People often say,’Love is blind,” but there are times when love actually opens our eyes.
Julius Waties Waring was one of those men who had his eyes opened because of the love of a woman.
Julius Waties Waring, a US Federal Judge was instrumental in early legal struggles of the American Civil Rights Movement.
A native of Charleston, South Carolina, he married his first wife in 1913. He became an assistant US Attorney and the lead counsel for the city of Charleston after which he co-founded a law firm.
Things were looking UP.
He was a Federal Judge from 1942 to 1952 and presided over several civil rights cases. He had been nominated to the bench by FDR.
Initially, Charlestonians supported their home grown jurist, but when he warped from a moderate to a proponent of radical change, well, things got tough.
He said, “The cancer of segregation will never be cured by the sedative of gradualism.” Stuff like that wasn’t so popular in Jim Crow South Carolina.
Spending the first 60 years of his life as a scion of the city, his status changed when he divorced his wife and married Elizabeth Avery, a twice divorced Detroit native!
He ended segregated seating in his courtroom and appointed John Fleming, a black man, as his bailiff.
People started shunning him and his poor wife wasn’t invited to any teas.
And the Cotillion was just O.U.T!
He was one of three judges to hear a school desegregation test case. Briggs v. Elliott pitted Thurgood Marshall against the Clarendon County South Carolina public schools which Marshall described as separate but not at all equal.
Marshall lost, but in his dissent, Waring stated, “Segregation is per se inequality.” The statement formed the legal foundation of Brown v. Board of Education which would come in 1954.
His lovely bride took the heat. The label of Yankee aside, she was disliked as she was considered the radical influence that had turned Waties Waring from a questioner of status quo to a radical outspoken critic of segregation and a champion for racial justice.
Though they can’t take all the credit, “separate but equal” was eventually declared unconstitutional due in part to this couple’s influence.
But, again, Charlestonians didn’t approve.
Eventually the couple moved to New York.
