This year marks the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. From time to time this year, we’ll post an entry on this blog about heroes who transformed civil rights law generally and employment law specifically. Today, we’ll take a moment to remember a giant in the legal profession, the late Judge John Minor Wisdom.
This month would have been the 109th birthday of the legendary Judge Wisdom, who sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit during the struggles of segregation.
Judge Wisdom, a Tulane Law graduate, was perhaps the jurist most responsible for forcing the South — kicking and screaming — to relegate segregation to the ash heap of history. Judge Wisdom wrote the opinion that forced Ole Miss to integrate. He managed the cases that implemented Brown v. Board of Education. He handed down many of the employment law cases that exposed the racial animus of the Deep South from the 1960s until his death in 1999.
At the time of his death, Xavier University President Norman Francis said, “John Minor was a major force in saving the South. We were a divided house on the verge of civil dissent.” Despite death threats and being ostracized in his home state of Louisiana, he was willing to take unpopular positions in the most important cases of his day. Consequently, Judge Wisdom forged a more just society in his native South.