Clifford Scott Green

Clifford Scott Green (April 2, 1923 – May 31, 2007) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Green was the eighteenth African-American Article III judge appointed in the United States, and the second African-American judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. During his 36 years on the federal bench Judge Green presided over a number of notable cases, and was regarded as one of the most popular judges in the district. Personal life Judge Green was born on April 2, 1923, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, Robert Lewis Green, had come to the United States from St. Thomas island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Green attended West Philadelphia High School, graduating in 1941. He initially had "no thought of going to college," intending instead to go immediately to work. From 1941 to 1942 he worked in a Philadelphia restaurant and at a drug manufacturing company. In 1942 he took a job with the United States Army Signal Corps. In 1943 Judge Green enlisted in the United States Army Air Corps, the predecessor to the United States Air Force. At the time, the armed forces were still segregated. Green was initially "optimistic that the military was going to be a good life," until his unit was shipped from Fort Lee, Virginia, to Keesler Field (now Keesler Air Force Base), in Mississippi. When the unit arrived at Keesler they were driven past the barracks to what Green would later describe as "a tent city." It was then that Green "realized for real that I was really in a segregated army, and there was always, as long as I was in the service, two standards, one quite unacceptable and the other as acceptable as could be considering the fact that the country was at war."