OXFORD, Miss. (AP) — Funeral services were being held Wednesday for longtime U.S. District Judge Neal Brooks Biggers Jr. of Mississippi, who issued significant rulings about prayer in public schools and funding of historically Black universities.
Biggers died Oct. 15 at his home in Oxford. He was 88.
Services were being held in Corinth, according to the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
Biggers was a Corinth native and served in the Navy before earning his law degree. He was elected as prosecuting attorney in Alcorn County, where Corinth is located; and as district attorney for part of northeast Mississippi. He was later elected as a state circuit judge.
In 1984, President Ronald Reagan nominated Biggers to serve as a federal judge for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Two of the biggest cases Biggers handled as a federal judge involved racial disparities in state university funding and prayer in school.
In the 1970s racial disparities case, Black plaintiffs argued that Mississippi was maintaining a dual …