Alton Maddox, best known for his work as a civil rights lawyer grabbing headlines for the high-profile cases he represented in the 1980s, died on Sunday in a nursing home in the Bronx at 77 years old.
Maddox was the civil rights lawyer who became an advocate for Tawana Brawley and other victims of racially charged attacks and police brutality in some of the most racially divisive cases of the era. He worked together with the Rev. Al Sharpton and disbarred attorney C. Vernon Mason.
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Most notably, Maddox and the other two men represented Brawley, a Black teenager who accused four white men of kidnapping and raping her in upstate Dutchess County and then leaving her naked but for a trash bag, covered in racial slurs and smeared in feces in 1987.
The accusation turned out to be false and has dogged the reputations of Sharpton and Maddox ever since.
He was born in Michigan, but grew up in Georgia and he was taught by his parents to distrust the whites.
He graduated from Howard University and got his law degree from Boston College.
In the early 1980s, Maddox moved to New York City.
He was disbarred for filing a false claim of racial bias in 1990.
A viewing service will be held for Maddox, who is survived by an adult son, Charles, at Abyssinian Baptist Church at 132 W. 138th St. in Harlem Monday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. followed by the funeral.
