The Abridged version:
- The Sacramento Historical Society is leading a fundraising effort to erect a statue of Sacramento lawyer Nathaniel Colley, to honor his national fight for fair housing rules.
- He won a landmark case, Ming v. Horgan, when Colley successfully argued that any housing project built with federal funds could not lawfully discriminate. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
- The statue project follows the 2021 opening of Nathaniel S. Colley Sr. High School in Sacramento’s Florin neighborhood.
Most people in Sacramento don’t know the name Nathaniel Colley — yet every day they move through the world he helped shape.
If you’ve ever rented an apartment, bought a home or moved into a neighborhood without someone telling you that you don’t belong, you’ve benefited from the legacy of a lawyer whose victories quietly transformed California and helped set the pace for the nation.
Colley didn’t lead marches or deliver famous speeches. He dismantled Jim Crow one courtroom at a time, brick by brick. And now, more than three decades after his death, Sacramento is giving him a place in the civic landscape he helped reimagine.
The Sacramento Historical Society, in partnership with the Colley family, is raising funds for a 7-foot bronze sculpture of the civil rights giant. The goal is simple: make visible a man whose work touches millions of lives, most of whom never learned his name.
“Nathaniel didn’t fight so he’d be remembered,” said Alfred Brown Sr., Colley’s son-in-law and a member of the Sacramento Historical Society board of directors. “He fought because it was right. But that doesn’t mean we should forget him.
“People should know,” Brown added, “he was caring and just very committed to making sure everybody was treated equally.”
The scholar Alabama tried to block
Colley’s rise began with a door slammed in his face.
Though he excelled academically, the University of Alabama School of Law rejected him under its segregationist admissions policy, which included state-funded scholarships to send students out of state. Thus, in an ironic twist, the state — determined to keep him out — instead funded his legal education at Yale University, a Jim Crow workaround Colley turned into a springboard.
Armed with an Ivy League law degree, he arrived in Sacramento in 1947 and became the city’s only Black attorney in private practice at the time. The region he walked into was deeply segregated. Developers routinely refused to sell to Black families. Public housing was divided by race. Federal dollars flowed in discriminatory patterns. Colley began challenging these norms almost immediately.
A trailblazer before the movement had icons
Five years before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat and before Martin Luther King Jr. was a national figure, Colley was litigating civil rights cases across Northern California. In the early 1950s, he won pivotal battles against segregation, including the New Helvetia housing project case and Banks v. San Francisco Housing Authority. These fights weren’t symbolic. They attacked the machinery that kept segregation running.
Brown mentioned Colley’s landmark case, Ming v. Horgan. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where Colley successfully argued that any housing project built with federal funds could not lawfully discriminate. In summarizing his argument, Colley has been quoted as saying: “He who dips his hand into the pocket of the federal treasury must not complain if a little democracy clings to it.”
The ruling reshaped housing law nationwide and cemented Colley as one of the most consequential civil rights attorneys in the nation. After that, Brown said, “minorities could move based on their economic well-being. This was new.”
In 1963, President John F. Kennedy brought Colley to the White House to advise on discrimination in federally funded housing and the armed forces. A photograph from that meeting shows Colley seated among some of the era’s most influential civil rights leaders —remarkable visibility for a lawyer whose office sat just blocks from Broadway in Sacramento.
California’s backlash — and Colley’s counterpunch
If the early ’50s put Colley on the national map, the mid-1960s defined his legacy.
In 1964, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 14, reinstating the right of sellers and landlords to discriminate. For civil rights advocates, it was a gut punch. For Colley, it was the next case.
He filed one of the first legal challenges to the measure. His case rose through the courts and helped trigger rulings from the California Supreme Court — and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court — striking Proposition 14 down. The decisions restored fair housing protections and set an influential precedent for the nation.
By 1968, colleagues were calling him “Mr. Civil Rights of California.” But those closest to him say the accolades were irrelevant. As Brown noted: “He wasn’t trying to be a symbol. He just believed the law had to live up to the Constitution.” Colley lived in Elk Grove and died in 1992.
Why a statue now?
For decades, much of Colley’s legacy lived in court filings, oral histories and the memories of the families he represented. In 2021, the Sacramento County Office of Education opened Nathaniel S. Colley Sr. High School in the Florin neighborhood. Supporters hope the new statue will further anchor his contributions in a public space.
The sculpture, commissioned from renowned artist Ronald Scott McDowell, depicts Colley leaning slightly forward, mid-stride — the posture of someone always pushing institutions to move before they were ready. McDowell’s work has been commissioned by high-profile figures including Michael Jackson, Spike Lee and President Jimmy Carter.
But supporters emphasize that the monument isn’t about building a pedestal. It’s about showing Sacramento — and the next generation — that civil rights history didn’t just unfold in Montgomery or Atlanta. It happened here, too.
The modern assumption that public programs must operate without racial bias exists, in part, because of Colley’s work. “He opened doors for people who would never know his name,” Brown said. “That’s exactly why the statue matters.”
The monument and how to support it
The Sacramento Historical Society is currently evaluating several potential locations for the monument, including some at Sacramento State, and expects to announce a final site soon, Brown said.
The fundraising goal is approximately $120,000, covering the sculpture and the structural foundation it will require. According to Brown, an anonymous donor has pledged to match contributions, doubling the impact of each gift.
Donations can be made through the Colley Civil Rights Coalition and the Sacramento Historical Society, with details available on their websites. For more information about Nathaniel Colley or the statue, visit https://colleycoalition.org or https://www.sachistoricalsociety.org
‘Honoring the values he brought to the table’
“When we put up that statue, we’re not just honoring a person — we’re honoring the values he brought to the table,” said Jesus Hernandez, a researcher whose work focuses on race and the economy.
“We’re honoring the lives of people before us and acknowledging that they went through a lot so we could have opportunities and possibilities in our lives,” Hernandez added. “Our social, economic, and political citizenship was at stake — and still is. If it takes a damn statue to make people recognize that, then put up five statues.”
Daryl V. Rowland is a freelance writer in Sacramento.