Jerry Summers
The Chattanooga area has had several attorneys who have been involved in landmark cases early in their careers, but time has often eroded the memory of their participation. Thurgood Marshall will always be remembered as both the first African American appointee to the United States Supreme Court and as the trial lawyer who traveled across the South in the post-WWII era representing accused blacks as Chief Counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Race riots occurred, and the turmoil provided an ample source of cases to be defended by Marshall, fellow NAACP colleague, Walter White and affiliated local counsel.
On February 25, 1946 an incident occurred involving a black US Navy veteran from the Pacific and a young white store clerk over a radio at a Columbia, Tennessee, department store that started with a minor charge of disturbing the peace, but would escalate into serious felony charges that would result in the veteran, Stevenson, being charged with assault with intent to commit murder.
A violent race riot followed in the segregated black business section known as the Mink Slide, resulting in four police officers being shot.
Both state and federal charges and trials took place with 25 blacks being tried on the serious charges in Lawrenceburg after they were transferred from Columbia.
In the September-October 2020 edition of the Tennessee Bar Journal, author and Law Professor David L Hudson, Jr. wrote a factual, frightening and entertaining article about the February 25-26th riots that is historical reading for both the legal profession and private citizens.
Because of illness, Marshall did not participate in the trial that resulted in 23 of the defendants being acquitted, but he did serve as counsel in a later case of two young African Americans accused of firing shots at law officers.
Local Chattanooga attorney Maurice Weaver was brought into the case to represent the 25 defendants, and is featured in the 1946 photo of the defense team in David Hudson's article.
In 1967 -1968 attorney Weaver defended a 67-year-old lady engage in the world's oldest profession as a second offender on charges of operating a bawdy house and patronizing prostitution.
Although a career as a trial lawyer and opulent lifestyle had taken its toll on the 1946 colleague of future Justice Thurgood Marshall, Weaver was still able to take advantage of the youthful prosecutor as the Hamilton County jury only fined the madam $50.00 and $25.00 with no sentence of incarceration on the charges.
(Both Marshall and Weaver would move forward from the 1946 Columbia race riot cases that are important chapters in their legal careers.)
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