All Hands on Deck

All Hands on Deck is an episode that introduces the first wave of civil rights lawyers to emerge after the end of Reconstruction. When the 1876 presidential election brought the period to its untimely conclusion, both the goals and the gains of the post-civil war amendments to the United States Constitution - the Thirteenth Amendment outlawing slavery, The Fourteenth Amendment establishing citizenship for the newly emancipated, and the Fifteenth Amendment extending the right to vote to black men - gave way to the revised state constitutions that sought the very deprivation of black civil rights that had been achieved during the Reconstruction’s twelve-year national reign.

Challenging the legality of these new state constitutions became a central concern of African American lawyers, many of whom had been born during the era. J. Coody Johnson and James Adlai Cobb, who make a cameo appearance in this episode, were two such lawyers.

J. Coody Johnson

Lawyer, Entrepreneur, Politician

J. Coody Johnson became one of the most prominent African American attorneys to practice in Oklahoma and a celebrated entrepreneur.

He was born was born July 27, 1864. He was of Black and Creek Indian heritage. Both the Creek and Seminole nations bestowed upon him the moniker “The Black Panther” a name he would later use in his most profitable business venture.

After the Civil War, the United States government and the Creek nation entered into a treaty that resulted in Johnson and other Creek freedmen being granted full citizenship rights and the status of full membership in the tribe. Johnson became a skilled interpreter, which led to his securing a several elected and appointed tribal positions. He became a member in the House of Warriors, secretary of the Creek Nation, and private secretary to a principal chief of the Seminole Nation.

Johnson would become an attorney in 1886 after reading law under the tutelage of Isaac Parker, Judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Arkansas. He established his law practice and bought a hotel on the main street in the Wewoka Township.

As discussed in the episode, Oklahoma gained statehood in 1907. Four years earlier, the territory held a constitutional convention. The deprivation of full citizenship rights for black people was not restricted to the former confederate states; southwest America also had its share of race prejudice.

Oklahoma included in its constitution provisions that resembled the Jim Crow stylings of the southern states who changed their charters beginning in 1890 and continuing through 1910. A central feature reserved the privilege of voting to those who could meet certain education and literacy tests, satisfied minimum property requirements, and who were deemed to be of good character. Most notable was the incorporation of the notorious “grandfather clauses,” which operated to exempt a voter from having to satisfy these qualifications if either they or someone in their family had been eligible to vote on or before January 1, 1866. Because black men did not have the right to vote until 1870, the grandfather clauses were an insidious end-run around the guarantees of the Fifteenth Amendment.

Johnson started and became president of the Negro Protection League to resist these efforts. He used this organization to set forth in the most forceful and eloquent terms the rights of all to be treated with fairness by the government. When Oklahoma gained statehood in 1910, he and fellow Black and Creek attorney, A. G. W. Sango, waged a five year battle in the courts to have the grandfather clauses outlawed. The work they did caught the attention of the NAACP, which was still in its infancy, and was looking for a test case to begin its inroads into legal advocacy. After the federal government brought a suit against Oklahoma election officials for their role in denying black people their right to vote, the NAACP joined the effort and the case ultimately wound up in the United States Supreme Court. Johnson and Sango were not mentioned in the briefs filed either by the government or the NAACP, but history notes their remarkable contribution in leading the charge to protect black voting rights.

Johnson would later go on to establish himself as a successful businessman. Johnson also distinguished himself as an African American entrepreneur. He started the Black Panther Oil and Gas Company and he owned the Black Panther Hotel in Wewoka. His Johnson Building, where maintained his law practice and business interests, is listed in the National Register of Historic places.

A portion of Johnson’s estate was used to establish the Johnson Grove School for Negro boys and girls. For a time, the school was located on his ranch because segregation laws did not allow black children inside the town limits.

Johnson died in February 1927

James Adlai Cobb

Lawyer, Judge, Educator

One of the America’s Founding Fathers of civil rights lawyering was born in the same year the nation created the need for civil rights lawyers.

James Adlai Cobb was born January 29, 1876 in Arcadia, Louisiana. He would be educated at both Straight University in New Orleans and Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and he would earn both a law degree and Master of Laws degree from Howard University School of Law in Washington, D.C. Immediately upon graduation, Cobb opened his law practice.

His legal acumen quickly gained national attention as lawyers from as far away as Oregon sought his advice on matters ranging from investigating pension claims to the more routine concerns of representing black defendants in criminal cases without black jurors.

In the same year that President Theodore Roosevelt rebuffed overtures by Booker T. Washington to address the racial stance taken in the Oklahoma constitution, the president elevated Cobb to a legal position in the federal government. In 1907, Cobb was appointed special assistant to the Attorney General of the United States. He served in that capacity until 1915, when he accepted a full-time faculty position at Howard Law School.

While at the Justice department, Cobb became proficient in the nuances of federal law, with a particular emphasis on the recently enacted food and drug laws. He made frequent appearances in the federal courts, strengthening his command of both substantive federal law and appellate advocacy.

While at Howard Law School Cobb became a highly sought out advocate. The NAACP was an eight year old organization looking to legal advocacy a part of its efforts, and it joined the federal government’s effort to bring suit against Oklahoma election officials for their role in denying black people their right. Cobb was later brought in to be a part of the legal team that challenged the all-white primary in Texas. The NAACP would later prevail in a case that found the all-white primary to be unconstitutional.

In 1926, President Calvin Coolidge appointed Cobb to be Judge of the Municipal Court of the District of Columbia. The black community held the appointed with bittersweet reception. On the one hand, the elevation of a black man to such a prominent position was noteworthy. However, many felt that the appointment “deprived the race of its most promising civil rights scholar.”

He soon won widespread approval from Washington lawyer and the District of Columbia Bar Association. He also proved to be a fearless judge. On one occasion Cobb ordered United States Senator Cole Blease from South Carolina to pay a $186 note to a bank in the state he represented. Ten days later, on the floor of the United States Senate, Blease “made an attack on ‘n . . . . r’ judges.” Nonetheless, the way he handled cases and his treatment of lawyers and their clients resulted in one hundred lawyers signing a petition for his reappointment for another term in 1930, to which President Coolidge obliged.

While a judge, Cobb served as the keynote speaker at the fifth annual meeting of the Harlem Lawyers’ Association:

The Constitution is sufficiently broad to give the Negro every right; the only thing needed is application. The Negro. . .must work out his own destiny through education, industry and the arts, and he must have an equal respect for all peoples.

His term as judge expired in 1935, and he continued teaching at Howard Law School until his resignation in 1938. While at Howard he taught contracts and constitutional law. Thurgood Marshall was one of his constitutional law students. He also served as Vice-Dean of the Law school from 1923 - 1929.

On his fiftieth birthday (January 29, 1926), Cobb moved for the admission of the first black woman, Viola Neatley, to practice before the United States Supreme Court, a legal distinction accorded him by his predecessor on the DC municipal bench, Robert H. Terrell. The Arc of Justice Project, which produces The Hidden Legal Figures Podcast, was incorporated on January 29, 2018, and we are proud to share that date (January 29) with two giants in the legal profession.

Four years after his star pupil led the legal charge to have the doctrine of separate but equal declared unconstitutional, James Adlai Cobb died in Washington D.C. on October 14, 1958.