Paul E. Wilson, who helped argue for the losing side in the Brown v. Board of Education case in 1952, died April 22. He was 87.
As an assistant Kansas attorney general, Mr. Wilson argued that the state had the right to permit separate schools for blacks and whites in the Topeka case that culminated in the historic 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down school segregation. Later, in a book titled Time to Lose, he wrote that he was relieved to have lost the case.
Mr. Wilson became an associate professor of law at the University of Kansas in 1957 and was named a distinguished professor of law in 1968. He served in that capacity until his retirement in 1981.
—Ann Bradley
