Chicago attorney R. Eugene Pincham, a retired Appellate Court justice, will receive the Elmer Gertz Award on Tuesday, Dec. 11, during a luncheon at the Union League Club of Chicago.

The award is presented annually by the ISBA Human Rights Section and the Blind Services Association in memory of the former Chicago civil rights attorney. State Rep. Julie Hamos will be keynote speaker.

An experienced human rights activist, Pincham harbors a desire to represent people who otherwise would not have counsel. His early experiences with poverty and racial discrimination have shaped his career.

Born in Chicago, he grew up in Alabama, where he picked cotton from dawn to dusk for 10 cents an hour. While attending the Northwestern University School of Law, he shined shoes, washed dishes and waited tables.

A 1951 graduate, Pincham was a trial and appeals attorney in state and federal courts until he became a Cook County Criminal Division judge in 1976.

He was elected to the Appellate Court in 1984 but retired from the bench in 1989 to run for the office of Cook County Board president.

“I have spent my life trying to keep people informed and educated in the political, economic and educational arenas,” Pincham told an N'Digo writer in 1995.

“If you keep people ignorant, you keep them suppressed, but you cannot suppress an enlightened people. My mission has been and will be to keep people enlightened.”