Styles Linton Hutchins was born in 1853 a few miles northeast of Atlanta. His father was of some means and paid for him to attend Atlanta University (a forerunner of Clark Atlanta University). After graduation, he taught school for a while before pursuing the study of law at the University of South Carolina. He graduated in 1876, was admitted to the South Carolina bar, and soon rose to become a state-court judge. When the South Carolina legislature abolished his judgeship, he recognized that sentiment there was irrevocably turning even more aggressively negative toward Black people. He returned to Atlanta to start a law practice. Undeterred by Georgia legislation impeding Black lawyers from practicing in the state, he fought for months to finally become the first Black attorney admitted to the Georgia bar. During the next few years, he grew weary of judges' and lawyers' personal attacks against him.
He looked north to Chattanooga, which was a more welcoming and accommodating city for African-American professionals. Blacks in Chattanooga held elected positions and significant government jobs. For these reasons, he moved here in 1881. Making an immediate impact, he quickly became a prominent and respected lawyer and was even recruited to run as a Republican candidate for the Tennessee General Assembly in 1886. He served one term before refocusing on his law practice and his goal of becoming an ordained minister. He would be one of the last African-Americans in the General Assembly until the civil rights movement culminated in the progress of the 1960s.
Hutchins was the most successful Black attorney in Chattanooga when he welcomed Noah Parden into his already-established law practice. Together, they were two of only a few Chattanooga attorneys who had studied at a law school.
Well before the Ed Johnson case, Hutchins used his legal skills to directly fight the deprivation of Black citizens' civil rights. He brought legal challenges against segregation of transportation services and summer athletic programs for children, and he represented the widow of a lynching victim against the Hamilton County sheriff. He also developed a reputation in the area as a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher who aggressively called out racist and segregationist government leaders.
He published The Independent Age, a newspaper for Chattanooga's African-American community.
Noah W. Parden was born in approximately 1865 in Floyd County, Georgia, about 60 miles south of Chattanooga. His father was likely the slaveholder of his mother, who was later emancipated and died when he was only six years old. With no family to care for him, a nearby orphanage took him in and educated him.
In 1884, Parden moved to Chattanooga at the age of nineteen. He matriculated at Howard School, the only public high school in Hamilton County and the only organized educational option for African-Americans at the time. He worked as a barber to support himself, graduated after five years of study, and enrolled at Howard University in the District of Columbia. Withdrawing after a year, he matriculated at Central Tennessee College in Nashville (the forerunner of Walden University and Meharry Medical College) to study law. In 1893, as the top graduate of the institution, he returned to Chattanooga to practice law.
Parden was a devoted Christian, faithfully attending Sunday services. He prayed before each meal, refused to drink alcohol or use tobacco, and never ate pork.
Despite his legal skills and many successes in the courtroom, the favor that white judges and jurors tended to show white lawyers allowed him only so much room to prosper; he never represented a white person during his practice in Chattanooga, and even Black litigants commonly hired white lawyers because of this prejudice.
Nevertheless, Parden was an innovator. Because so many Black clients did not have money to pay him, he undertook representation on a contingency-fee basis. Some of his most notable victories came at the expense of unscrupulous insurance companies who sold policies to Black families and businesses with the intention of systematically denying their claims. Parden's contingency-fee arrangements empowered victims to unexpectedly challenge the insurance companies' practices. He won over white jurors by suggesting that, if they didn't protect Black policyholders, the culprits would abuse whites next.
Much of the money he earned on civil cases allowed Parden to take on more pro bono criminal work than any lawyer in Chattanooga. He advocated just as zealously for his non-paying clients, frequently taking their cases all the way to the Tennessee Supreme Court.
Prior to Ed Johnson's trial, Parden denied overtures to join the defense team. But he had assisted Johnson's trial attorneys by tracking down witnesses and doing other leg work. Johnson's father appeared at Parden's office after his son had been sentenced to death, beseeching Parden to help. His partner, Styles Hutchins, overheard the conversation from the next room and, after the desperate father left, convinced Parden to take the case.
Parden and Hutchins must have known the personal and professional risks they were taking by signing on to represent Johnson. During their work on the case, they survived arsonists attempting to burn down their office and gunfire into Parden's home. Yet they pressed on for their client.
While their work on behalf of Ed Johnson was lauded within Black communities throughout the United States, it rendered them outcasts in Chattanooga. Hiring lawyers - even accomplished ones - whom white lawyers, judges, and other leaders detested was not likely to help a client's cause. Parden and Hutchins saw their practice wither quite abruptly. They left Chattanooga, never to return.
Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins, two African-American men in the Jim Crow Era, beat the incredible odds of their time to achieve professional success and prominence. In those circumstances, they must have held their accomplishments even more dearly than we can imagine today. Parden and Hutchins must have known they were risking everything to represent Ed Johnson. But it was the right thing to do; the rule of law required it. And within months, both lawyers had lost nearly everything - their homes, their careers, and their place in the community. We owe these heroes gratitude for their example of sacrifice for the cause of justice.
