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The bar in black and white
By Richard Goldstein
April 27, 1950, would be the last and most consequential convention of the old Florida Bar Association. In an Ormond Beach hotel William McRae (JD 33) led the debate about whether to abolish the association. Under an order of the Florida Supreme Court, all practicing lawyers in the state would now be members of an integrated bar. Its key responsibility then and continuing today would be disciplining its members: reprimanding, suspending and disbarring unethical and dishonest lawyers. The question before that 1950 convention was whether to continue operation of a statewide, voluntary association even as the disciplinary functions were incorporated into the obligatory, integrated bar.
McRae, whose future included the presidency of The Florida Bar and a federal district judicial appointment by President Kennedy, may have boasted the most impressive resume in the room. In addition to his degree from UF Law, McRae had been a Rhodes Scholar before the war and held a master’s degree from Oxford. He left the U.S. Army Air Corps with the rank of colonel in 1945. At the San Francisco Conference the same year he looked out for U.S. security interests as an adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff while the United Nations charter was written, according to William A. McRae Papers, Special and Area Studies Collections in the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. McRae was partner in the law fi rm that would later become Holland & Knight, arguably the most influential in Florida.
Next to his professional and scholarly credentials, the argument that McRae would advance is all the more jarring. There were only a handful of black lawyers practicing in 1950 Florida and an integrated, professional bar would now include all of them. Many at the convention feared that professional integration of the bar would lead to racial integration of the bar’s social activities.
“If you have all men, regardless of race, creed, previous conditions of servitude, and whether the effect of slum or what condition or position may be, if all of those are brought into the integrated bar then what with respect to one of the most important phases of our work as a volunteer organization?” McRae asked the convention. “The solution is a rather simple one. The work of the bar as a profession is participated in by everyone … But, as to social occasions, they will, as they are at this present convention, be handled under the control and the sponsorship of the local associations.”
In the aftermath of World War II, the rumblings of the civil rights movement were just beginning in Florida. Blacks had begun to demand equal treatment under the law, and one member of the convention alluded to the fact that Virgil D. Hawkins, a Bethune-Cookman College official, was suing to secure a place at UF Law.
Would it be long before demands were forthcoming that black lawyers be admitted to the lunches, dinners and conventions of The Florida Bar?
John T. Wiggington (JD 32), soon to take offi ce as president of the integrated bar, elaborated on how racial segregation could be maintained: “That if perchance there is in attendance upon our meetings, some members of the bar who are of the colored race, that the invitations to social functions can be so handled that they will not be invited and therefore no friction would arise or no unpleasant occurrences take place.”
This history, recorded in the proceedings of the convention published in the June 1950 issue of The Florida Law Journal, underscores the signifi cance of another UF Law graduate’s accomplishment. After his 2011 election, Eugene K. Pettis (JD 85) is slated to become the first black president of The Florida Bar in 2013.
(Pettis is joined by Glendell Jones as a black UF Law graduate to achieve a major leadership milestone. Jones starts July 1 as president of Henderson State University, a public liberal arts college in Arkadelphia, Ark.)
“It’s amazing that it took 61 years for it to happen,” Pettis said during a break at a January Board of Governors meeting in Tallahassee. “I’m certainly not the fi rst (black person) who was a member of this bar who was qualified to do it. But the doors were not opened in the past.”
ALLEN’S FIGHT
In 1958, Hawkins withdrew his application at UF Law in return for a settlement that racial integration would come to all University of Florida graduate and professional schools. W. George Allen (JD 62) would run through the door that Hawkins worked nearly a decade to open. Allen was the fi rst black person to earn a degree from UF Law, the University of Florida or any previously whites-only college in Florida. He tells the story of Florida educational integration in a self-published new memoir, Where the Bus Stops (see Page 60).
After his graduation from UF Law, Allen moved to Fort Lauderdale where the pugnacious (and pugilistic: he once decked a fellow UF Law student who said, “get out of the way boy” and gave Allen a push as both tried to register for a class) Sanford native had more integrating to do. This time it was related to The Florida Bar and the Broward County Bar Association. During the 1960s, the county voluntary bar associations brought disciplinary grievances to the Board of Governors of The Florida Bar. These local bars were often, if not always, whites-only clubs.
“I said if they are going to set my fees and discipline me then I want to be a member,” Allen explained in a telephone interview from his Fort Lauderdale offi ce. “In ’64 I applied for membership.” Allen called on the Gator Nation for help. A reference was required from a member of the Broward County Bar for admission so Allen asked classmates Morton Perlin (JD 62) and Charles M. Prince (JD 61) to vouch for him. Allen said he issued threats of a lawsuit in addition to his classmates’ reference. But in due course Allen was admitted to the Broward County Bar and in 1988 he became president.
Chesterfield Smith (JD 48) was another UF Law graduate unafraid to upset the apple cart. Smith, of Bartow, started out as a law partner to McRae, and he would build Holland & Knight into the powerhouse we know today. In his spare time, Smith served as Florida Bar president 1964 to 1965 and as American Bar Association president 1973 to 1974 when he issued one of the most devastating condemnations of President Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal: “No man is above the law.” Allen said Smith’s encouragement and assistance led him to become a national delegate to the ABA and he was appointed to key ABA committees. In 1975, Smith attended Allen’s inauguration as president of the National Bar Association, an organization devoted to the interests of black lawyers.
By 35, Allen, who had worked in the celery fi elds near Sanford as a kid, was driving around Fort Lauderdale in a yellow Rolls Royce.
PETTIS ASCENDS
Pettis entered a different world in 1978 when he enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Florida. Pettis was the youngest of seven children of a Fort Lauderdale maintenance man and teaching assistant who sent all their children to college. He was doubtful at fi rst about enrolling at Florida, thinking it had “too many white students and it’s too big.”
A scholarship offer helped change his mind. “When I got to Florida I found every opportunity if I was willing to go out and work for it.”
In 1985, Pettis graduated from UF Law as a double Gator, having served as treasurer of the student body and a member of Florida Blue Key.
In 1991, fellow UF Law alumnus and former Gov. Lawton Chiles (JD 55) appointed Pettis as the fi rst black person to serve on the South Florida Water Management District. In 2005, the personal injury, medical malpractice and employment lawyer with Haliczer Pettis & Schwamm was elected to the bar’s Board of Governors. Pettis claimed the Broward County (17th Circuit) seat that one of his mentors, Henry Latimer, held before his death in a car accident. Pettis fi gures that Latimer, a one-time judge who had returned to private practice, had been on track to be the fi rst black Florida Bar president. When Pettis ran for bar president last year he faced no opposition.
Among the bar’s priorities in 2012 is encouraging more minority lawyers to participate in bar activities. “The bar is going to recognize its true strength when we can recognize the involvement of all people, when we can harness that diversity,” Pettis said.
As this happens, Pettis expects that he will soon enjoy company at the top. “I think it’s worthy of note that I will be the first. I don’t think it will be too long before there’s a second.”
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