"Hugh Macbeth Sr.{1884-1956}

An African American attorney active in Las Angeles,California in the Early 20th Century,was born in Charleston,South Carolina in as Hugh Ellwood Macbeth,was a pioneering African American photographer.He attended the Avery Institute in Charleston and graduated from Fisk University in Nashville,Tennessee in 1905.Three years later he earned a law degree from Harvard University.Hugh lived in Baltimore for five years where he was founding editor of the newspaper The Baltimore Times.In 1913.He moved to Los Angeles,California.He soon became an important player on the California.Los Angeles legal and political scene.In 1914 he was appointed as special counsel to the Los Angeles Forum,a local African American civil rights group.The following year Hugh began a decade long effort,ultimately unsuccessful,to establish an African American agricultural  colony in Baja California,which he would call Little Liberia.He was a major promoter of the Little Liberia Colony,his legal work in Los Angeles remained a priority.Hugh's law firm concentrated on aiding African American litigants and criminal defendants,and represented such notable client as Jazz great Jelly Roll Morton.Hugh pressed numerous cases challenging segregation laws and restrictive housing covenants.In 1940,he persuaded the American Legion to cease excluding black boxers from fight cards at Hollywood Legion Stadium.Hugh's firm had many white clients(including John Hunt, a white disciple of the religious Father Devine movement).In 1934 he was named general counsel for the Utopian Society, a largely-white economic reform group that claimed 600,000 members.His broad connections led to his being named resident consul for the Republic of Liberia in 1936.Two years later,when Governor Frank Merriam created the state Race Relations Commission,Hugh,who had drafted the law establishing the commission,was named Executive Secretary and sole black Commissioner.In the 1940s he founded a human rights organization,the United Races of America.After Pearl Harbor,he traveled to Washington,D.C.,hoping to persuade the federal government to make racial discrimination a military offence punishable as treason.He then delivered a speech in Chicago,"Justice for all Humanity,"which was published in book form shortly afterwards.Hugh became a champion of the incarcerated Japanese.He and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney A.L. Wirin defended Ernest Toki Wakayama who were removed from their California home following the announcement of Executive Order 9066.Because of Hugh's unpopular defense of equal rights,he was asked to resign as Liberian consul in 1944.In 1945 He and A.L. teamed again to represent Fred and Kajiro Oyama,who challenged California's Alien Land Act.The case ultimately reached the United States Supreme Court as Oyama v.California.The Court's ruling in January 1948 ended enforcement of the Act,furnishing an important legal precedent for later rulings striking down segregation.Hugh died in Los Angeles.