The Time When Black Lawyers Asked Mayor Richard Arrington to Run Me Out of Birmingham
- Donald V. Watkins
- 5 minutes ago
- 3 min read
By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on January 10, 2026
An Editorial Opinion
I have told the story about my 1994 meeting with Birmingham, Alabama business icon Henry C. Goodrich and his request on behalf of the city's White business leaders for me to leave town immediately because I was a "troublemaker" in Birmingham who was disturbing the business community’s “good relations with the Colored community."
I have also told the story of Birmingham-Southern President Neal Berte (1976 to 2004), who wrote a handwritten letter to Arrington in 1990 in which Berte opposed my successful legal representation of Arrington in the face of Republican U.S. Attorney Frank Donaldson's racially-motivated, unrelenting, 4-year battle to oust Arrington from office and imprison him. Arrington allowed me to read Berte's letter before he balled it up and threw it in the trash can.
Neal Berte wrote his letter to Mayor Arrington after U.S. Senator Howell Heflin, who was White, placed a detailed report about Frank Donaldson's lawlessness against Arrington into the Congressional Record.
Local Black Lawyers Demanded a Meeting with Mayor Arrington
Now it is time to tell you the story of a group of Black lawyers in Birmingham who demanded and got a meeting with Arrington in 1991 in an effort to run me out of town. Led by Henry “Hank” Thompson and Henry L. Penick, this group of about 6 Black lawyers was upset that my law firm was being paid about $1 million per year to litigate complex, high-profile cases on behalf of the city and mayor’s office where losing was not an acceptable option.
As a self-insured city, Arrington determined that it was cheaper to pay me to win these difficult cases than it was to pay skyrocketing and expensive insurance premiums.
By the time the Black lawyers called for the meeting, my Birmingham litigation Dream Team, which is depicted below, had won 73 straight cases for the city and saved the municipality more than $100 million in potential liability exposure.
Mayor Arrington attended the meeting with his trusted confidant Doyal Reed and administrative assistant Jessie Huff. Arrington excluded me from the meeting so that the lawyers who gathered in his City Hall conference room would feel free to voice whatever concerns they had.
Their concerns basically boiled down to the fact that I was making substantial money from litigating complex city legal cases, and they were not. None of them claimed to have greater litigation skills and abilities than I had exhibited in my 73 court victories. None had a better win-loss record in the courtroom.
None of the lawyers had experience in representing a municipality at the time. I was representing the largest city (Birmingham) and third largest city (Montgomery), as well as the city of Uniontown, in complex litigation in cases where losing was not an acceptable option. At the time, Montgomery had an arch-conservative White Republican mayor who was paying me a higher hourly rate for my services than Arrington paid.
None of this mattered to these Black lawyers. As longtime Arrington supporters, they believed they should be handling the lion’s share of the city’s legal work, with local White firms handling the remainder. In their view, I needed to be fired immediately and sent back to Montgomery where I came from.
For context, this meeting occurred while Frank Donaldson was aggressively trying to indict Arrington on bogus criminal charges and put him in prison. Donaldson was also looking for any basis to get me removed as the city-paid lawyer who was fighting his criminal investigation of Arrington. Donaldson even encouraged an unsuccessful taxpayer's lawsuit against the city and me to recoup all legal fees I had been paid.
Mayor Arrington closed the meeting by thanking the local Black lawyers for voicing their concerns. After the meeting, Arrington told me about their concerns and instructed me to stay focused on my legal work. Doyal Reed provided me with a detailed briefing on the meeting.
Looking back on my legal career today, I am probably the only Birmingham lawyer who had three different local groups trying to run me out of town simply because: (a) I disturbed the “good relations” White business leaders had with the city's "Colored community,” (b) I was proficient at picking the highest caliber of legal talent for my litigation Dream Teams, and (c) I was winning all of my assigned cases, for which I was paid well.
I finished my 46-year legal career in 2019 with 217 documented courtroom victories and 8 losses.