J. Mason Davis, Jr.: Reimaging History Dishonors True Civil Rights Heroes

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted and Published on April 19, 2025

Attorney J. Mason Davis.

An Editorial Opinion

With the passage of time, many historians have a tendency to reimage the role of key participants in the fight to end Jim Crow in Old Confederate states. Those who aided and abetted the state's official agenda to subject its Black citizens to hardcore “cradle to the grave” racial discrimination are sometimes recast in a favorable light, while those who fought to end this discrimination are often ignored.

The mistreatment of Blacks in southern states is well-documented in thousands of recorded federal court cases. Court orders in these cases are often the most reliable version of this recorded history. They always tell us who was on the right side of history in each case, and when.

Earlier this month, I witnessesed an effort by local Birmingham, Alabama news media, public officials, and others to reimagine a chapter in the city's civil rights history. They created a “legendary Alabama civil rights activist” out of thin air. His name was J. Mason Davis, Jr., a longtime Black attorney in Birmingham who died on April 4, 2026, at age 90.

The world knows Birmingham as the site of the 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little Black girls who were attending Sunday School in 1963. Birmingham is also known for City Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor and his use of firehoses and police dogs against school children and others who peacefully marched in protest for civil rights in the early 1960s.

Birmingham, Alabama firefighters hosing civil rights demonstrators in 1963.

In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote his famous "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" while imprisoned in the city.

In 1960, local barber James Armstrong filed a lawsuit that eventually degregated Birmingham's city schools.

In 1956, Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth formed the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights to fight racial discrimination on every front in the city. Shuttleworth's local church was bombed in retribution for his civil rights activism.

Local judges, government officials, and news reporters were major participants in the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program that targeted, harassed, and persecuted thousands of local Black civil rights activists, including Rev. Shuttlesworth, Mr. Armstrong, Dr. King, Mayor Richard Arrington, Jr. (from 1972 to 1988), and U.S. District Court Judge U.W. Clemon in 1996.

J. Mason Davis, Jr., was a nice, classy, and affable man who enjoyed a long and successful career representing businesses in antitrust, securities, and product liability litigation, as well as life, health, and surety company defense. I highly respected his legal work in these specialty areas.

However, Davis was NOT a "legendary" civil rights lawyer or "activist." He was NEVER on the front lines representing Rev. Shuttlesworth, Mr. Armstrong, Dr. King, Mayor Arrington, Judge Clemon, or the thousands of other Birmingham freedom fighters who were targeted, harassed, and persecuted by government agents during the long, vicious, and dangerous fight to break the back of Jim Crow in Alabama, from 1963 to to the present.

In fact, Davis defended the racial status quo in Alabama at crucial times during this period.

The Shuford Case

In 1975, I won a federal court consent decree against the Alabama State Board of Education that specifically required the establishment of "uniform non-discriminatory written standards and procedures for evaluating applicants for faculty and staff positions at all state junior colleges and technical schools" in the state. Lee v. Macon County Bd. of Educ., C.A. No. 604-E (M.D. Ala. Aug. 4, 1975, at p. 4).

This decree built upon the progress Black plaintiffs made in prior federal court orders that were litigated and won by legendary civil rights attorneys Solomon S. Seay, Jr., and Fred D. Gray in 1967 and 1970. Those orders were intended to remedy "segregation" in the 33 junior, technical, and community colleges that comprised Alabama’s postsecondary system. By 1975, the court recognized that the hiring and promotion of faculty and staff on a non-discriminatory basis was a necessary ingredient in disestablishing racially identifiable schools. 

Despite the hiring and promotion mandates in the 1975 consent decree, the state of Alabama never adopted uniform employment standards in the postsecondary system and little progress was made toward faculty and staff desegregation.

In 1989, a new class of Black plaintiffs called the “Shuford Plaintiffs” challenged the system’s continued use of racially discriminatory hiring and promotional practices, in violation of the 1967, 1970, and 1975 court orders. Veteran civil rights attorneys Terry G. Davis, Mark Englehart, Anita L. Kelly, and Kenneth L. Thomas represented the Shuford Plaintiffs.

Veteran civil rights attorneys James U. Blacksher, John C. Falkenberry, Leslie Proll, Rebecca H. Hunt, Joe R. Whatley, Jr., Thomas T Gallion, III, Beverly Ann Poole Baker, and Richard H. Walston represented a class and sub-class of female Plaintiff-Intervenors who challenged gender discrimination in the system's hiring and promotional practices.

The State Board of Education waged a fierce battle against the Shuford Plaintiffs and female Plaintiff-Intervenors. The Board brought in a new champion to lead the fight against the Shuford Plaintiffs and the Plaintiff-Intervenors -- Attorney J. Mason Davis, Jr. This polished defender of the status quo represented the State Board of Education, its board members, and three predominantly White community and technical colleges.

From 1989 to 1994, Davis led the state's massive resistance to non-discriminatory hiring and promotional practices within the postsecondary system of junior, technical, and community colleges.

On March 15, 1994, U.S. District Judge Myron H. Thompson in Montgomery issued a landmark order that highlighted the lack of compliance with the court’s prior 1967, 1970, and 1975 orders. Thompson awarded the Shuford Plaintiffs and female Plaintiff-Intervenors sweeping injunctive relief, monetary awards, and other class-based relief. [Click here to read the Order in its entirety]. 

Thompson’s March 15^th order ended the prolong suffering of thousands of deserving Black and female applicants for employment and promotional opportunities within the postsecondary system. The Shuford Plaintiffs and female Plaintiff-Intervenors finally broke the back of Jim Crow in this educational system.

On my digital media platforms, I always strive to feature and honor the true civil rights heroes who opened the doors of equal opportunity for historical victims of “cradle to the grave” racial, gender, age, and religious-based discrimination, and not those who put new locks on these doors. Furthermore, I will never participate in any effort to reimage Alabama's drum major role in perpetuating ongoing "cradle to the grave" racial discrimination against its Black citizens.