In January 1969, the high court agreed to hear Kramer’s case. Then the American Civic Liberties Union heard about it and offered its assistance, and with the ACLU at their back, Kramer and Murray appeared before the Supreme Court.

Victory is sweet

Kramer claimed that a state law that barred a citizen from voting in a local school election because he or she did not own property or have children in the schools violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which ensures equal protection under the law for all.

Six months later, the Supreme Court sided with Kramer. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the court’s 5-3 majority opinion. The court determined that a state government could limit a citizen’s right to vote only if it could prove that it was acting in the best interests of the people –– if, for example, it acted on grounds of national security.

Historians and legal scholars Paul Finkelman and Melvin Urofsky included Kramer v. Union Free School District in their tome on the high court, “Landmark Cases of the United States Supreme Court,” published in 2007. The authors note that the Constitution does not explicitly guarantee the right to vote. In applying the 14th Amendment to Kramer’s case, the Warren court helped to tacitly establish it.

Leatrice Spanierman, who was executive editor of the Nassau Herald when Kramer was thrust into the national spotlight, said, “His case, taught in constitutional law classes to this day, basically overturned restrictive voting practices in the United States.”

The front-page headline of the Herald’s June 19, 1969, issue read, “High court gives vote to bachelor in District 15: State statute struck down.”

Winning the right to vote in the Lawrence District election –– a right that Kramer has exercised many times since –– he felt as though he was “as valuable as everyone else,” he said.

No doubt, he always was.

In part two, a civic activist turns his attention to saving the planet.