In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations to Milwaukee’s Social Development Commission Foundation, NAACP Milwaukee, or the ACLU of Wisconsin. Funeral services will be held Jan. 13 at noon at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Smithfield, Virginia.