Emancipation: The Making of the Black Lawyer 1844-1944 by J. Clay Smith, Jr.

 p. 238: Clifford’s admission to the bar was followed in 1889 by that of Christopher H. Payne. Payne, who had read law, was soon thereafter appointed deputy collector of internal revenue, a position he held from 1889 to 1893, before opening his law office….One of the most noted black lawyers in West Virginia in the early part of the twentieth century was Thomas Gillis Nutter, an 1899 Howard University law graduate and the brother of Isaac Henry Nutter, a lawyer in New Jersey. In 1903, Nutter opened a law office in Charleston, three years after his initial admission to the bar in Marion County, Indiana.

 p. 239: Soon after Nutter started his practice in Charleston, another Howard University law graduate, Emory Rankin Carter, opened a law office in Charleston and practiced there until 1905. He then relocated to McDowell County, becoming its first lawyer. Nutter, however, remained in Charleston and specialized in civil cases, and Republican politics.

 p. 240: Brown Wesley Payne, also returned to West Virginia to practice law, settling in Beckley. He was the town’s first black lawyer. Payne and James M. Ellis are responsible for two decisions by the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia holding that it is unconstitutional to exclude “all persons of the African race” from serving on petit and grand juries.

 p. 241: In 1920, West Virginia had twenty-three black lawyers, none of whom were women. By 1930, that figure had declined to twenty. Neverthless, in 1923 the editor of West Virginia’s edition of the History of the American Negro indicated that in “proportion to population, one finds more colored lawyers in West Virginia than the states of the South [and] most…are well equipped and are meeting with success.” This success was hard won, as black citizens in West Virginia frequently resorted to hiring white lawyers in instances where blacks were excluded from serving of the jury.

             Between 1922 and 1928, the number of black lawyers in West Virginia had increased to twenty-five, spread across fourteen cities in eight counties. And yet, as one report noted, “Negro lawyers [were] needed at several places in the state where none [were] located.”