Daniel Holcombe Thomas

American judge

Daniel Holcombe Thomas (August 25, 1906 – April 13, 2000) was a United States district judge who served nearly five decades on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama .

Early life and education

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Born in Prattville , Alabama , Thomas came from a family of lawyers and judges. His father was a local probate judge for Autauga County, Alabama . His uncle William Holcombe Thomas had served on the Alabama Supreme Court and another uncle, J. Render Thomas was that court's clerk; his paternal grandfather W.C. Thomas had served in the state legislature. Daniel H. Thomas received a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Alabama School of Law in 1928.

Legal and military careers

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Thomas was in private practice in Mobile , Alabama from 1929 to 1943. He also became an assistant solicitor for Mobile County , Alabama during the Great Depression (1932 to 1939). He became Mobile County's acting solicitor in 1943. Called into military service during World War II , Thomas served in the United States Navy as a Lieutenant (from 1943 to 1946). He then returned to private practice in Mobile from 1946 to 1951 with Joseph Lyons and Sam Pipes as the firm of Lyons, Thomas and Pipes.

Federal judicial service

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President Harry S. Truman on January 29, 1951, nominated Thomas to a seat on the United States District Court for the Southern District of Alabama vacated by Judge John McDuffie . The United States Senate confirmed Thomas's nomination on March 6, 1951, and he received his commission on March 9, 1951. For several years Judge Thomas was the only federal judge in his district, until Judge Virgil Pittman (initially confirmed as judge for both the Middle and Southern Districts of Alabama) was reassigned solely to the Southern District. Judge Thomas served as Chief Judge from 1966 to 1971 (succeeded by Judge Pittman), and assumed senior status on August 25, 1971. He became known for his personal integrity.

Selma voter registration

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In April 1961 he was assigned a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Civil Rights Act of 1957 against the state of Alabama and the Dallas County voter registration office (then one man, but later led by Victor Atkins) which failed to register most black persons who wanted to vote in Selma while registering unqualified whites. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found he should have issued the injunction, although not overturning most of Thomas' factual findings about the intolerable slowdown against the Alabama officials.

Mobile school desegregation

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One of Judge Thomas' most famous (and probably frustrating) cases involved the desegregation of Mobile's schools. Mobile had more than tripled its size since World War I, and by 1962 the segregated school system was Alabama's largest, and 27,965 of the 72,696 students (over 40%) were black, although only 10% of administrators were black (though 37% of teachers and principals were black and unusual for the South, black and white teachers had the same pay scale). Shortly after the school board rejected the request of John LeFlore on behalf of African American parents and the NAACP for integration of Mobile County's schools, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in the U.S. District Court, contending that such racial segregation of children of service members and federal workers violated the 14th Amendment (Brookley Air Force Base on Mobile's southern border was one of the largest federal installations in the country). Soon, LeFlore accompanied four black students who attempted transfer to Baker High School in Mobile County west of the city, and were denied, so the NAACP lawyers filed Birdie Mae Davis et al v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County on March 27, 1963. The local NAACP lawyers were Vernon Z. Crawford and Clarence E. Moses, assisted by Derrick Bell and Constance Baker Motley of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York City.

The lawsuits were initially upstaged by nonviolent demonstrators led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., but Judge Thomas held a hearing on April 24, 1963, and required the school board to submit a desegregation plan. School officials argued that they could not prepare a desegregation plan by that fall, because the schools were massively overcrowded and 14 new schools with more than 300 classrooms were under construction. Judge Thomas thus denied the parents' request for immediate relief, but after another hearing on November 14 again ordered a desegregation plan, but for the 1964-1965 school year. The parents appealed and weeks after Governor George Wallace tried to defy a desegregation order for the University of Alabama at Birmingham , a divided 5th Circuit panel in July ordered Mobile's school board to start desegregation that fall. Justice Hugo Black refused the school board's request for a stay.

Mobile's School Board then proposed that only the 12th grade in Mobile City be desegregated that year, with additional grades in later years. Judge Thomas approved the plan, but after the white Mobile Citizens Council held a rally at which former Birmingham mayor Arthur Hanes and Montgomery's Leonard Wilson preached resistance, only two black students were scheduled to attend formerly all-white Murphy High School . However, when they appeared, they and their lawyers were greeted by the Highway Patrol's Chief, who read Governor Wallace's Executive Order No. 12 forbidding desegregation in Birmingham, Mobile and Tuskegee.

Judge Thomas and four other federal district judges from Alabama soon ordered Wallace to stop interfering, but Wallace instead tried to replace the state troopers at the schools with national guardsman. However, President John F. Kennedy nationalized the troops and they withdrew, allowing Henry Hobdy and Dorothy Davis to attend classes at Murphy High School on September 10,

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