Born December 26, 1847 in Knoxville, Tennessee, Roderick B. Thomas came to Alabama sometime in the 1860s. He first appeared in Alabama's history on April 16, 1867 when he caused a near-riot in Mobile by attempting to board a streetcar that was reserved for whites. His efforts to integrate the streetcars of Mobile give him some claim to be Alabama's first "freedom rider." Sometime after that, Thomas moved to Selma, Alabama.
By 1870 he was taking a prominent role in the politics of his new home. In 1869 he was elected clerk of the Dallas County criminal court. In April 1873, Thomas was elected to the Selma City Council from the Fourth Ward. His aggressive advocacy of black progress wins him praise in Frederick Douglass's newspaper, "The New National Era." Thomas was elected to serve as a judge of the criminal court of Dallas County on November 03, 1874. This made him the first African American to serve as a judge in Alabama. However, a few months later, Thomas was removed from office when the court was abolished after Democrats regained electoral power in the state in 1874. Two years later, after marrying a schoolteacher, Thomas left the state. Little is known about him between 1876 and 1885. He was said to have formed a law partnership with Mifflin W. Gibbs in Arkansas in 1885. Thomas died on November 16, 1887.
Peter A. Hall was a leading civil rights attorney who tackled discrimination cases, such as the exclusion of blacks from Alabama juries, with Alabama attorneys Arthur Shores and Orzell Billingsley. Hall worked on the NAACP legal team that defended Martin Luther King, Jr. during the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott. In 1972, Hall was elected Birmingham, Alabama's first African American judge. According to "The Associate Press" Hall stated that he would do his best to be fair and "temper justice with mercy." He became Birmingham, Alabama's first African American judge in 1972.
Charles Swinger Conley was born in Montgomery County in 1921. He attended private school, and after high school graduation, he earned his bachelor's degree from Alabama State College, his master's in history from University of Michigan and his jurisprudence degree from New York University School Law School. Conley returned to Montgomery and served as an attorney for Martin Luther King, Jr. Many of Conley's cases involved Civil Rights issues including litigation that attacked segregated public facilities such as the public libraries in Montgomery. He was also an attorney in the landmark case Sullivan v. New York Times. In 1972, Conly was elected as Alabama's first African American judge of the Court of Common Please in Macon County. This court system changed to that of a District Court, and Judge Conley was reelected in 1976. After retirement from the Bench, he resumed the practice of law. Conley died on September 09, 2010.