The Last Secret of Robert Archer Martin

By: Donald V. Watkins

Copyrighted and Published on March 24, 2026 

Robert Archer Martin, Montgomery, Alabama.

On March 27, 2026, I published an article title, “Robert Archer Martin: One of the Great Ones.”  I called him Bob Martin.  He was one of the greatest men in Alabama history.

While I enjoyed telling Bob’s story last year, I intentionally left out one very important chapter in his life. It had been an unspoken secret between us until now.

Bob Martin Believed in a Level Judicial Playing Field

Bob Martin headed Alabama’s Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) for 25 years. He worked under Chief Justices Howell Heflin, C.C. “Bo” Torbert, Sonny Hornsby, and Perry Hooper, Sr.

I met Bob in the early 1980s. We hit it off right away. Over the years, Bob and I spent a lot of time together. We became very close friends.

Bob was more of a listener than a talker. When he spoke, his words had meaning. What is more, Bob's word was his bond, which is a rare commodity in today's superficial world.

After we because super close, I let my guard down and began to reminisce with Bob about my painful experiences in Alabama's racist judicial system during the 1970s. I told him how some of the White state court judges openly referred to me in court proceedings as the “Nigger lawyer from Montgomery." To them, that was my name.

I explained how other racist judges called me no name at all. They would look away from me and simply barked out commands that I assumed were directed at me.

I also told Bob how a few of these judges could not contain their utter disdain for me and my clients and were abusive to us in other ways. For example, some of them would throw court documents on the floor for me to pick up rather than hand them to me in my hand. Others canceled scheduled hearings on the spot after I had driven for 2-4 hours to show up in court on time. A couple of them banned Black supporters from sitting on the main floor of the courtroom during my trials, thereby restricting them to the limited seating in the balcony section of the courtroom. The list of insults and mistreatment is long and ugly.

Bob could see that I was very emotional when recounting these experiences. Sometimes, I cried because I had repressed those memories for years in order to stay strong, keep fighting for equal justice, and hold my head high in the courtroom.

Bob did not say much. He studied my body language as I recounted my experiences with hardcore judicial racism. He listened to me intently. Bob stared at me with his piercing eyes.

When I finished describing these unpleasant encounters, Bob would calmly and casually ask me for the names and court locations of these judges. I provided this information to him.

Bob didn’t express any opinions or particular thoughts on the subject beyond stating that his goal was to make things better for all citizens inside the Alabama judicial system. He firmly believed that every Alabamian deserved a fair shake in the state's court system.

Bob was a Problem-Solver

Over the course of time, Bob would update me on the status of certain state court judges who had left the bench. At first, I did not pay much attention to these updates.

After Jimmy Evans became Alabama Attorney General (1991-1995), I learned from Evans that Bob Martin had found a discrete, quiet, and effective way to purge each one of the racist judges I had identified (who was still on the judicial bench) from the Alabama judicial system.

Bob and I never spoke about the purge, but I could tell from our conversations and Bob's body language that he took extreme pride at how the court system had vastly improved under his 25-year tenure at AOC.

In his own way, Bob Martin secretly leveled the playing field for thousands of Black litigants and their lawyers in courtrooms across the state. In the process, Bob liberated me from the demons that dwelled within my spirit as a result of the unspeakable acts of degradation and disparate treatment I experienced from a cadre of hardcore racist judges in the 1970s.

This was the last secret of Robert Archer Martin, who died on September 15, 2020. Bob's family deserves to know how great a man he really was.

Never has one man done so much to impact the lives of so many Alabamians in such a profound and positive way.