John Segar Gravatt

John Segar Gravatt (February 26, 1909 - December 9, 1983)(often J. Segar Gravatt, which is also the appellation of his youngest daughter, the first woman ordained as an Episcopal minister in Virginia, Jacqueline Segar Gravatt) was a Virginia lawyer and trial judge, who drew national attention for defending the Massive Resistance policy of the Prince Edward County, Virginia School Board to the United States Supreme Court decisions in Brown v. Board of Education, which included a companion case from Virginia, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County.

Early life and education

Born at "Birdwood" in Blackstone, Nottoway County, Virginia, the eldest son of William Moncure Gravatt(1883 - 1961) and his wife, Rebecca Epes Dupuy Gravatt (nicknamed "Budie"; 1882-1959), John Segar Gravatt had an elder sister, as well as two younger brothers and a younger sister.^[1] He attended the local public schools, then Episcopal High School. After graduation, Gravatt attended the University of Virginia and the University of Virginia Law School, receiving an LLB degree in 1933. He was a member of The Eli and Imp Societies, as well as Delta Kappa Epsilon, and from 1948-1958 was a member of the university's Board of Visitors. He also earned letters in four sports in high school and college.^[2]

During the Great Depression, Gravatt lived with his parents and at least two siblings. When he gained a financial footing, he married Isbelll Turnbull (1918-1997), daughter of Judge Needham Stuart Turnbull. They had three daughters, Mary and the twins Isbell and Jacqueline, al of whom survived their parents.

Career

After his admission to the Virginia bar, Gravatt established a private legal practice with his father. He briefed and argued dozens of cases before the Virginia Supreme Court, as well as in federal courts. He continued his legal practice until nearly his own death, and was also heavily involved in Rotary club.

For 35 years Gravatt was also a part-time trial judge in Nottoway County, after being elected to that position by the Virginia General Assembly. He served in the Circuit Court as well as the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. On June 7, 1937, Gravatt as Trial Justicereceived a legal opinion from the Virginia Attorney General concerning commissions to sheriffs for settlement of claims. On April 13, 1971, about a year after Gravatt requested a legal opinion from the Virginia Attorney General, he received a letter stating that the mayor of an incorporated town could simultaneously hold the office of substitute county in the surrounding county, and that "judicial duties may be exercised in courts not of record, which would include a mayor's court, in different jurisdictions by the same person."

Gravatt represented Dinwiddie and Nottoway Counties and the City of Petersburg in the limited 1956 Virginia Constitutional Convention, held between March 5 and March 7, 1956. He handily defeated Wyatt T. Walker, whom Gravatt referred to as a "negro of the City of Petersburg", and who later became Executive Secretary of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.^[3] The convention was necessary to amend the state Constitution to allow tuition grants to private schools, called segregation academies because they primarily served white children whose parents wanted them educated in an environment without African American or other nonwhite students. On July 23, 1956, Gravatt gave a speech advocating continued segregation before the Defenders of State Sovereignty and Individual Liberties, with which he was heavily involved.^[4]

Gravatt also assisted David J. Mays in the litigation which gave rise to the U.S. Supreme Court decisions in Harrison v. NAACP (1959),^[5] and NAACP v. Button(1963).^[6] He was also a member of the Commission for Constitutional Government, which Mays and James J. Kilpatrick led and which couched segregation policies in constitutional terms to appeal to Northerners.^[7]

At least since early 1955, Gravatt represented the Prince Edward County Commonwealth's attorney or board of supervisors in several cases. He was among those advising the county board that it could choose not to appropriate any funds for public education, and thereby close its schools to avoid desegregation (as well as keep them closed). Prince Edward County thus closed its schools in 1959 to avoid their racial integration. In March 1964, after nearly five years of such closure, and after fellow lawyer Collins Denny, Jr. , head of the Defenders of State Sovereignty died in January, Gravatt argued Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County before the United States Supreme Court. When he attempted to highlight the new integrated county school built using federal grants (after severe disturbances in August 1963),^[8] as well as argue that schools were solely a state matter, Justice Hugo Black chided Gravatt for evasiveness, then Chief Justice Earl Warren tartly questioned him whether that meant black children had a "freedom to go through life without an education."^[9][10] Justice Black wrote the Court's decision issued on May 25, which questioned the county's long deliberation and lack of speed in implementing Brown as well as denounced the closure policy for subverting the court's decision for nonconstitutional reasons of race and opposition to desegregation.

Gravatt also assisted on the briefs in Board of Supervisors of Prince Edward County cert. denied 385 U.S. 960 (1966), and in School Board of City of Richmond, Virginia v State Board of Education of Virginia, which was affirmed by an equally divided Supreme Court on May 21, 1973 ^[11]

Death and legacy

Gravatt died in 1983, survived by his wife and daughters, and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery in Nottoway County.^[12] After his death, it was revealed that he was a member of the Seven Society, devoted to performing anonymous good deeds. His papers beginning in 1941 are held by the Special Collections division of the University of Virginia Library.^[13]

References