Jerry Summers
Although his Pulitzer Prize winning grandson for his biography, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House in 2009,” Jon Meacham, is better known in the literary world, the late Chattanooga judge Ellis K. Meacham also made significant contributions with his writings.
Ellis was born in Chattanooga in 1913 and died in 1998. He was the son of an attorney, graduated from the University of Chattanooga (U.C.) in 1935 and received a law degree from Vanderbilt University in 1937.
He entered the practice of law with the firm of Cantrell, Meacham and Moon as a young associate attorney.
In 1940 he married Jean Austin, a teacher and future dean at U.C. She would be a supporter of his writing endeavors and would later create the Meacham Writers Workshop in 1985 in honor of Ellis at the University of Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Community College. Said workshop is held twice a year and gives novice writers an opportunity to interact with experienced writers of national renown.
During World War II Ellis served in the Navy as a gunnery officer in the Pacific obtaining the rank of Commander. He returned to the practice of law in Chattanooga as an assistant city attorney in 1948. He practiced with his father, C.W.K. Meacham, until the latter retired in 1954.
In January 1958 Ellis became a member of a newly created law firm, Anderson, Meacham and Collins. Starting in 1968, Meacham was an assistant city attorney under City Attorney Joe Anderson who had served as a member of the city’s legal staff since 1920.
Eugene Collins, who had served two terms in the Tennessee General Assembly representing Hamilton County, would replace Joe Anderson when he retired as City Attorney. Collins would retain that position from 1963-1990. He died April 26, 2004.
Aside from his law practice, Meacham continued to write and in 1968 published his first novel in his “Napoleonic Nautical trilogy set in India” in the style of the more famous Horatio Hornblower series with his lead character being Percival Mereweather.
“The East Indiaman” (1968) was followed by “On the Company’s Service” (1971) and “For King and Country” (1976). His first book won him a Friends of American Writers Major Award in fiction in 1969.
In 1972 he became judge in the City Court of Chattanooga handling traffic, criminal, misdemeanor, and felony bind over cases until he retired.
During this time, he was also working on a proposed novel on the 1906 case involving the hanging of African-American Ed Johnson from the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga arising out of a later determined false charge of rape of a white woman. This led to the historical trial against the sheriff of Hamilton County and others for contempt of court for allowing Johnson to be taken out of the Hamilton County Jail and hanged.
Meacham was a close friend of attorneys Crawford Bean and his younger partner, Leroy Phillips, Jr., and decided to curtail his writing activities. According to legal sources, he turned over his preliminary investigative file on the case to Leroy. This led to completion of the story and the collaboration of Leroy Phillips and nationally recognized legal writer Mark Curriden, who together wrote the award-winning novel “Contempt of Court,” that later resulted in the vindication of Ed Johnson by the Criminal Court of Hamilton County on the charge of rape in 2006. Phillips and Curriden would be recognized by winning an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for the book.
After he became City Judge he realized that he had less time to write and never finished the proposed fourth volume of the Mereweather nautical series. He also started a fictionalized account of the Jimmy Hoffa trial held in Chattanooga in 1968 but stopped work on it prior to completion.
In 1998 Ellis Meacham died having made significant contributions in the field of literature and law. The Meacham Writers Workshop insures possible greater recognition of his writings after his death than he achieved during his lifetime.
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Jerry Summers
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Ellis K. Meacham