Bertis English

In 1867, nine formerly enslaved men in Marion, Alabama, the county seat of Perry County, incorporated the Lincoln School. The preeminence of one incorporator, Alexander H. Curtis, remains one of contemporary Southern history’s greatest little-known facts. Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1829, Curtis relocated to Marion with his owner in 1839. In future years, Curtis enjoyed a comparatively privileged life for an enslaved person. Among other acts, he kept part of his earnings despite a state law enabling an owner to take any cash, property, or related earned by an enslaved person. In 1859, Curtis’s savings enabled him to purchase not only his freedom but also the freedom of his unofficial wife, Princess. Following the official end of the Civil War in 1865, Alexander Curtis amassed a sterling professional record. He was the only African American state legislator to preside over the Alabama Senate during the nineteenth century. Curtis also was a Baptist eminence, standout union organizer, and co-founder of the Alabama Equal Rights Association. Personally, Curtis was a devoted husband, caring father, and beloved mentor to scores of friends and associates. The Lincoln School, however, remains one of his greatest legacies. Today, the school is Alabama State University.

In 1980, a gubernatorial appointment made a Talladega College and Howard University educated civil rights lawyer named Oscar W. Adams Jr. the first Black member of the Supreme Court of Alabama. When voters elected him to the court in 1982, he thus became the first Black citizen to occupy a statewide office in Alabama via election. Those achievements extended Adams’ largely unknown history of meritorious professional and civic service. Among other endeavors, he in 1956 cofounded the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights. In 1961, Adams helped litigate a case that established a defendant’s constitutional right to effective representation at every stage of a legal proceeding. In 1963, Adams argued a case before the Supreme Court of the United States whose ruling set a precedent for the proper way to address an individual in a court proceeding. In 1967, Adams cofounded the first ethnically integrated law firm in Alabama. Moreover, as local counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, or LDF, Adams litigated more LDF cases than any other lawyer in the state. By highlighting such efforts, this book project solidifies Adams’ position as one of the most unsung legal pacemakers (trailblazers) in the Heart of Dixie (Alabama).