The Alcoa-Blount County NAACP will host its third annual Founder’s Day Freedom Fund Gala from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Feb. 25 via Zoom, the Daily Times reports. During the event, the chapter will award three $1,000 Freedom Fund scholarships and present two with its Game Changers Award in recognition of engagement in social justice and advocacy work. The keynote speaker will be Blount County native Ronald Coffin, who was one of the first four African American students to desegregate Maryville High School in 1963. Registrants are asked to donate $50 to the local NAACP Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 6347, Maryville, TN 37802-6347. Register for the event here.

YWCA Nashville & Middle Tennessee will host the virtual program “Stand Against Racism: The First Amendment in a Time of Crisis” on Feb. 25 from noon to 1 p.m. CST. Speakers — including Belmont College of Law visiting professor David L. Hudson Jr., Vanderbilt University Law School professor G.S. Hans and Brandon Tucker with the ACLU — will discuss ways in which the First Amendment supports and challenges the fight for racial justice. Download a flyer for the event.

A mural displayed at the Lawrence County Courthouse in Lawrenceburg represents one of the most significant early civil rights victories in a southern courtroom. The ‘Justice Served’ mural was painted by Bernice Davidson and unveiled in the courthouse in 2017. It features key figures from the criminal case that unfolded after 100 Black citizens were arrested during the Columbia race riot of 1946. Twenty five of those arrested would be charged, most with attempted murder. The trial would showcase the talents of several attorneys who would later go on to become household names during the Civil Rights Movement, like Nashville lawyer Z. Alexander Looby and Thurgood Marshall, before he became the first African American U.S. Supreme Court justice. An all-white jury found 23 of the 25 defendants not guilty on the attempted murder charges, a verdict that sent shockwaves through the courtroom and the country. Read more on the mural and the Columbia race riot from the Administrative Office of the Courts.

The Memphis Bar Association and the Center for Excellence in Decision-Making will host a webinar Thursday from noon to 1:30 p.m. CST on “Broken Policing and the Windows for Change.” Jeffery Robinson, deputy legal director and director of the ACLU Trone Center for Justice and Equality, will discuss a century of racism in policing in America and the ethical obligations of law enforcement to render equitable service to all communities. The program is free but registration is required. Contact Lauren Gooch at the MBA for more information.

A documentary about how the right to vote has evolved in the United States, specifically in Tennessee and the South, will air next week on Nashville Public Television. The program, "The Fight to Vote: Black Voter Suppression in Tennessee," will focus mainly on the challenges poor and Black people faced getting access to the ballot box in the decades after the Civil War, but also aims to spur discussion about voting rights today and why voter turnout remains low in some parts of the country. In Nashville, the show will air on Feb. 22 at 7 p.m. CST. Check local listings for coverage in other cities.

University of Tennessee College of Law professor Dwight Aarons wrote about some of the first black lawyers in Tennessee in the November 1999 issue of the Tennessee Bar Journal. His piece acknowledged that while it is not entirely clear who was the first African-American lawyer in Tennessee, it is accepted that Horatio N. Rankin was the earliest documented Black lawyer admitted to any bar in the state. Rankin practiced law in Memphis, created the West Tennessee Colored University and advised Congress on the freedman’s laws. Other “firsts” Aarons covers in his article include Alfred Menefee, the first Black man admitted to the Nashville bar; Joseph H. Dismukes, the first graduate of Tennessee’s first law school for African Americans and the state’s first Black law professor; William Francis Yardley, who likely was the first Black judicial officer in the state; John Sinclair Lewis, the first African-American admitted to practice before the Tennessee Supreme Court; Samuel R. Lowery, the first southern Black man admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court; and Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Adolpho A. Birch Jr., who became the court’s first Black chief justice. Read more about these and other pioneers in this compelling historical review.

As a part of Black History Month, the TBA is highlighting the work of Black attorneys in Tennessee, both past and present, and celebrating the ways in which they have helped shape the bar and legal community. Watch for stories each week.

In 1960, students across Tennessee engaged in lunch counter sit-ins to protest racial segregation. These non-violent demonstrators brought national attention and helped make tangible change; within a few months, Nashville became the first major city in the South to desegregate public facilities. A group of Tennessee lawyers who shared the students’ courage and determination stepped up to represent those who were arrested, risking danger and condemnation to do their job for a cause they believed in. The Black attorneys who played a vital role in the historic Tennessee sit-ins were Emmett Ballard, A.A. Birch, Coyness L. Ennix Jr., Benjamin Hooks, Robert Lillard, H.T. Lockard, Z. Alexander Looby, Russell B. Sugarmon and Avon Williams Jr., among others. Read more about these Civil Rights Movement heroes in Suzanne Robertson’s article “When ‘Courage Superseded Fear’” from the May 2010 Tennessee Bar Journal.