[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 20 (Thursday, February 1, 2007)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E236-E237]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




REGARDING THE DESIGNATION OF THE FEDERAL BUILDING LOCATED AT 167 NORTH 
MAIN STREET IN MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE AS THE ``CLIFFORD DAVIS/ODELL HORTON 
                           FEDERAL BUILDING''

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, January 31, 2007

  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, Odell Horton was appointed to the United 
States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee by 
President Jimmy Carter on May 12, 1980, the first black federal judge 
appointed since Reconstruction. Judge Horton served as chief judge of 
the district from January 1, 1987 until December 31, 1993.
  Born in Boliver, Tennessee on May 13, 1929, Odell Horton was the 
oldest of four boys and a girl. Horton's father was a laborer and his 
mother took in laundry. Horton's first job at the age of six was 
delivering laundry for his mother. He and all his siblings picked 
cotton, stacked lumber and took other odd jobs to help support the 
family.
  After graduating high school in 1946, Odell Horton enlisted in the 
Marine Corps. He took an early discharge ten months later and entered 
Morehouse College in Atlanta, using the GI bill to finance the tuition. 
By the time Horton graduated in 1951, the Korean War was underway and 
he returned for a second tour of duty.
  Upon completion of his second tour of duty, which included graduating 
from the U. S. Navy School of Journalism, Horton entered Howard 
University in Washington, D.C., where he received his law degree in 
1956. Horton moved to Memphis, rented a one-room office upstairs at 145 
Beale Street, and opened his law practice.
  Horton was in private practice from 1957 to 1962 and then was an 
Assistant United States

[[Page E237]]

Attorney in Memphis for the next five years. Governor Bufford Ellington 
appointed Horton to the Shelby County Criminal Court, a position to 
which he was later elected without opposition.
  In 1968, at the peak of the civil rights movement, with the black 
sanitation workers in Memphis on strike, Mayor Henry Loeb appointed 
Horton as director of the city's hospitals, making him the only black 
division director in City Hall at the time. Horton dealt with a bitter 
strike by hospital workers, who were represented by the same union 
leadership as the sanitation workers. During the strike, Horton 
confronted officials at the University of Tennessee's medical school 
over the way their doctors treated patients at the hospitals. Judge 
Horton ordered the desegregation of William F. Bowld hospital and began 
moving some indigent patients to Bowld and Crump hospitals, which had 
been reserved for paying patients from the UT doctors' private 
practices. In 1969, he received the L.M. Graves Memorial Health Award 
as the person who did the most to advance the cause of health care in 
Memphis.

  Judge Horton stepped down from the bench to serve as the President of 
LeMoyne-Owen College, a historically African-American liberal arts 
college, from 1970 to 1974.
  Judge Horton returned to federal service upon his appointment as 
reporter for the Speedy Trial Act Implementation Committee by the 
Western District Court of Tennessee and later served as U. S. 
Bankruptcy Judge from 1976 to 1980.
  After having served as both jurist and chief justice for the United 
States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Judge 
Horton took senior judge status on May 16, 1995, and two years later, 
closed his Memphis office.
  Judge Odell Horton is remembered as a calm and patient judge, who 
carefully and deliberately explained legal concepts to jurors.
  Judge Horton and his wife, Evie L. (nee Randolph), were married for 
over fifty years and have two sons, Odell, Jr. and Christopher, who 
graduated from his alma mater, Morehouse College in Atlanta.
  Odell Horton's wife, Evie, spoke for so many in both his professional 
and personal life when she stated after his death, ``He was a rare and 
precious jewel in the crown of humanity and made all our lives richer 
and better because he passed this way.''

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