Frank Parker began his legal career as a staff attorney in the Office of General Counsel of the United States Commission on Civil Rights from 1966 to 1968. He moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1968, working as a staff attorney with the Jackson office of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. He became chief counsel in 1976. He litigated dozens of voting rights and employment discrimination cases in the state of Mississippi. Parker served as chief counsel or co-counsel in several landmark cases, including, but not limited to, Brooks v. Winter, which resulted in the creation of a majority Black court-ordered congressional district and the election in 1986 of Mike Espy, the first Black member of Congress from Mississippi since Reconstruction; and Connor v. Finch, which resulted in four Black legislators being elected to the Mississippi Legislature in Hinds County in 1975 and a total of 17 Black legislators elected statewide from single member districts in 1979. In 1978 Parker succeeded Mel Leventhal as counsel for plaintiffs in Loewen et al. v. Turnipseed et al., challenging Mississippi's denial of Mississippi: Conflict and Change, a textbook in Mississippi history intended for use in a required ninth-grade course. Under his leadership, the case was won, a victory that the American Library Association includes among a dozen decisions that underlie Americans' right to read. After Jackson Easter flood damaged the campus of Jackson Academy, the racially segregated private school resumed classes in temporary facilities provided by local churches. Jackson Academy was forced to vacate the churches after Parker filed a lawsuit to force the IRS to remove the churches' tax exempt status since the churches were aiding a segregation academy. TParker recalled that he received so many threats of violence that he had to leave Mississippi for several weeks. Parker served as an associate professor of political science at Tougaloo College from 1975 to 1976. He returned to Washington, D.C., in 1981, working as voting rights director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law until 1993. Mr. Parker was a leader in the effort to gain passage of the Voter Registration Act of 1993, the "motor-voter" law. Parker taught at the District of Columbia School of Law from 1993 to 1995. He taught at American University in 1996 and then accepted an appointment as a visiting professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, teaching constitutional law. At the time of his death on July 10, 1997, Parker had accepted an appointment as a visiting law professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
Frank Parker was born May 11, 1940, in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, to Marjorie LeClair Parker and Frank R. Parker, Jr. He attended public schools in Steubenville, Ohio, and received his B.A. from Oberlin College. After studies at Oxford University, Parker received an Erwin N. Griswold Scholarship to Harvard Law School, where he obtained his L.L.B. degree in 1966. Married three times, to Virginia Foster Durr, Carolyn Parker, and Ann Burlock Lawver, Parker had four children: Barbara Parker Thornton, Stephanie Parker Weaver, Kevin Parker, and Ian Parker. Frank Parker died July 10, 1997, from complications due to a ruptured aortic aneurysm.
