[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 114 (Wednesday, July 27, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1417-E1418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          HONORING FLORIDA CHIEF JUSTICE, LEANDER J. SHAW, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. CORRINE BROWN

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 27, 2011

  Ms. BROWN of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize former 
Florida Chief Justice, Leander J. Shaw Jr. Shaw was born in Salem, 
Virginia, on September 6, 1930. His parents were Leander J. Shaw, 
retired Dean of the Florida A&M University Graduate School in 
Tallahassee, and Margaret Shaw, a retired teacher. He attended public 
schools in Virginia and received his bachelor's degree in 1952 from 
West Virginia State College. After serving in the Korean conflict as an 
artillery officer, he entered law school and earned his juris doctorate 
degree in 1957 from Howard University.
  Shaw came to Tallahassee in 1957 and followed in the footsteps of his 
father as an assistant professor of law at Florida A&M University. In 
1960 he was admitted to the Florida Bar and went into private practice 
in Jacksonville, where he also served as assistant public defender. 
Shaw's hiring marked the beginning of an era that revamped the Florida 
judicial system. Prior to his hiring no African Americans were working 
for Duval County. Shaw later joined the State Attorney's staff in 1969, 
where he served as head of the Capital Crimes Division.
  In 1974 Governor Reubin Askew appointed him to the Florida Industrial 
Relations Commission, where he served until Governor Bob Graham 
appointed him to the First District Court of Appeals. He served there 
until January 1983 when Governor Graham appointed him to the Supreme 
Court. Justice Shaw served as Chief Justice from 1990 to 1992. 
Following a prestigious career serving the public of Florida, Shaw 
returned to private practice.
  Shaw serves on a number of advisory boards and is a member of various 
professional and community associations, including the American Bar 
Association, the National Center for State Courts, and Florida's Human 
Relations Council and Police Advisory Committee. He has been granted 
honorary degrees from West Virginia State, Florida International 
University, Nova University, Washington and Lee University and has been 
the recipient of such prestigious awards as the Florida Humanist of the 
Year and the Ben Franklin Award.
  Justice Shaw is the father of five children and lives on Lake Iamonia 
in Leon County.
  I submit an article by Tom Cornelison, entitled ``Profiles in 
Courage.''

                [From Jacksonville Magazine, Nov. 2007]

                          Profiles in Courage

                          (By Tom Cornelison)

       Historians debate the merits of his presidency and it is 
     certain his private life did not live up to his public image, 
     but there is little argument that John F. Kennedy was an 
     inspirational leader. When his life was cut short by an 
     assassin in Dallas on November 22, 1963, Kennedy left behind 
     the memories of history that he made and a slender volume of 
     history that he wrote.
       It was called Profiles in Courage, a collection of stories 
     about political rather than physical courage in which public 
     officials risked their careers by bucking popular opinion. 
     Just such an episode quietly took place in Jacksonville the 
     week before Kennedy died.
       In those days of strict racial segregation throughout the 
     South, Duval County Solicitor Edward M. Booth Sr. and Public 
     Defender T. Edward Austin--a future Jacksonville mayor--each 
     appointed an African-American to their staff. On November 15, 
     1963, Booth announced the hiring of Alfred R. Taylor while 
     Austin did the same for Leander J. Shaw, who would later 
     serve as chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court. The 
     state's court system was revamped in 1967, but in 1963 the 
     county solicitor functioned as a prosecuting district 
     attorney for non-capital cases. The public defender's office 
     was newly created and supplied legal representation for 
     indigent defendants who could not afford attorneys.
       On the second floor of the Duval County Courthouse, near 
     Courtroom No. 8, two men's rooms stand side-by-side. What 
     looks like poor planning today also gives silent testimony to 
     the era in which Taylor and Shaw were appointed. In 1963, one 
     of the men's rooms was labeled ``white,'' the other 
     ``colored.'' Taylor and Shaw could only use the latter 
     because that was the way things were. If they couldn't go in 
     the same men's room as the vilest of white defendants, well, 
     those defendants couldn't use theirs either. It all seemed 
     normal.
       ``Separate but equal'' seems comical when applied to 
     bathrooms and water fountains, but it was grimly serious for 
     society, where services and opportunities were clearly 
     unequal. No black people had served in public or appointive 
     office in Duval County since the enforced integration of the 
     post-Civil War Reconstruction era almost a century before.
       ``Until Nat Glover was elected sheriff in 1995, we didn't 
     even have a black elected to countywide office after 
     Reconstruction,'' says Edward Booth Jr., a Jacksonville 
     lawyer and historian who is the son of the 1963 county 
     solicitor. ``And the appointments by my father and Mr. Austin 
     took place 32 years before. They were in an era of separate 
     conditions, but it was really an era of separate exclusions.
       ``The thing is, they didn't have to do it. It was just the 
     right thing to do.''
       Few controversial decisions are implemented with an in-
     your-face contempt for the conventional. This was not a movie 
     with inspirational background music. Booth Sr. and Austin 
     presented sound, practical arguments for their action. These 
     centered on the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on 
     the Gideon vs. Wainwright case. Prior to this ruling, accused 
     Florida lawbreakers in non-capital cases were not entitled to 
     an attorney if they could not afford one. Clarence Earl 
     Gideon. a convicted burglar from Panama City, argued this 
     violated his Constitutional rights and won his case with the 
     help of attorney Abe Fortas, later a U.S. Supreme Court 
     Justice. The story was later dramatized in Gideon's Trumpet, 
     a made-for-TV movie starring Henry Fonda and Jose Ferrer.
       ``It was an exciting time in the legal profession. 
     Tremendous changes were taking place,'' recalls Austin, who 
     is 81 and served as Jacksonville's mayor from 1991-95. ``It 
     was also a very busy time. The Gideon decision made a public 
     defender's office necessary because it immediately threw 580 
     convicted inmates from Jacksonville back into the court 
     system to be retried. We had been sending people without 
     lawyers to prison regularly for years. Very many of these 
     were minorities. It was obvious minorities should be involved 
     In the process. It was just true. There was a great mistrust 
     of the legal system in the black community and we earned that 
     mistrust because the system abused them for decades.''
       In making his 1963 announcement--timed on a Friday, perhaps 
     to give any resulting anger a weekend to simmer down--Booth 
     Sr. also cited the number of cases involving racial 
     minorities as a reason for the appointment, saying Taylor's 
     experience as a lawyer and, earlier, as a school principal, 
     would be ``of immeasurable value . . . in dealing with young 
     Negro defendants.''
       The term ``Negro'' was not considered a slur at the time. 
     The Florida Times-Union and Jacksonville Journal both used it 
     in headlines about the appointments. So did the Florida Star, 
     an African-American newspaper that heralded the event as a 
     ``Florida breakthrough'' and added ``Duval County set a 
     statewide precedent.''
       The Times-Union reported that ``Booth said the services of 
     a qualified Negro attorney would greatly assist in the 
     prosecution of cases involving Negro defendants, who 
     represent the majority of persons coming before the court.'' 
     Booth also favorably cited ``work done by Negro assistants 
     employed by'' the Sheriff's Office and Juvenile Court.
       Besides the logic of black lawyers dealing with black 
     criminal cases, the joint announcement meant Booth and Austin 
     had each side covered--prosecution and defense. Austin 
     insists this was a coincidence.
       ``Eddie and I were friendly but I don't remember that we 
     ever discussed it at all,'' Austin says. ``Of course, you're 
     talking about a half-century ago, but I don't think we ever 
     talked. I'm just real glad he did it. Spread some of the risk 
     around.''
       That risk turned out to be non-existent.
       At Taylor's funeral in June 1988, Booth said the only 
     criticism he received was from an angry woman who called him 
     at home the next day. He said she called him back an hour 
     later and apologized.
       Austin said his only opposition came before his decision to 
     hire the young lawyer.
       ``A group of 20 or 25 public officials met with me who 
     really didn't want me to make

[[Page E1418]]

     the appointment,'' he recalls. ``They were not the least bit 
     enamored with my decision and tried to talk me out of it. I 
     said it wouldn't hurt them and it wouldn't hurt me and if it 
     did hurt me, then I'd just go on and do something else for a 
     living.''
       ``Maybe it's because Judge Shaw's credentials were so 
     impressive, but there was never any negative feedback. You 
     pick a winner, you'll be all right. Still, it surprised me, 
     considering the reaction I had gotten before the 
     announcement. It was not the deal-breaker in the community 
     that they thought. Just a sense of calm. I can remember a few 
     members of the Bar Association raised minor objections when 
     Judge Shaw would cross-examine witnesses in rape cases, but 
     that didn't amount to much.''
       Booth's son believes Kennedy's assassination in Dallas one 
     week later overshadowed the appointments. There is no doubt 
     it ate up all the news space and air time, as anyone who can 
     remember that day knows.
       ``I'm not sure I want to go there,'' Austin says. ``I think 
     if there was going to be any serious criticism I'd have 
     gotten it the first or second day.''
       Perhaps the explanation is that racial tension in 
     Jacksonville did not seriously heat up until later in the 
     1960s.
       The younger Booth recalls his house was put under police 
     guard and a slur was spray-painted on the family car when his 
     father successfully prosecuted four Ku Klux Klansmen for 
     brutally attacking an elderly black minister. The September 
     1965 verdict was the second conviction the elder Booth 
     obtained in a white-on-black crime case with an all-white 
     jury. The defense attorney, incidentally, was J.B. Stoner, 
     the flamboyant white supremacist who later ran for governor 
     of Georgia.
       ``A lot of people have taken a lot of credit for a lot of 
     things in the advancement of civil rights,'' says the junior 
     Booth. ``There's nothing wrong with that. It's fine that they 
     do. But my dad and Mr. Austin took it in stride.''
       ``All in a day's work,'' says Austin,
       Taylor and Shaw took it in stride, too. An example is a 
     meeting of Austin's staff in which one of the lawyers said, 
     ``Look, we can do what we want. We're free, white and 21.'' 
     All eyes turned to Shaw. Looking perplexed, he dead-panned, 
     ``You want to run that by me again?''
       Austin later switched to prosecution and, as state 
     attorney, employed both Taylor and Shaw. Taylor retired in 
     1977 and died 11 years later. Shaw prosecuted 42 cases and 
     lost only one. In 1979, Gov. Bob Graham appointed Shaw to the 
     state supreme court where he was elevated to chief justice in 
     1990. He is now 77, retired, and lives in Leon County.
       Despite admitted political differences, Austin and Shaw 
     remain close friends. It was Shaw who swore in Austin as 
     Jacksonville's mayor in 1991.
       Booth Sr. died in 2006, like Taylor, at age 78.
       All but lost to history is a quiet act of political courage 
     that occured in Northeast Florida some 45 years ago, but it 
     lives on as the memory of a job well done by a man in his 
     eighties and in the pride of a son for his father.

                          ____________________