Legal Legend Honored

By Joseph Green-Bishop

Arise Rejoice News Service

Judge L. Clifford Davis, who successfully sued the Mansfield and Fort Worth, Texas school districts in 1955, was proclaimed a “Texas Legal Legend” by the Texas State Bar Association at a ceremony held Monday at the Texas A&M University School of Law in Fort Worth.

“The purpose of this recognition is to memorialize the stories of legendary lawyers who have practiced in Texas,” said Federal Judge Christine Stetson, who presented the award to Judge Davis, who will celebrate his one-hundredth birthday on October 12th.

“Judge Davis is one of the finest lawyers and legal scholars to have ever practiced law in our state and our country, said Michael Heiskell, the president of the National Criminal Defense Lawyers Association, who shared a law practice with Judge Davis in North Texas.

A graduate of Howard University Law School, Judge Davis, a native of Arkansas, founded one of the first Black law practices in Texas. Among the legal scholars he regularly worked with was former U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall.

Exactly one after the U. S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ruled separate but equal schools unconstitutional, Judge Davis filed successful discrimination lawsuits against two North Texas School Districts.

“My law practice and my life have been inspired and enhanced by Judge Davis, said Bobbie Edmonds, a North Texas attorney who has written a biography about Judge Davis, a member of Saint Andrews United Methodist Church in Fort Worth.

“I believe that life requires all of us to pursue justice, equality, and fairness for all people without regard to race, gender, or status,” Judge said after the sixty-minute ceremony.

“We all must work for the general welfare of people,” he told the nearly one hundred people attending the ceremony sponsored by the Texas A&M University School of Law.