Lynn Walker Huntley

Lynn Walker Huntley, a lawyer who was deeply involved in a wide spectrum of civil rights cases and causes, including capital punishment, race relations and employment discrimination, died Aug. 30 at her home in Atlanta. She was 69. The cause was cervical cancer, her husband, Walter Huntley, said. Ms. Huntley was at various times an official in the Department of Justice, general counsel to the New York City Commission on Human Rights, a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a scholar and program director for the Ford Foundation and president of a charity that works to improve education for children. Mary Lynn Jones was born on Jan. 24, 1946, in Petersburg, Va. Her father, the Rev. Lawrence N. Jones, was active in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, when he was associated with Fisk University in Nashville. He was dean of Howard University’s divinity school in Washington from 1975 to 1991 and died in 2009. Her mother, Mary Ellen, died in 2003. Ms. Huntley attended Fisk and graduated with honors from Barnard College with a degree in sociology. She also graduated with honors from Columbia University Law School, where she was the first black woman to become editor of the Columbia Law Review. Later, she was a law clerk for Judge Constance Baker Motley of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, who in 1966 became the first black woman to hold a federal judgeship. In addition to her husband, Ms. Huntley is survived by a stepdaughter, Tyeise Huntley Jones; and a brother, Rodney Jones. An earlier marriage, to Gary Walker, ended in divorce.