A war overseas that many Americans don’t understand. Sharp political division at home. Court rulings ignored. Judges publicly attacked, threatened, labeled “radical” and “dangerous.”
Sounds like 1966. Also sounds like 2026.
Inside the Ford Theatre at the National Civil Rights Museum, four retired federal judges gathered Thursday, Feb. 26 to remind an audience that during the Civil Rights era, it wasn’t only marchers and ministers who faced danger.
Judges did, too.
“These were people who literally put their lives on the line to support the rule of law,” said Hon. Jeremy D. Fogel, recalling federal jurists who issued desegregation rulings and endured ostracism, threats and violence.
The forum — “Justice in Balance: The Courts, Civil Rights, and Our Democracy” — was hosted by the museum in partnership with Keep Our Republic and livestreamed nationally.
But the message in Memphis was local, historical and urgent.
When the robe carries risk
In recounting the sacrifices of the Civil Rights Movement, Americans often speak of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X.
Less remembered are judges such as J. Waties Waring of South Carolina, who ruled against segregation and was ostracized in his community; Frank Johnson of Alabama, who allowed the Selma-to-Montgomery march to proceed; and Robert Vance, the federal judge assassinated in 1989.
Judge Allyson K. Duncan noted that Waring’s wife was spat upon in public and that bricks were thrown into their home.
“It goes beyond ostracism. It was venomous,” she said.
The point, the panelists said, was not nostalgia. It was a warning that judicial independence — the ability to rule without fear or favor — has never been self-sustaining. It depends on public trust and public defense.
“Preservation of the rule of law is not a spectator sport,” said Hon. Bernice B. Donald.
Balance: The Courts, Civil Rights, and Our Democracy” at the National Civil Rights
Museum on Thursday, Feb. 26, 2026. (Gary S. Whitlow/Tri-State Defender)
A courtroom turned mirror
Donald, who retired from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in 2023, offered a story that drew quiet laughter — and then reflection.
On her first day as a General Sessions Court judge in Memphis, the first African American woman to hold the post in Tennessee, she called her first case: a young white man facing a traffic violation.
“I was there in an elevated position wearing my black robe, ready to do justice,” Donald said. “Right below me were my two minute clerks — an African-American female to my left, an African-American male to my right. At a 45-degree angle on the floor was a prosecutor — an African-American male.
“Ringing the courtroom was the security team — four Shelby County deputies in uniform, one African-American female and three African-American males — each armed with a standard-issue Smith & Wesson weapon strapped to his or her side. And we were open for business. Open for justice.”
Donald remembered the young man’s eyes going wide as he realized his case would be decided by people of color.
“He came with fear and trepidation,” Donald said. “I suspect he was concerned about whether he could get justice in a courtroom where there was no one who looked like him.”
He asked for a continuance. Thirty days later, he returned with an African American defense attorney. Donald told the story not as irony, but as metaphor.
“Look at the years — the dozens of years — that African-Americans all across this country entered courtrooms hoping for justice and believing in their hearts that they were not going to get it,” she continued. “Not because they didn’t have cases of merit, but because race, socioeconomic status and other things provided a barrier.”
Today’s flashpoints
Moderator Otis Sanford pressed the panel on current events — including instances in which court orders have been publicly criticized or disregarded.
Fogel cited recent immigration cases in which judges ordered hearings before deportations, only to learn the individuals had already been removed.
“There’s three pillars to the rule of law,” he said: decisions based on evidence and legal principles, the right to a hearing and an honest decision-maker.
When those pillars are weakened — whether through defiance, intimidation or public vilification — the consequences ripple outward.
Judge James T. Giles reminded the audience that grievances against a king who controlled judges appear in the Declaration of Independence itself.
Without constitutional protections, including lifetime tenure, judges could be punished for unpopular rulings, he said. And when judges are threatened with impeachment simply for decisions some dislike, Donald warned, the damage is deliberate.
“That kind of thing is designed to undermine public trust and confidence in the judiciary,” she said.
The arc does not bend alone
As the forum closed, Donald invoked Dr. King’s words about the arc of the moral universe.
“It doesn’t bend of its own volition,” she said.
“It only bends because men and women of courage … apply their hands firmly to that arc. And they push and they pull it in the direction of justice.”
In the 1960s, that push came from marches, pulpits and courtrooms. In 2026, the judges suggested, the setting may look different — social media instead of street corners, impeachment threats instead of bricks through windows — but the question is the same.
Will the public defend the independence of the courts before erosion becomes collapse?
