About The Man
Donald V. Watkins grew up as the fifth of sixth children of the late Levi Watkins Sr., a longtime president of Alabama State University, and his wife, Lillian, a school teacher and homemaker.
Watkins learned business skills at a young age, working several summers as an apprentice to his grandfather, Adam Watkins, who ran a plumbing business in Clarksville, Tenn., at the height of segregated life in the South. Watkins: “That’s where I learned that quality services transcend racial barriers,” recalling that his grandfather made house calls to white homeowners during hours when white plumbers had closed for the day.
Leaving the “Deep South,” Watkins attended Southern Illinois University. After graduating from SIU, he came to Washington to enroll in the Howard University law school in 1970, but left quickly when the NAACP offered him a scholarship to Alabama, part of the civil rights group’s effort to further integrate the overwhelmingly white professional schools in the South. He and one other black student were part of the second integrated law school class at Alabama, although they rarely saw each other.
According to Milton C. Davis, a former assistant Alabama attorney general in the 1970s, Milton, in a collaboration with Watkins (then a young lawyer) convinced governor George C. Wallace to pardon Clarence Norris, the last of the black Scottsboro Boys framed in the purported 1931 rape of two white women. Watkins said that reading a book about the Scottsboro Boys while a freshman at Southern Illinois University motivated him to become a lawyer. “I wanted to fight cases like that,” said Watkins, who had gone to college thinking he would become an architect. According to Milton Davis: “Watkins was Clarence Norris’s attorney. He was key in finding the evidence.” Norris died in 1989 at the age of 76.
As a successful lawyer, Donald Watkins has won 40 of 41 lawsuits he handled representing the City of Birmingham during the 1980s and 1990s.
Shortly after winning the Norris pardon, Watkins was elected to one term on the Montgomery City Council and while there frequently clashed with the City’s conservative Republican mayor, Emory Folmar, now 76, who recalled that when Watkins left the council in 1983 he told him “that it was one of the greatest blessings since the Yankee troops went home in 1870. We clashed repeatedly over political philosophy.”
Ironically, Folmar later hired him to represent the City.
“I have tremendous respect for him as a lawyer and businessman,” Folmar said. “He always told the truth, which is a great commodity in my book.”
Watkins entered the entrepreneurial world with his purchase of a major equity stake in 1998 in Masada Oxynol, LLC (and its affiliates), a privately held waste-to-ethanol energy technology and development company based in Birmingham, Alabama. Parent company Masada Resource Group, which sold its cable and telecommunications holdings for $800 million, is expected to produce much of the ethanol. Watkins is so powerful in the energy industry that his company was one of only 100 invited to the Montreux Energy Roundtable in June of 2001 in Montreux, Switzerland. The Masada family of six companies is also managed by Watkins.
In January 2000, Watkins successfully founded Alamerica Bank (www.alamericabank.com) in Birmingham, a state-chartered, full-service bank with a commercial focus. The Bank achieved the industry’s benchmark return on equity of 15% in 2005. The Bank’s return on equity since 2006 has averaged 20%. In June of 2006, the Bank’s holding company, Alamerica BancCorp, successfully launched its wholly-owned mortgage affiliate, Alamerica Mortgage Corp.
In 2005, Watkins became the first and only litigator to successfully defend a New York Stock Exchange company CEO against Sarbanes-Oxley charges. This accomplishment was profiled in the July 2, 2005 edition of Fortune Magazine in an article headlined, ”Donald Watkins: The Man Who Saved Richard Scrushy.” Watkins’ role in the stunning victory in Scrushy’s case was also featured in the August 22, 2005 edition of the National Law Journal in an article titled, “Coming Back To Try One More”.
In 2002, Donald Watkins founded The Voter News Network (www.voternewsnetwork.com), a news organization geared toward independent thinking voters. He also established The Children’s Bank, which helps children with entrepreneurial dreams start or expand businesses by providing them with resources unavailable from a traditional bank. The fund is open to children 18 years of age and younger, and requires applicants to formulate a business plan.
Among his many directorships, Watkins serves on the Board at State Mutual Insurance Company in Rome, Georgia. He is also a life member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.