Born in Alexandria, Virginia, Louis Lorenzo Redding relocated to 203 E. 10th Street, Wilmington, Delaware. He graduated from Howard High School in 1919 and with honors from Brown University in 1923, then taught in Florida and at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1925 he entered Harvard Law School, where he was the only African-American in Harvard Law's 1928 graduating class. Admitted to the Delaware bar in 1929, he became the first African-American lawyer in Delaware. Over 57 years of practicing law, he handled cases that successfully challenged segregation and discrimination in housing, public accommodations, employment, and the criminal justice system. His major cases included the 1950 Parker v. the University of Delaware, which made the University of Delaware the first state-funded undergraduate institution required to desegregate by court order. He successfully argued Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1961, which held that segregation in public accommodations was not permissible. His landmark case was Gebhart v. Belton, which was combined with cases from three other states and the District of Columbia to become part of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which changed Federal public policy regarding "separate but equal" forever.