by Caroline C. Emery
In 1897, Jacksonville was a tourist and citrus center with a population of 30,000. On Thursday, Feb. 4, 1897, nine men founded The Jacksonville Bar Association. A scholarly aristocrat, E. Jacquelin L’Engle, nominated the young visionary and future U.S. Senator Duncan U. Fletcher for president. The nomination was seconded by Francis P. Fleming Jr., who had been admitted to The Florida Bar at the age of 20. Fleming and his father, a former governor, formed one of the City’s first firms, Fleming & Fleming. He later became president of Florida Publishing Company.
The Association was formed to maintain the honor and dignity of the profession, to regulate the practice and promote improvements in the law and methods of administration and to cultivate professional ethics and social ties among its members. Its Charter Members consisted of 22 lawyers. On July 23, 1952, the association was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization. Today, the JBA has 1,820 members.
On Wednesday, Feb. 24, 1897, the Association held its first banquet in the splendor of the Windsor Hotel at Hemming Park. That Saturday, the Florida Times-Union described it as “one of the most brilliant events of the season . . . A large number of the most prominent lawyers of the city attended, and the occasion was one that will long be pleasantly remembered.” Duval County Sheriff Napoleon Bonaparte Broward, who had just taken office on Jan. 5, 1897, was among those invited.
On April 20, 1897, Louise Gato was shot outside of her father’s home in North Springfield. Her father was a well-known businessman. Before dying, she named her assailant as Edward Pitzler, her sweetheart. Fletcher prosecuted the case with A.G. Hartridge. In the 1930s, prosecutor Hartridge would claim that State v. Pitzler had been his most interesting case. The jury deliberated for 22 hours. After it found Pitzler not guilty, he left town. Recalling the stress, prosecutor Hartridge said, “in his concluding argument for the defense, Mr. Abrams made a heart-appealing speech, which ended dramatically as he fainted and fell into the arms of the deputy sheriff.”
Hartridge believed that “there was no question he was guilty,” but he was freed based upon a woman’s perjured testimony that she had been with him when the crime was committed. As Hartridge further recalled, folks in the city “considered me a heartless, inhuman prosecutor,” and they would not speak to him for years. This historical case may remind Jacksonville residents of last month’s “JaxReads!” book “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It also involved a well-respected lawyer (Atticus), who withstood criticism by many in his town for his legal representation. Last month, JBA lawyers served as reading group facilitators in the “JaxReads!” program.
The Great Fire of 1901 broke out on May 3 at noon. An area two miles long and nearly a mile wide turned to ashes. Seven lives were lost. Among the ruins were the Windsor Hotel and the city’s pride: the magnificent County Courthouse, which had yellow pine ceilings and stain glass windows, the most striking of which was behind the courtroom bench, depicting the scales of justice and the State’s coat of arms. That morning, Judge Doggett had sentenced Henry Hicks to 10 years — ironically — for burning down an unoccupied house. Duncan Fletcher, the Bar’s first president, was elected as mayor a few weeks after the fire.
During the Florida “Land Boom” of 1925, the rising real estate king, Telfair Stockton, built Jacksonville’s posh suburb, Avondale. Riverside Avenue was described as one of America’s most prestigious streets at the turn of the century. The Stocktons were heavily involved in the JBA. Between the 1920s and the 1940s, financial tycoon Bion H. Barnett, who controlled Barnett Bank, and his counsel, Bar member Frank Fleming, also became two influential figures in town.
When Jacksonville’s economy crashed in the early 1930s, The Jacksonville Bar Association took action. A five-man committee reported that government expenses could be cut by consolidating the large city and county governments, saving untold thousands of dollars. The leader in this fight was C. Daugherty Towers, who became Jacksonville’s most famous political kingmaker in the 1950s. Towers crusaded throughout Florida for the City’s consolidation by a State constitutional amendment, which was finally approved in 1968. His law firm was the predecessor of Rogers & Towers, one of the City’s largest and most prominent law firms today.
In 1900, James Weldon Johnson was the first African-American admitted to practice law in Florida. As principal of Stanton School, he expanded it to create the only high school for African-Americans in Jacksonville. He moved to New York in 1902 and became a civil rights leader. According to The Jacksonville Advocate Free Press, Feb. 16-22, 1989, quoted in “A March of Centuries,” the practice of law in the early 1900s in Jacksonville was often “financially unrewarding for talented black lawyers. Almost all of their clients were black and unable to afford legal services.”
For many decades, there were also very few women lawyers in the association, and even fewer women leaders. Circuit Court judges Dorothy Pate and Virginia Beverly were two. Another remarkable woman, Susan H. Black, who is currently a federal appellate judge, has been a trailblazer for women in many ways. She became the first female assistant state attorney in 1969, first female County Court judge in 1973, first female Circuit Court judgein 1975, and, in 1979, she became Florida’s first female federal judge. The first female lawyer to serve as the Bar’s president was Mary (“Kitty”) K. Phillips in 1986. Karen K. Cole was the Bar’s only other female president, elected in 1992. She is now a Circuit Court judge.
Over the years, The Jacksonville Bar Association has proudly had the privilege of furnishing many lawyers who have occupied positions of responsibility with honor and distinction, including Florida governors, U.S. senators and representatives, federal judges, Florida Supreme Court justices, presidents for the American Bar Association and The Florida Bar, and most recently, Mayor John A. Delaney, following Mayor Ed Austin.
The Jacksonville Bar Association has been a keen influence in the city. One of the Bar’s most distinct contributions to Jacksonville’s social welfare was the creation of Legal Aid in 1932, which furnishes free legal services to indigent people. The Bar also sponsored legislation to establish the Small Claims Court in 1949. In addition, in 1961, the Bar established its Lawyer Referral Service, which currently handles over 1,000 calls each month from the general public seeking legal representation.
Members of the Association have also consistently and enthusiastically participated in virtually every kind of volunteer, civic, and community service, often furnishing leadership. For almost 30 years, one of the Association’s most visible contributions has been its annual Law Week program, in which it sponsors a wide variety of activities for all ages to increase the community’s awareness of the law and the impact that lawyers can have on our legal system and our way of life. For the past several years, lawyers and judges have also helped build several homes for HabiJax, sweating profusely while putting up siding, hammering, hanging dry wall, painting and landscaping.
The Association has been committed to working closely with the 4th Judicial Circuit Court system to preserve its long-standing reputation as a circuit with a Bench and Bar of the highest caliber, earned by its insistence upon high standards of professionalism and civility. It has been instrumental in processing complaints made about lawyers to the Professionalism Review Committee, designed in 1998 by Chief Judge Donald R. Moran Jr. to encourage lawyers’ compliance with the standards promulgated in the Bar’s “Professionalism Guidelines.” Also, the Bar co-sponsors the “Mentor Program,” created in 1998 to match local seasoned lawyers with young lawyers. It provides the less experienced lawyer with guidance and resources, thus fostering a high degree of professionalism, ethics, and civility among lawyers. As reflected by the signs found in each judge’s chamber: “Professionalism & Civility, Anything Less Will Not be Tolerated.”
As summarized best by The Jacksonville Bar Association’s 1965 Handbook, “[a] history of the Bar is more than the story of its courthouses. It is more than a list of its famous members, more than an account of the projects accomplished by the committees of its formal organizations and more than annotations to the Bar’s codified rules of conduct . . . [its] history is all these things and more, and every day is history, the building, the events, the moods, times and places, and upper-most the people which [sic] without which would be no law or history, and the members of the Bar are a part.”