Lawson Thomas

Lawson E. Thomas was an American lawyer and civil rights activist who served as the first African-American judge appointed in the American South since Reconstruction. As a lawyer, he maintained his own legal practice which was unusual for a black attorney in Florida at the time. Lawson Thomas's education up to this point was segregated due to Florida's 1885 Constitution ban on integrated schools. Because it was not possible for Thomas to attend a white law school in Florida, and there were no Black law schools in Florida, Thomas was forced to attend law school out of the state. In 1923, Thomas earned a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School, and in 1926 he was admitted to the Michigan Bar. As an attorney, Lawson Thomas practiced law in Detroit for two years after having passed the bar until moving back to Florida in 1928. Lawson Thomas would serve as a prominent civil rights attorney, at times cooperating with the NAACP until his appointment as a judge in 1950. In Miami, the war had a particularly strong effect on the civil rights movement, as the city saw a dramatic population increase brought about by both the expansion of wartime industries and the presence of soldiers from across the United States being trained in Miami. This sudden change inflamed racial tensions across Florida and the Army Services Forces in Florida anticipated race riots. The racial environment in Miami at the end of the war encouraged civil rights activists in Miami to push further than they had prior. Although the organization itself played no role in organizing the protest, most of the protestors where members of the NAACP. The protesters waded in the surf waiting to be arrested while Thomas stayed on the beach with five hundred dollars in order to pay bail. The protest was relatively unique because it occurred while World War II was still ongoing, as Japan would not surrender until August 15th, 1945, so the protest pre-dated almost all of the civil rights movement.

Quincy v. State Aaron Quincy was a black man who was indicted by an all white grand jury for the first degree murder of Lena Sparkman, a white woman in Holly Hill, Florida. Thomas appealed the case on the basis that black citizens had been excluded from the grand jury and that Quincy had only been indicted because of his race. As a result, the circuit court ordered for the previous indictment to be thrown out and for a new grand jury that did not exclude African Americans to be selected. After the Quincy case, African Americans began to be regularly selected for jury duty across much of Florida for the first time since reconstruction. The existence of the court proved controversial, as many figures in the Miami African American community lauded it for expanding the self governance of African Americans, while others criticized it for continuing segregation. Additionally his former law offices in Overtown is designated as a historic site.