Professor H. T. Smith recently gave a speech at the Black History Month Celebration of the Dade County Bar Association, providing a history of the challenges Black lawyers have faced over the years in Miami-Dade County – from the County’s first Black lawyer, Richard E. S. Toomey, who was not permitted by the court to speak directly to the judge; to the establishment of America’s only “Colored Court”; to pioneer attorney Jesse McCrary, Florida’s first Black Assistant Attorney General, whose secretary quit on him his first day on the job, leaving a note behind that she would not work for a “nigger lawyer.”
Professor Smith is the Founding Director of the FIU Law Trial Advocacy Program. He teaches Advanced Trial Advocacy and Trial Advocacy.