State’s pioneering litigators honored

Attorneys R. Jess Brown, Carsie Hall Sr. and Jack Young Sr. are forever linked because of the similar work they did during the 1950s and 1960s. Their work has now been memorialized by a “freedom trail” marker erected in front of the Big Apple Inn on Farish Street in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. 

It is fitting that the historical marker memorializing Brown, Hall, and Young is located on Farish Street. Each attorney was a civil rights lawyer representing African Americans in Mississippi. Each established a law office on Farish Street during the time it was the center of Black business and professional life.

Carsie Hall and Jack Young were both native Jacksonians. Hall and Young started out as mail carriers. The public law school at the University of Mississippi and the private Jackson School of Law did not admit Black students. Hall and Young studied law under African American attorney Sidney Redmond, who was himself a self-taught lawyer. Young passed the bar exam in 1951; Hall in 1952.

R. Jess Brown moved to Jackson in 1946, having been born in Coffeeville, Kansas, and reared in Oklahoma. He taught at Alcorn College and Lanier Junior/Senior High School before attending Texas Southern University Law School. He passed the bar in 1953.

Once they passed the bar and were licensed, the young attorneys were bombarded with legal work. Much of their work was on routine matters, such as wills, divorces, and criminal accusations.

They also handled high-profile cases involving lynching and other racial murders, voter discrimination, public education discrimination, and various other forms of Jim Crow. Because of their work on these civil rights cases, the three attorneys often faced threats from racist individuals and groups. In addition, they were also threatened for being activists with the NAACP and other civil rights organizations. 

Judge Constance Slaughter-Harvey, the first African American to graduate from the Ole Miss Law School and first African American female appointed as a judge in Mississippi, spoke during the celebratory occasion.