Lawson Edward Thomas and Miami's Negro Municipal Court

Authors

Ernesto Longa

First Page

125

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Lawson Edward Thomas, born in 1898 in Ocala, Florida, was both Miami's first black judge and the first black judge in the South since reconstruction. The municipal court Thomas presided over was located within Miami's Black Police Precinct and handled only cases involving black defendants arrested by black patrolmen. In other words, in 1950, Miami established a municipal court on purely racial lines. Amazingly, considerable research has not revealed a single scholarly article written about Miami's all-black court; Marvin Dunn's Black Miami in the Twentieth Century contains only four sentences on L.E. Thomas. Even Miami-Dade County's "local court historian" seems to know next to nothing about the court Thomas had presided over. In addition, as of this writing, the old municipal court records have seemingly disappeared. Miami-Dade County's court archivist explained that an earlier records custodian may have simply thrown the court's records away believing them to be historically unimportant. This article hopes to convince the reader that Miami's "Negro Municipal Court," the United States' first, and perhaps only, court ever set up on purely racial lines is both historically important and worthy of scholarly attention.

Recommended Citation

Ernesto Longa, Lawson Edward Thomas and Miami's Negro Municipal Court, 18 St. Thomas L. Rev. 125 (2005).
Available at: https://scholarship.stu.edu/stlr/vol18/iss1/7