On this day in Black history, in 1961, President John F. Kennedy nominated James Benton Parsons to be the first African American district court judge in the continental U.S., and the first Black judge with lifetime tenure.
He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II and received his law degree from the University of Chicago.
Parsons would go on to accomplish more historic firsts in the judiciary field, as he became the first African American chief judge of a district court on April 17, 1975. In the following month of that year, Parsons was elected the first African American representative to the Judicial Conference of the United States. He retired from the bench in 1992.
All this and more on “Prime.”
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