Smith County Donates Historic Documents to Law School

TYLER — Smith County Commissioner JoAnn Hampton Tuesday handed over the nearly 60-year-old court documents from a civil rights case involving U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall to representatives of the Texas Southern University Thurgood Marshall School of Law. “It’s magnificent,” DeCarlous Y. Spearman, law library director and associate professor of law at Texas Southern University, said of the donation of documents from a 1956 civil rights case to the university.

According to a Smith County news release, Spearman attended Commissioners Court Tuesday to collect the court file and said she plans to put some of the documents in a showcase for students to peruse. Tyler Branch NAACP President Cedrick Granberry, as well as several members of the NAACP and Texas Southern University Alumnus LeRoy Francis, were also in court for the presentation.

After discovery of the documents from the 1956 case in Tyler’s 7th District Court, for which Marshall was an attorney, the decision was made to digitize the historic records and donate the originals to the law school that bears his name. The civil case, The State of Texas vs. NAACP, has been preserved in six files in the Smith County Records Department and includes papers, correspondences, and pleadings signed and prepared by Marshall when he was acting legal counsel for NAACP.

“Most of us know about his service on the U.S. Supreme Court, but we don’t know about his life prior to the Supreme Court,” Commissioner Hampton said. “To actually have a case here in Smith County where we can see his name on documents makes him more human to us, and it will be great for the law students to see those documents with the name of the man their school is named after.” The law school has received another case in which Marshall was involved as an attorney so the Smith County documents will add to their small collection, Mrs. Spearman said. “It will be instrumental,” she said of the Smith County donation. “I’d like to thank Smith County. I was amazed they thought of us.”

After reading a book referencing the case, former Smith County Assistant District Attorney Stan Springerley began his search, with the help of Records Director Joseph Settanni, to see if the original case files were still stowed away in the Cotton Belt Building. “It was very exciting when I came across the first original signature of Thurgood Marshall, along with the other civil rights attorneys of the era,” Springerley said.

Commissioner Hampton, along with the Smith County District Clerk’s Office and Assistant District Attorney Thomas Wilson, took over the project of having the records digitized by local company Keen Solutions Group and donated the original copies to the law school. All files have been digitized, with a copy being kept by the Records Services Department, according to the news release. The State Bar of Texas has also shown interest in the Smith County court documents and the background regarding the historical case, according to county officials.