Home > U.S. Immigration and Migration > Felix Frankfurter Biography

Born November 15, 1882

Vienna, Austria

Died February 22, 1965

Washington, D.C.

U.S. Supreme Court justice, legal scholar, and defender of civil rights

"It was a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals."

Felix Frankfurter came to the United States in 1894 at the age of twelve, not speaking English but possessed with a lively imagination. He was part of a great wave of immigrants to the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Within forty years of arrival, he had become a top advisor to the president and was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, a living testament to the promise of opportunity in the United States.

The immigrant on the Lower East Side

Felix Frankfurter was born in Vienna, Austria, on November 15, 1882. His father, Leopold, lived in Vienna, capital of the...