Bar Unity March By SHAYLA NICOLE PURIFOY, 2020 President of the Ben F. Jones Chapter of the National Bar Association
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s you approach the jury room in Giles County, Tennessee, you may notice the entrance door decorated with the words, “United Daughters of the Confederacy,” complete with the United Daughters of the Confederacy emblem. Inside the jury room, there is an original Confederate flag and a portrait of Jefferson Davis (slave owner and President of the Confederacy during the Civil War), among other relics. This jury room sits on August 14, 2020—not 1865 nor 1968—as a reminder that at one point in time the subjugation, dehumanization, and debasement of an entire race of people was tolerated and legal. Giles County is also infamous for the formation, in a law office in 1865, of the first chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, of which Nathan Bedford Forrest was its first Grand Wizard. Just a few hours from Giles County, statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis stood in Memphis until 2017, when attorneys Van Turner and Bruce McMullen successfully had them removed.1 We all have stories—some from family oral history, some from childhood, some from college and some from now. The Ben F. Jones Chapter of the National Bar Association started informally in 19602 to “gather legal knowledge and create a sense of community and camaraderie among the small number of AfricanAmerican attorneys in Shelby County at that time.” Initially, the group started as informal mentorship meetings by the Honorable H.T. Lockard, James Estes, S.A. Wilbun, Ben F. Jones and Rev. Dr. Benjamin Hooks3 —“the first five.” These five luminaries gathered because African American attorneys in Memphis were not welcome to join the local bar association, which was segregated, at the time. African American lawyers experienced heightened scrutiny while practicing in court. It was common for some attorneys and judges to refer to African American attorneys by their first name rather than giving them proper respect of last names. Some may think these things happened light years ago, but this ill treatment toward African Americans was the 6
norm just over 50 years ago. And as a poignant reminder that racial progress has its ebbs and flows, the jury room in Giles County remains the same in 2020. Faced with a new civil rights movement in 2020, we have a choice to make. We may follow in the footsteps
