Undeterred by the segregregated law,school in Georgia,A.T. earned his law degree from the University of Michigan and returned to Georgia in 1911 to practice,one of the few African-Americans lawyers in the state
through the 1940s and 1950s.He played a critical role in achieving equal
pay for African-American schoolteachers in Atlanta in 1943,filing a suit in federal court.In 1952 he represented Horace Ward in the first legal challenge to seek admission by an African-American student to the all-white University of Georgia Law School.
A.T. became known as a southern civil rights leader,in some cases serving as a local lawyer for the NAACP in cases in which it had national
leadership.From 1946 he was active in leading efforts to get African-Americans registered to vote in the the city of Atlanta and contributed to numerous political and civil organizations. A major power broker in the city, he worked effectively with businessmen and political leaders.
Austin Thomas Ward was born in Fort Valley,Georgia.His parents,Jennie Tomlin and Jeff Walden,were children when freed from slavery after the
American Civil War.In 1907 A.T. graduated from Atlanta University,a historically African-American college.Because of segregation,A.T. used a Georgia "out of state scholarship" and went to Michigan.He earned his
law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1911.(This practice of the state's offering scholarships because it refused to admit
African-American residents to its segregated law schools was ruled unconstititutional in 1938 in the Gaines case.)
For a short time A.T. practiced law in Macon,Georgia before he joined the US Army in 1917 with the United States entry into the Great War.A.T. was commissioned as a captain and served as an assistant judge advocate.He received an honorable discharge in 1919,at which time he settled in Atlanta and began his own law practice.
In May 1918 he married Mary Ellen Denner,a public school teacher from
Baltimore.They had two daughters,Jenelsie & Austella.
As an attorney he often represented African-American professionals who had been racially persecuted because of their middle-class status.
In 1927,a reputable African-American dentist in Atlanta was beaten after riding a streetcar and refusing to get off so the driver could have a
drinking party.He was charged with disorderly conduct,and A.T. successfully gained the dropping of these charges.
In another case,A.T. along with A.W. Ricks,represented Dr.& Mrs.C.A. Spence, who were beaten by a streetcar conductor after a dispute over a transfer.After months at trial,the Spences were acquitted of all criminal charges.Unsatisfied with the injustice the Spences suffered,in a
revolutionary turn of events,A.T. and A.W. filed action for damages against the streercar company.They won damages for the Spences in the amount of $1,500.
A.T. was also successful in a legal suit,lasting six years,which gained equal pay for African-American school teachers in Atlanta in 1943.In the early 1900s,the Board of Education had raised salaries of white teachers by cutting those of African-American teachers.The NAACP entered the continuing struggle and A.T. filed suit in federal district court on behalf of an African American teacher.This case signaled the entry of the federal government into school civil rights cases.
As one of the few African-American lawyers in Georgia,A.T. frequently worked with the national legal team of the NAACP,led by Thurgood Marshall,when the organization became involved in in a civil rights case.In 1948,while in commucation with the NAACP A.T. did not get directly involved in the case of the lynching of Robert Mallard in Lyons,Georgia,as his widow had already hired an attorney.Rather than
pursuing what had been described as a white mob that stop Mallard car and shot Mr.Mallard,the local sheriff arrested Mrs.Mallard on suspicion of murder.At the national level,the NAACP added the local law officials'
inadequate investigation to its argument for federal anti-lynching legislation.Having grown up in rural Georgia he was described as having a "pragmatic civil rights" vision that was less confrontational than that of the national office of the NAACP.He approached the Mallard case strategically for the way it might play into NAACP long-term goals if the
local and state governments continued their blunders.
Additionally,as part of an effort to end segregated higher education,A.T.
represented Horace Ward in 1952 in the first lawsuit in the state in federal court for an African-American seeking admission to the all-white
law school at the University of Georgia.While his suit did not succeed,
A.T. attended and graduated from Northwestern University school of law in Chicago.Change was coming; A.T. later served as counsel for students in a 1961 suit that successfully gained them admission to the
University of Georgia.He was later appointed as a federal judge.
A.T. also had success in acting as the chief negotiator representing civil rights activists to desegregate lunch counters in Atlanta department and other stores.Students from local African-American colleges started
sit-ins in 1960,first at train and bus stations,which dealt with interstate
travel should have been covered by the United States constitution.They
moved on to Rich's Department Store in October,as it was a major downtown institution.They also opposed related discriminatory consumers practices in stores,such as preventing African-Americans from trying on clothes,using restrooms,and similar measures.After many activists were arrested,including Dr.Martin Luther King,Jr.,
students led economic boycotts of the department stores.By September 1961,many store owners desegregated their lunch counters. In 1962,a federal court ordered desegregation of the city's public pools and parks.
The federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 overturned all state laws supporting racial segregation,but changes in practices took longer to take hold.
In 1948 A.T. founded and president of the Gate City Bar Association for
African-American lawyers in Atlanta.
In 1963 A.T. retired as a full-time attorney,he continued to take charity
cases for free.He remained actively involved as a political leader in civil rights in the city.
A.T. started as a Republican and served as chair of the Republican Party
executive committee from Georgia's 5th congressional district.As the Republican Party had declined drastically in the South following the turn of the century disenfranchisement of most African-American by state legislatures,A.T. decided to participate where there was competition.
In 1940 he became a persistent and committed member of the Democratic Party.For a period,the Georgia Democrats used the white primary to exclude African-Americans from voting.When that was struck by a United States Supreme Court decision in Smith v.Allright (1944),African-American activists worked to register voters.
A.T. devoted much of his political career pursuing this objective in Atlanta after African-Americans were effectively enfranchised again in 1946.He became a founder and co-chair of the Atlanta Voters League and leader of the All-Citizens Registration Committee.Block-by-block efforts helped increased the number of African-American registered voters from 1,800 in 1910 to 25,000 by 1939,individual efforts routinely
encountered outright discriminatory practices by white registrars.By gaining representation in the city,African-American began to get results:the city invested more money in frastructure improvements in their neighborhoods and began to hire more African-American policemen.
In a sign of changing times,in 1962 A.T. was elected to the State Democratic Committee of Georgia.In 1963,he was appointed as a Georgia delegate to the Democratic National Convention.A.T., along with Leroy Johnson were the first African-Americans to participate in a Georgia Democratic Convention delegation that year he was appointed by President John F.Kennedy as a member of the American Battle Monuments Commission.
In 1964 A.T. was appointed as the first African-American judge in the state after Reconstruction; Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen appointed him as an alternate judge of the municipal courts of Atlanta.In the period after
passage of civil rights legislation,white conservatives left the Democratic Party and moved into the Republican Party in Georgia and other former Confederate states.
Throughout his life A.T. was actively involved in the community and recognized for his steadfast efforts in gaining equal rights for African-Americans.He was involved in a number of different organizations in which he held leadership positions including: founder and president of the Gate City Bar Association,chairman of the Executive Board of the YMCA and the Atlanta Urban League,president of the Alumni Association
of Atlanta University,national vice-president of the NAACP,member of its National Legal Committee,chairman of the trustee board of Wheat Street Baptist Church,teacher of the Bryant Bible class,and founder and co-chairman of the Atlanta Negro Voters League.
A.T. died in Atlanta.He had lived long enough to witness passage of the
Civil Rights Act,of which was passed by Congress later in 1965 and signed by President Lyndon B.Johnson.The Atlanta mayor praised him saying,"Much of Atlanta's outstanding pioneer progress and better race relations was due to the effective leadership of 'Colonel' Walden.His leadership laid the groundwork for much that is not an accepted fact.
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