Letters.

Citation Form for the Appellate Practitioner

Thanks for the outstanding article, "Citation Form: Getting It Right" in the March issue. The author, Susan W. Fox, managed to distill from the Harvard Bluebook everything that an appellate practitioner really needs to know about citation form.

JUDGE PHILIP J. PADOVANO First District Court of Appeal, Tallahassee

African-Americans' Role in Practice of Law in Florida

We read with interest Gary Blankenship's article "The Story of The Florida Bar" in your April issue. Please let us mention that the author, in attempting to note the presence of African-American lawyers in Florida over generations, erred in attributing the state's first black lawyers to "the late 1890s."

In fact, African-Americans had practiced law in Florida for a generation prior to the 1890s. The first individual known to have accomplished admission was Henry S. Harmon of Gainesville, who took the oath in May 1869. At the time, Harmon held office as state representative from Alachua County and later served as chief clerk of the Florida House of Representatives. In 1874 he established a partnership with Congressman Josiah Walls and onetime constitutional convention delegate William U. Saunders, both of whom had been admitted the previous year.

When the Harmon-Walls-Saunders partnership coalesced, other black lawyers already were practicing in Florida's courts. These included Joseph E. Lee at Jacksonville, C.A. Rideout at Monticello, and, at Tallahassee, James D. Thompson, William F. Thompson, and John W. Mitchell. W.F. Thompson and Mitchell were two of three black lawyers who helped draft Florida's 1885 constitution. The third, Henry Wilkins Chandler of Ocala, also represented Marion County in the state senate. Chandler was a graduate of Maine's Bates College and of the Howard University law department.

By the late 1880s, numerous others had joined these pioneer black lawyers. One-time Tampa slave Peter W. Bryant, for example, had graduated from the Howard University law department and was headed for a practice at Florida's largest city of Key West. James Dean had preceded Bryant at Howard and at Key West. In 1888, Monroe County voters elected him their county judge.

This is meant, by no means, as an exhaustive account of the pioneer generation of Florida's black lawyers. We hope, though, that it will permit the members of today's Florida Bar to appreciate better the role that African-Americans have played in the development of the...