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Mr. Gay displays winning court judgment. NJG Files.
James F. Gay, Sr. |
- 1943 - 2008 -
James F. Gay: Helped Reform Elections In Norfolk
Leonard E. Colvin
Chief Reporter
New Journal & Guide
James F. Gay, Sr., the Civil Rights lawyer whose legal skills helped bring down at-large voting in Norfolk, was found dead of apparent natural causes at his home in Chesapeake last weekend.
A friend close to the family said that Mr. Gay was found dead sometime over the weekend of April 19-20. The family is awaiting a Medical Examiner’s report, but they expect Mr. Gay’s death will be connected to renal failure. Mr. Gay, who has suffered a series of strokes over the past few years, was undergoing kidney dialysis.
Gay, 65-years-old at the time of his death, was the lead lawyer in Collins vs. the City of Norfolk, a decade-long battle by the African American community to dismantle the city’s at-large system of electing mayor and city council. The suit contended that the at-large system was a barrier which kept African Americans from electing candidates of their choice.
The at-large system was part of the post-Civil War political machinery imposed in the early 1900s by southern cities such as Norfolk. It was designed to keep Blacks off governing bodies like city councils and thus without influence in the city’s political system.
Under the system, if three seats were up for election in a given year, the candidates receiving the top three number of votes would win a position on council. When Blacks sought to be elected to the council, racially polarized voting patterns and the poll tax which many Blacks could not pay in order to vote proved to be successful tactics in weakening black voting strength. In Norfolk, African Americans did not get a seat on city council until 1968.
Mr. Gay was the lead attorney who took the case of Collins vs. the City of Norfolk that ended at-large voting in Norfolk in 1989.
The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which agreed that at-large voting in Norfolk was a deterrent to black political empowerment and ordered the city to abolish the system in 1989. In its place, a ward system was designed and imposed. It called for three of the seven members to be elected from three all-black voting districts.
“That will be the legacy of James F. Gay,” said Dr. Milton Reid, who was one of the five plaintiffs in the suit which abolished the suit. “The suit opened the door for black participation in the political system of this city. We still have a long way to go, but if it were not for the work of James Gay, we would not have the |
Posted April 23, 2008
foundation for change we have today. I think he was the last Black Civil Rights Attorney in this city. I see no other lawyer willing to work and sacrifice to improve the political and social life of poor and black people this city.”
Before he was barred from practicing law for mishandling the legal affairs of a client, his son, James, F. Gay, Jr, said his father was one of the most distinguished lawyers in Hampton Roads.
His son said that other lawyers have “made mistakes similar to my father’s but they got their license and their livelihood back. I think they were determined to punish him for his work in that suit.”
James F. Gay, Sr., graduated from the Norfolk public schools system. He attended the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College, now known as Norfolk State University where he received an undergraduate degree in Chemistry. Gay then enrolled in the law school at the University of Virginia, where he was one of the first 13 African Americans to receive a law degree from the Commonwealth’s most prestigious university.
Gay’s interest in political and social activism to force change began during his undergraduate years in college. He was the President of the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College’s student government. He was also the leader of the Norfolk NAACP’s Youth Division.
Gay told the New Journal and Guide during an interview some time ago with this reporter, that he and his youthful colleagues had an opportunity to make Civil Rights History.
Gay said that during the 1959 National NAACP convention, the Norfolk Youth unit of the Civil Rights group proposed that a series of “sit-ins” be held at local department stores in Norfolk and elsewhere to protest the Jim Crow policy of commercial outlets like the now-defunct Woolworth’s which refused to serve Blacks at their lunch counters.
“But they (the older leaders of the national NAACP) said that would not be wise and would be counter productive,” Gay recalled during that interview with the Guide. “We could not get the leaders of the Norfolk NAACP to back us up. So we dropped the matter. But the guys in Greensboro did not listen to the old wise men.”
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