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Senior Judge Horace T. Ward of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, gave the 92nd Sibley Lecture Oct. 31 in the Chapel.
Ward, who is African American, was denied entrance to the UGA School of Law in 1950 but earned a law degree from Northwestern University and returned to Georgia to help represent Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes in the 1961 case that eventually forced the integration of the University of Georgia. Some highlights from Ward’s lecture:
“I’ve grown up working for the public. . . . I hope I have merited their trust. I appreciate the long ride and hope it will continue for many years. I should be one of the best qualified lawyers in Georgia--I spent seven years trying to get into one law school, and three years trying to get out of another. . . .
“In my opinion, the parties involved [in my court case]--both myself and the defendants--labored under certain misconceptions. State officials contended that my effort to study law was not sincere . . . that I was being paid by the NAACP . . . when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. . . . I really was a ‘footsoldier for justice,’ but not in that sense. . . .
“The significant factors that should not go unnoticed in this saga include the tremendous waste of time . . . and the demagoguery of the state. It took 10 years and three lawsuits to establish what everybody already knew was a fact--that race was a primary factor.”
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