Did you know that the famous black lawyer of Gloucester County, Thomas Calhoun Walker, received his legal instruction from two men who had served as officers in the Confederate army?
Walker was admitted to the bar in 1886 at a session of Gloucester Circuit Court. He practiced until his death at the age of 91 in 1953; and his funeral at Bethel Baptist Church, Sassafras, was attended by fellow members of the local legal profession. Members of the Thirteenth Judicial Bar Association, all or mostly white, were honorary pallbearers.
His remarkable life began in slavery and ended crowned with honors. More than 70 years after his death, a county school facility, emblem of his own struggle for an education, and of his leadership in erecting schools for black children in an era of deep racial segregation, still bears his name.
But, back to the early days.
Walker had scraped together a basic education and then a college degree at Hampton Institute, and returned to his home county as a teacher. O...