Article by Frank T. Read
Turn to any country music station, listen long enough, and you will hear the sad refrain, "My heroes have always been cowboys." Like the balled writer, I too have had heroes; but my heroes have always been lawyers. And foremost among those lawyers is a small, hawk-nosed man who, I submit, is one of the premier federal appellate judges of this century. My hero is John Minor Wisdom. His photograph hangs in a prominent position on my office wall. In it he is tipped back in his chair, glasses pushed up on his forehead, an elfin grin on his face, with shirt collar open and tie askew. He, and three other giants on the old United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, John R. Brown, Richard T. Rives, and Elbert P. Tuttle—known at the time by the derisive title "The Four"—transformed the Supreme Court's seemingly impossible promise of equal educational opportunity in Brown v. Board of Education into reality. More often than not, John Minor Wisdom was the penman, architect, and genius who wrote the seminal decisions that integrated the public schools of the Deep South. He was tried and tested in the crucible of an unprecedented, judicially sparked social revolution and became the finest tempered steel. He, and those other three giants, Brown, Rives, and Tuttle, had more to do with the translation of Brown's vague promise into civil rights reality than any other Americans of their time. To the public at large, they remain largely unknown and unsung. But to those who know the tortuous course of the desegregation of the Deep South, they are true heroes. And it was John Minor Wisdom's pen, fueled by his intellect and his will, that transfigured promise into reality.
About the Author
Frank T. Read. Dean and Professor of Law, University of Florida College of Law.
Citation
60 Tul. L. Rev. 264 (1985)