U.W. Clemon is Alabama's first African-American federal judge.  Born in Birmingham on April 9, 1943, he attended and graduated from the public schools of Jefferson County, Alabama.  He subsequently earned degrees from Miles College and Columbia University Law School.  He has done further legal studies at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University.  Before his appointment to the federal bench by President Carter in 1980, he was a civil rights lawyer, specializing in job discrimination and school desegregation cases.  In 1974, he was one of the first two African-Americans elected to the Alabama State Senate since Reconstruction.  During his first term, he chaired the Rules Committee.  During his second term, he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee.  He served on the Executive Council of the American Bar Association from 1976-1979.  He holds an honorary doctorate from Miles College.  Clemon received the Drum Major Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1980 and the C. Francis Stradford Award in 1986--the highest honor given by the National Bar Association.  More recently, the African-American judges of the United States presented to him the William H. Hastie Award "in recognition of his exceptional legal scholarship."  He is married to the former Barbara L. Lang and is the father of two children.  He is an alternate member of the Judicial Council of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.  Fraternally, he is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the Shriners, and the Prince Hall Thirty-Third Degree Masons.  He currently sits in the Northern District of Alabama and serves as Adjunct Professor of Constitutional Law at Birmingham-Southern College.