If you would like to make a donation in honor of Drew, it can be made to:

- The Yale Law School Financial Aid Giving Site (giving.yale.edu/supportProfDrewDays)

- The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund (https://www.naacpldf.org/support/)

- Hamilton College (https://www.hamilton.edu/makeagift)

IN MEMORIAM

In a letter Drew wrote to Ann in 1966, he spoke of the many sides of himself:

“For those who regard me as an intellectual, with a proclivity for discussing Sartre to the music of Bartok, I invite them to see me gyrate to a rock-n-roll beat...For those who enjoy my humor, my gaiety, I open the door to my brooding, unsmiling, man-boy... And to those who think of me lawyer-like, double-tied and burlap-suited, I offer the slob: unshaven, unabashed and, most importantly, happy. People who accept and propagate stereotypes are attempting to deprive me of my ‘individuality,’ of my ‘Drewness.’ They are saying to me that my skin color tells them all they need to know about me.” 

Drew dedicated his life to making sure that everyone would have the freedom to express all of their diverse parts as he, himself, aimed to do. He will be remembered for the many roles he played in his lifetime.

Drew was a child in the segregated south. Born in Atlanta, Georgia on August 29th, 1941, he grew up in Tampa, Florida where he learned to swim and love the water, and lived his teenage years in New Rochelle, NY. He was the son of Dorothea Jamerson Days, a teacher, and Drew Days Sr. who worked for a life insurance company. Mary McLeod Bethune, the women’s and civil rights activist, served on the board of that company, and young Drew recalled the early and profound experience of sitting on her lap. 

He will be remembered as a prominent Civil Rights Attorney, who served on the legal staff of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, part of a team that successfully desegregated the Tampa schools he had attended as a child. 

Drew was a student and later trustee of Hamilton College, where his name lives on in the Days-Massolo Center, promoting diversity awareness and fostering cultural dialogue on campus. 

He will be remembered as a legal scholar, who found his home at Yale University Law School, pursuing civil rights law as a student, sharing his love of singing as a tenor in the Yale Russian Chorus, meeting his future wife, Connecticut College student Ann Langdon, and earning his law degree there in 1966. He later built his professional base at Yale for 36 years. Named the Alfred M. Rankin Professor Emeritus, his teachings and writings focused on civil procedure, federal jurisdiction, anti-discrimination law, comparative constitutional law and international human rights.

This passion for justice and creating a better future was further evident in his role at several organizations, among them the Orville H. Schell Jr. Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School, where he served as founding director; his position as a board member of the MacArthur Foundation, which supports “creative people, effective institutions, and influential networks building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world”; and as board member of the Petra Foundation, named for a friend and colleague, which celebrates “unsung local heroes who are fighting injustices and working to make the world more equitable and just.”

There are those who will remember Drew for journeying with his wife Ann to volunteer for the Peace Corps in Comayagua, Honduras where they learned to speak Spanish and served for 2 years, Drew organizing an agricultural cooperative during that time. 

Drew is known for his work in Washington DC, as the first African-American Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, under President Jimmy Carter, hoping “to get America to where it sees subtle forms of segregation." He served, too, as Solicitor General, the nation’s top courtroom advocate, during President Bill Clinton’s first term. He argued 24 cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, 17 of those as Solicitor General, in areas as diverse as international tax, civil rights and military & criminal law.

He served alongside his sister, Jacquelyn Days Serwer, as a distinguished founding member of the Scholarly Advisory Committee of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC, helping to advise the board of the Smithsonian on issues leading to successful museum planning, design and construction as well as providing recommendations on the acquisition of objects for its collections. 

He joined Morrison & Foerster as “of counsel” for 14 years, the cornerstone of the firm’s appellate and Supreme Court practice. Though he didn’t sing with the Mo-Fonics, he was wooed by the sounds of the rock band made up of Morrison & Foerster partners and associates.

In his hometown of  New Haven, where his two daughters grew up, Drew became the first African-American member of The Committee of the Proprietors of the Common and Undivided Lands at New Haven, an independent body which has owned the New Haven Green since the 17th century. 

He spent many summers with family and friends at the home of his mother-in-law in Little Compton, Rhode Island, riding the New England waves, swimming a sometimes challenging route out to sea and back, and enjoying fresh seafood picnics and conversation. 

Drew will be remembered for all that he was to each of us. A fighter for social justice, a legal mind, a soaring voice, an asker and answerer, a world traveler, a philosopher, a storyteller. We will miss the insight, generosity, humor, warmth, experience, and friendship that he shared with us. 

Drew leaves behind his wife of 54 years, artist Ann Langdon-Days; two daughters, Alison L Days (Sergio Rico) & Elizabeth J Days (Donald Karr);  granddaughters Frida & Georgia Rico; his sister Jacquelyn D Serwer (Daniel), and all of his loved extended family, colleagues, and friends.