MEMORIAL-STANDISH E. WILLIS

Illinois General Assembly - Full Text of SR0849

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SR0849 - 104th General Assembly

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SR0849
LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1
SENATE RESOLUTION

2

WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois Senate are saddened
3
to learn of the death of Standish E. "Kwame" Willis, Esq. of
4
Chicago, who passed away in his spiritual homeland of Ghana,
5
West Africa on February 28, 2025; and

6

WHEREAS, Stan Willis, born to Mr. Andrew and Mrs. Plumie
7
Willis on August 16, 1941, was a lifelong Chicagoan who was
8
raised on the West Side and infuenced by his mother's Church of
9
God in Christ (COGIC) faith, his father's work ethic, and his
10
uncle's Garveyite ideals; he was a first-generation high
11
school graduate who enlisted into the United States Air Force
12
during the Vietnam War; after being honorably discharged, he
13
worked as a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority
14
(CTA), where he helped organize several wildcat strikes,
15
including the largest in Chicago's history that disrupted
16
travel city-wide during the 1968 Democratic National
17
Convention, which helped win concessions from the CTA union
18
and led the City of Chicago to begin dismantling racist
19
policies and practices impacting Black drivers; and

20

WHEREAS, Stan Willis, while still with the CTA, attended
21
Crane Junior College, where he was an active student leader;
22
during his studies, he led a march to protest the murders of
23
Black college students by South Carolina National Guardsmen in

SR0849
- 2 -
LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1
Orangeburg, South Carolina; he also served as editor of the
2
college yearbook, founded the Afro-American History Club, and
3
was elected as president of Student Government, through which
4
he led the student movement to name the new campus after
5
Malcolm X; upon completing his associate's degree, he
6
transferred to the University of Chicago, earning a Bachelor
7
of Arts and a master's degree in Latin American Studies; he
8
studied economics at the master's degree level at the
9
University of Illinois Chicago, and he earned his Juris Doctor
10
from Chicago-Kent College of Law of the Illinois Institute of
11
Technology; and

12

WHEREAS, Stan Willis became a lawyer who specialized in
13
civil rights, police brutality and misconduct, criminal
14
defense work, and human rights; he initially joined Peoples'
15
Law Office (PLO) as a partner, during which time he also joined
16
the Lawyers for Washington movement; he served with PLO for
17
several years prior to establishing his own firm, The Law
18
Office of Standish E. Willis, in 1989; he tried numerous
19
federal jury trials and several state jury and bench trials,
20
and he argued many cases before the Seventh Circuit Court of
21
Appeals; he also litigated hundreds of civil rights lawsuits
22
against many municipalities involving public officials, served
23
on the Federal Defender Panel and its prestigious Selection
24
Committee, and was named one of Chicago's "Tough Lawyers" by
25
Chicago magazine in 2002; and

SR0849
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LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1

WHEREAS, Stan Willis taught in various settings over the
2
course of his professional life, devoting the same level of
3
dedication and rigor to the classroom that he brought to the
4
courtroom and community organizing; he taught a number of
5
courses, including the GED program at Malcom X College,
6
African American history at Stateville Correctional Center,
7
and economics at Roosevelt University for ten years; he was a
8
frequent guest lecturer at Chicago-area law schools and led
9
annual workshops for lawyers and lay people across the nation,
10
providing state-certified continuing legal education (CLE)
11
credits; he served as a faculty-lecturer for the annual civil
12
rights seminar sponsored by the Illinois Institute for
13
Continuing Legal Education (IICLE), the Chicago-Kent College
14
of Law, and the American Bar Association in the area of 42
15
U.S.C. 1983 on civil rights liability and litigation; he also
16
maintained speaking engagements on issues related to the
17
criminal justice system, the death penalty, police violence,
18
community control of police, the prison-industrial complex,
19
America's political prisoners, racism and the American legal
20
system, international human rights, and reparations; further,
21
he was the subject of and contributed to articles and chapters
22
of numerous books, dissertations, and documentaries; and

23

WHEREAS, Stan Willis founded the grassroots organization
24
Black People Against Police Torture (BPAPT) in 2005; he led a

SR0849
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LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1
coalition of lawyers, activists, and community members to
2
internationalize the Chicago Police Torture cases by means of
3
international human rights mechanisms and treaties to which
4
the U.S. was subject; he presented evidence of police torture
5
before the Organization of American States' Inter-American
6
Commission on Human Rights in 2005, the UN Committee Against
7
Torture (CAT) in 2006, and the United Nations' Committee to
8
Eliminate Racial Discrimination (CERD) in 2008, helping to
9
bring a modicum of justice in the Chicago police torture cases
10
by sparking the indictment of former Chicago Police Department
11
Commander Jon Burge; through BPAPT, he called for reparations,
12
was among the first to challenge Chicago's right to host the
13
Olympics, coined the now familiar phrase of "the torture
14
capital of the U. S.", and personally initiated and drafted
15
the legislative bill that was ultimately enacted in 2009 in
16
the form of the Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission
17
(TIRC), securing justice and freeing many torture victims and
18
survivors; and

19

WHEREAS, Stan Kwame was involved in many social justice
20
campaigns, including the Free South Africa Movement to end
21
Apartheid; he organized the African-American Defense Committee
22
Against Police Violence after the televised beating of Rodney
23
King in 1991 and The Riverdale Eight, a group of
24
African-American women who were brutalized by Riverdale police
25
officers, in 1995; he joined many abolitionists globally to

SR0849
- 5 -
LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1
spare former Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu Jamal from
2
execution, organizing and chairing the African-American
3
Committee to Free Mumia Abu Jamal; he continued educating and
4
mobilizing support for all victims of racial and political
5
oppression, including the numerous victims of the notorious
6
Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) by authoring a
7
stakeholders' report on COINTELPRO Political Prisoners in
8
2010, which was submitted to the first UN Universal Periodic
9
Review (UPR) of the United States; he was also instrumental in
10
leading then-Governor George H. Ryan to clearing Illinois'
11
death row and commuting the death sentences of four men who had
12
been convicted based on tortured confessions; and

13

WHEREAS, Stan Willis was a longtime member of the National
14
Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL), serving as chair of its
15
Chicago Chapter; he was a longtime board member for the Black
16
United Fund of Illinois (BUFI) and co-founded several
17
significant institutions, including the Communiversity, a
18
pre-cursor to the Center for Inner City Studies, the Black
19
Student Congress, African Liberation Day in Chicago, the
20
National Anti-Imperialist Movement in Solidarity with African
21
Liberation, the Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers/NCBL
22
affiliate, and the Office of HBCU Development and
23
International Cooperation (OHBCUD); he also served as a member
24
of the Durban 400 in 2001, helping secure a UN declaration that
25
the Transatlantic slave trade was a crime against humanity;

SR0849
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LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1
and

2

WHEREAS, Stan Willis was often recognized for his
3
unswerving commitment to social justice work and solidarity by
4
groups across racial, generational, and class lines, including
5
the National Lawyers Guild, the Arab American Action Network,
6
the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, the Cook County Bar
7
Association, and the National Conference of Black Lawyers; he
8
became the namesake of the Standish E. Willis Community
9
Service Award by Black law students at Chicago-Kent College of
10
Law in 1984; and

11

WHEREAS, Stan Willis will be remembered as a tireless
12
advocate for oppressed communities across the globe who stayed
13
true to his Chicago roots and Pan African calling, remaining
14
guided by the needs of the community and the people;
15
therefore, be it

16

RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE ONE HUNDRED FOURTH GENERAL
17
ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we mourn the passing of
18
Standish E. "Kwame" Willis, Esq. and extend our sincere
19
condolences to his family, friends, and all who knew and loved
20
him; and be it further

21

RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
22
presented to the family of Stan Willis as an expression of our

SR0849
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LRB104 21290 LAW 36054 r
1
deepest sympathy.

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