Recognizing civil-rights advocates
During protests in the U.S. last year, Explore Pine Bluff. com highlighted the contributions of three groundbreaking civil-rights attorneys with Pine Bluff connections — Wiley Branton Sr., Harold Flowers and Leo Branton Jr.
“We owe a debt of gratitude to these brave men who had the courage to use their legal talents to disrupt the status quo,” the website said on July 1, 2020.
WILEY BRANTON SR.
Branton Sr. was one of the first black law graduates from the University of Arkansas. He served as co-counsel for the Little
Rock Nine during the Central High School crisis of 1957 and successfully argued the landmark Cooper v. Aaron case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
He defended Freedom Riders and civil-rights workers in Arkansas and Mississippi, even as he had to engage armed guards for his Pine Bluff home after a cross burning and numerous death threats. He was also a major player in the integration of the University of Arkansas Law School by Silas Hunt and worked with Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in Little Rock.
Branton Sr. was recommended by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil-rights leaders to Vice President Lyndon Jonson to head the Voter Education Project in 1962. He registered 700,000 black voters in the 1960s, transforming the Southern political landscape forever. Branton Sr. served in several other capacities, heading civil-rights efforts within the federal government before becoming dean of the Howard University School of Law.
HAROLD FLOWERS
Known in Arkansas as the “Dean of Black Lawyers,” Flowers moved to Pine Bluff in the 1930s. Flowers was a key figure in the fight for desegregation and the first lawyer in Arkansas to accept civil-rights cases.
He led the court fight to integrate south Arkansas schools in the 1930s and 1940s, organized campaigns to register black voters in the 1940s, and led the NAACP in Arkansas, laying the groundwork for his friend and mentee Daisy Bates.
Flowers played pivotal roles in the two most notable civil-rights events in Arkansas: The Little Rock Nine and the integration of the University of Arkansas Law School. He led the Pine Bluff delegation escorting Silas Hunt — the first African American to enroll in a graduate program in the south — to make
sure that he was enrolled in law school.
In 1947, Flowers won a landmark case, marking the first time a black man had not been sentenced to death for killing a white man in Arkansas. Flowers served as Gov. Bill Clinton’s appointee on the Arkansas Court of Appeals in 1980 and championed civil-rights causes his entire life.
LEO BRANTON JR.
Pine Bluff native Branton Jr. was the only African American graduate of Northwestern University’s law school in 1948. He returned to Pine Bluff to help his brother, Wiley Branton Sr., defend civil-rights activists.
Branton Jr. then moved to California and became the first African American to practice entertainment law in California. A legendary California-based litigator, he represented the likes of Dorothy Dandridge, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, and the Platters.
He remained active in the civil-rights movement, helping singer Nat King Cole integrate an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood and helping his brother, Wiley, defend the Freedom Riders. Branton Jr. also defended Black Panthers from false charges. His moving closing argument in a racially and politically charged murder trial in 1972 helped persuade an allwhite jury to acquit Black Panther Party member and academic Angela Davis.
He had argued numerous cases of police abuse in the 1950s, and he urged jurors to view her behavior in the context of centuries of slavery, racism and abuse against blacks. Branton Jr.’s closing argument in the Angela Davis case is considered a textbook argument that is still taught in law schools today.
This article is among features at ExplorePineBluff.com, a program of the Pine Bluff Advertising and Promotion Commission. Sources: African Americans of Pine Bluff and Jefferson County; Wikipedia. Images Credit: John Flowers, Bettman/Corbis/AP Images.