DETROIT -- The life of Judge Damon J. Keith will be celebrated in Detroit next month, as his family announced funeral arrangements on Monday.
Keith, a revered figure in the civil rights movement as a federal judge, died Sunday at the age of 96.
A public visitation will be held at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History on Saturday, May 11 from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The Wright Museum is located at 315 E Warren in Detroit.
A funeral service will be held on Monday, May 13 at the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church, located at 18700 James Couzens Fwy in Detroit. The service is schedule for 10 a.m.
Keith served more than five decades in the federal courts, and before his death still occasionally heard cases at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan issued a statement on Sunday, saying Keith's rulings "have safeguarded some of our most important and cherished civil liberties."
In 1970 Keith ordered a bus policy and new boundaries in the Pontiac school district to break up racial segregation. He later found that officials in Hamtramck had illegally destroyed black neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal with the federal government's help -- another groundbreaking case.
Keith in 1971 captured the country's attention with a wiretapping case against President Richard Nixon and Attorney General John Mitchell. Keith ruled they could not, without warrant, wiretap three people suspected of conspiring to destroy government property. The decision was appealed and ultimately upheld by the appellate court. It went all the way to the Supreme Court, where his ruling prevailed, becoming known as "the Keith case."
