A native of Ahoskie, North Carolina, James Robert Walker Jr. was a prominent civil rights attorney. Born in 1924 as the first of eight children, Walker grew up the son of educators with advanced degrees and the grandson of a preacher. He served in World War II and returned home to earn his bachelor’s degree from N.C. Central University after being honorably discharged from the United States Army.
Walker became the first of two Black graduates from any program at UNC-Chapel Hill, having graduated from its law school in 1952. Walker fought to earn his place a UNC-Chapel Hill which opened its doors to Walker and a handful of other qualified Black students. While there, Walker led efforts to desegregate the student section at Kenan Stadium and the social dances of its law school, penning a letter to the governor in the former and to the university chancellor in the latter. Deferring what would have been a comfortable living as a lawyer in the Piedmont, Walker opted to instead return to his native northeastern North Carolina and became a grassroots civil rights attorney, namely waging battles in the realm of voting rights across a six-county area (Halifax, Northampton, Warren, Bertie, Hertford, Gates).
In 1899, there was a proposal to add a poll tax, a grandfather clause, and a literacy test to the North Carolina Constitution. The Democratic-sponsored amendment, which was modeled on disfranchising laws recently adopted by other southern states, passed, and went into effect in North Carolina in 1901. By the 1904 elections, virtually no African Americans were able to vote in the state. North Carolina’s literacy test would remain on the books until federal law voided it in stages beginning in 1965. Until then, its only serious legal challenge came from James R. Walker Jr.
One of Walker’s techniques was to litigate in his name. This enabled him to avoid the ethical and practical complications of using surrogate clients. In June 1956, he challenged in his name the legitimacy of a “single shot” voting law that applied to local elections in Halifax County, his home county (he voted for the lone Black candidate instead of following the ballot instructions). unsuccessfully suing the registrar C.D. Moss, and losing in the state Supreme Court (Walker v. Moss). That same year, he filed a lawsuit challenging the administration of the state’s literacy test toward Black citizens in Lassiter v. Northampton County Board of Election, which was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. While he was unsuccessful yet again in Lassiter, years later, voting rights advocates would cite the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the unconstitutionality of the literacy test by invoking that lawsuit.
Despite losing in Lassiter, Walker would be successful in getting the state’s high court to rule against the administration of the state’s literacy test toward Black citizens in Bazemore v. Bertie County Board of Elections in 1961. All three cases originated in northeast NC (Halifax, Northampton, and Bertie counties). Historian John Wertheimer argues that Walker’s work highlights the underappreciated aspect of civil rights during the 50s and 60s, grassroots litigation- that is “locally based efforts to achieve legal change through test cases in appellate courts.”
Walker was the principal organizer and president of the Eastern Council on Community Affairs, which according to the Raleigh News and Observer, covered over two dozen eastern NC counties in the First and Second Congressional Districts of North Carolina. This group advocated for Black representation in local and state governing bodies, including town councils and state legislatures. It also opposed bills for school separation or segregation in Warrenton, Littleton-Lake Gaston School District in Warren and Halifax counties, and the Scotland Neck City School District in Halifax County. All three acts that created the districts were found to be unconstitutional, with the Scotland Neck entity (U.S. v. Scotland Neck City Board of Education) being found unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. Walker served as counsel in some capacity in all three lawsuits.
Walker is the first Black member of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Dialectic and Philanthropic Societies, the school’s debating and literacy society, and the oldest student organization on the campus. The state’s NAACP also recognized him with its Distinguished Service Award for his efforts in civil rights. In 1961, the same year he won the Bazemore case, he was the keynote speaker for the National Lawyers Guild in Detroit, Michigan, and in 1978, was named Lawyer of the Year by the same organization.
References
“Bazemore v. Bertie County Board of Elections,” 254 N.C 298 (1961). https://law.justia.com/cases/north-carolina/supreme-court/1961/168-0-4….
Cecelski, David. “James R. Walker, Jr. & the Struggle for Voting Rights in North Carolina’s Black Belt,” n.d. https://davidcecelski.com/2020/11/07/james-r-walker-jr-the-struggle-for….
“Lassiter v. Northampton County Bd. of Elections,” 360 U.S. 45 (1959).
Leloudis, James L., and Robert Rodgers Korstad. Fragile Democracy: The Struggle over Race and Voting Rights in North Carolina. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
“Walker v. Moss,” 246 N.C. 196 (1957).
Wertheimer, John. Law and Society in the South: A History of North Carolina Court Cases. Pbk. ed. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2010.