Elbert Bertram “Bert” Haltom, Jr.: A Brilliant North Alabama Attorney Who Coached Me Up as a Litigator
- Donald V. Watkins
- 22 hours ago
- 4 min read
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted on July 28, 2026
I met Elbert Bertram “Bert” Haltom, Jr., in the Harvest Mitchell, Jr., employment discrimination case against the Florence City School System in 1976. I was Mitchell’s lawyer, and Haltom represented the school board.
From the moment we shook hands in our first pretrial meeting, Bert Haltom treated me with dignity and respect. I remember every pretrial meeting and discovery documents review session with Haltom because he was one of the few white lawyers who treated me with genuine respect. We met at a time when quite a few judges in Alabama openly called me the “Nigger lawyer from Montgomery” during court sessions.
Haltom’s word was his bond, which is a rare commodity in the legal profession. Furthermore, Haltom was the same person in public that he was in private.
When we met, I was 27 years old and had enjoyed plenty of success as a litigator. I had been trained well by Mr. Ramus Rhodes (the janitor at the University of Alabama law school) and Attorneys Fred D. Gray, Solomon S. Seay, Jr., Charles D. Langford, and J.L. Chestnut on how to litigate and win cases.
Harvest Mitchell was a High-Profile Client in North Alabama
Harvest Mitchell was head football, basketball and track coach at all-black Burrell-Slater from 1959 through 1969. Mitchell built Burrell-Slater into a North Alabama sports powerhouse.
During his ten years at Burrell-Slater, Mitchell’s record in basketball was 209 victories and 46 loses. In football, Mitchell's record was 55 victories and 19 loses. He was nominated for basketball “Coach of the Year” eight of those ten years and he won five times. Mitchell was also chosen “Coach of the Year” in football once. These impressive achievements are complemented by the successful tournament participation of teams under his direction. Mitchell had no assistant coaches.
In 1968, Mitchell was inducted into the Sports Hall of Fame in Madison County, Alabama.
Yet, the Florence Board of Education refused to award Mitchell a head coaching job at the predominantly white Coffee High School after Burrell-Slater was closed in 1969 as a result of court-ordered desegregation.
Mitchell applied for a vacant head coaching position in football after the 1969-70 season ended and a head basketball coaching job during the 1970-71 school year. Both applications were rejected in favor of lesser qualified white applicants.
On March 6, 1972, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ordered U.S. District Judge Frank H. McFadden to award the head basketball coaching job at Coffee High School to Harvest Mitchell. McFadden, who was affectionately known in the state’s white community as “Big Red,” was notorious for denying judicial relief for deserving black plaintiffs in school desegregation lawsuits. McFadden, an “old school” Mississippi-born racist who regularly used the word "nigger" in his private conversations.
Harvest Mitchell coached basketball at Coffee High School for four seasons, while also serving as an assistant football coach. The school, fan, and booster support Mitchell enjoyed at Burrell-Slater was replaced by tidal waves of racial hatred and resentment from the administration, fans, and boosters of Coffee High School.
Bert Haltom Kicked My Ass During the Trial
I represented Harvest Mitchell in 1976 when the School Board tried to replace him with a white basketball coach whose objective qualifications for the job were vastly inferior to Mitchell’s. We returned to Judge Frank McFadden’s courtroom to fight for Mitchell’s job. Bert Haltom, who was 54 and a master litigator, was waiting for me and he was fully prepared.
I had never been up against a trial attorney with Haltom’s litigation skills. He was calm, confident, and surgical in his defensive moves. I was bleeding all over the courtroom for two weeks. I gave it everything I had, but Haltom was always one or two steps ahead of me.
After our hard-fought trial, Haltom won the case. Judge McFadden, once again, refused to enforce Mitchell’s constitutional right to fair employment practices. Haltom had given McFadden the evidentiary cover he needed for his adverse ruling.
After we left court, Bert Haltom came by my hotel room and asked me to stay one more night so we could meet the following morning. I agreed to do so.
When Haltom showed up the next morning, he spent several hours with me reviewing every phase of our litigation battle. He analyzed every offensive play I ran in the courtroom, witness-by-witness, and explained the defensive maneuvers that neutralized them.
Haltom was not giving me a beatdown. Instead, he was coaching me up. Haltom genuinely wanted me to become a master litigator, and he was using his time, energy, and specialized knowledge to make that happen.
It’s one thing to be coached by the master litigators who sent me into battle. It’s something else to be coached up by a master litigator who had just kicked my ass in the courtroom.
Haltom finished his private tutorial by telling me how proud he was of me. He gave me a strong handshake and told me to call him if I ever needed anything. That was the last time I saw Bert Haltom.
Epilogue
I never forgot how Haltom made me feel in defeat. He used the occasion as an invaluable teaching moment.
In the years that followed, I used every lesson Haltom taught me on my way to amassing a record-setting 155 straight courtroom victories. That record was broken on October 20, 2017, by Tampa, Florida attorney David S. Shankman, who is the best litigator in America today.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Bert Haltom as a U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Alabama. He retired from the federal bench in 1998 and died on October 12, 2003.
Harvest Mitchell, Jr., died on March 22, 2022. In November 2023, the Florence City School Board named the gymnasium at the Burrell-Slater Community Education Center in honor of Coach Mitchell.
I never had the pleasure of trying a case in Judge Haltom’s courtroom, but I never forgot what he did for me in that Florence, Alabama hotel room in 1976.