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Luminary Awards salute legal profession stalwarts on MLK Day

Seven local attorneys were honored by Mayor Jim Strickland and the City of Memphis at the third annual Luminary Awards, Monday. The event commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday recognized the recipients as trailblazers in civil rights.

The seven attorneys honored in the Hall of Mayors at Memphis City Hall were: Walter Bailey Jr., Michael Cody, Bernice Donald, Bruce McMullen, Charles Newman, Van Turner Jr. and Allan Wade.

“Memphis continues to change the world, and it’s certainly true of its people, Strickland said during the ceremony. “These attorneys have dedicated their lives to improving our community. They are those dedicated individuals who know – just like Dr. King said – that progress takes work and sacrifice.”

GALLERY: Photos by Gary S. Whitlow/GSW Enterprises

The event was especially symbolic for some of the honorees who had ties to the late civil rights icon.

“I just feel so fortunate to be a small part of helping to move this community where it ought to go,” Luminary recipient Mike Cody said. “So that we’re just one family of people and not several races that fight with each other. This was Dr. King’s dream.”

Cody recalled the day before Dr. King was assassinated. He, Charles Newman and Walter Bailey Jr. – two other Luminary recipients –met with King in his room at the Lorraine Motel. Cody was instrumental in fighting a federal injunction that prevented King from leading the protest in support of the sanitation workers. He, along with another local attorney were able to win the case, but King was assassinated just hours before the court case concluded.

Newman said he was lucky to have met Dr. King twice. Once at the meeting at the Lorraine Motel and prior to that while he was a student at Yale University.

“I was in awe of him,” Newman said of Dr. King. “The way he was able to motivate and lead people – and it was genuine.”

Newman said it sparked him to become a change agent. Since then, he has continued to contribute to the City of Memphis, including his work on preventing Interstate 40 from being built through Overton Park.

The other Luminary recipient who sat with Newman and Cody that day in 1968 was Walter Bailey Jr. A budding attorney at the time, he later became a member of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, a position he held until he stepped down in 2018 due to term limits. His tenure made him the longest-serving commissioner in the county.

Bailey played a pivotal role in the removal of the Confederate statues in two city parks. He shared the feat with three other Luminary honorees, Commissioner Turner, Wade and McMullen.

Turner formed Greenspace, a nonprofit organization formed to take ownership of the former city parks and oversee their future development.

Wade, who has served as the City Council attorney since 1988, contributed to the statues’ removal in a different way. He was part of the legal team that crafted a plan to assist in their removal. He has successfully defended the act in every lawsuit that’s been filed.

“There are some winners and losers in all politics,” Wade said. “So often times when I take a position on my clients’ behalf, I know that am going to inspire some anger in some people – but that’s just what you have to do when you want to elicit change.”

While serving as City Attorney, McMullen put together a team that oversaw the logistics of the sale of the parks and removal of statues. He has also been named one of the top 100 Tennessee attorneys and top 50 Memphis attorneys.

There was a lone woman on the list of Luminary honorees. Judge Bernice Donald was the first black woman in the United States to serve as a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge. The trailblazer, who served more than 30 years as a federal judge, also made history when she was appointed by then-President Bill Clinton as the first black woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee.

“Dr. King believed that if you have the skills and the ability and persistence that you ought to be able to go wherever your talents took you,” Donald said. “And so, I feel like I stand on the shoulders of all of those people who worked very hard so that somebody like me could be here today.”

The first Luminary Awards presentation was held in 2018 and honored the 1968 sanitation workers. In 2019, 10 local women were honored for their contributions to the City of Memphis.

 

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