Push on to name building for Helena judge of 1900s

WASHINGTON -- More than 60 years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal judge in Arkansas took on a white supremacy group and ruled that citizens couldn't be blocked from employment based on their race.

Jacob Trieber was the first Jewish man ever appointed as a federal judge, serving the Eastern District of Arkansas from 1900 until his death in 1927. His 1903 ruling that the Constitution protected a right to work was a new way of interpreting the 13th Amendment, historians and legal scholars said.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down his opinion at the time, but decades later repudiated that ruling, endorsing Trieber's view that all citizens have a right to enter into contracts, such as work, under the 13th Amendment, which was ratified in 1865 to protect the rights of newly freed slaves.

Trieber's legacy isn't widely known outside legal circles, and historians, legal experts and politicians say that needs to change.

Last week, Arkansas' congressional delegation sponsored legislation to honor the judge by naming the federal complex at 617 Walnut St. in Helena-West Helena as the Jacob Trieber Federal Building, United States Post Office, and United States Court House.

"As a whole ... this guy is a movie waiting to happen," said U.S. Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark., whose district includes the Delta city. "He was certainly somebody who was light years ahead of his time."

Born in Prussia (part of the former German Empire) in 1853, Trieber moved with his parents to St. Louis in 1866 before relocating to Helena in 1868, according to the Arkansas History Commission. Trieber studied law and entered the Arkansas Bar in 1876. He practiced law in Helena and was active in Republican politics. He also served on the Helena City Council and as the Phillips County treasurer. Trieber played an influential role in saving the Old State House in Little Rock and establishing the Arkansas Tuberculosis Sanatorium.

He was appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern Arkansas District in 1897, and then was appointed by President William McKinley to the federal bench in Little Rock in 1900.

Trieber is best known for two 1903 rulings involving the "whitecappers," a group similar to the Ku Klux Klan. In United States v. Hodges, 15 whitecappers were actively pressuring companies to fire black workers from a sawmill in Poinsett County. United States v. Morris involved whitecappers terrorizing white landowners who employed black workers in Cross County.

In 1906, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Trieber's decision in the Hodges case, stating that the 13th Amendment didn't protect the right to earn a living. For decades the decision was used to keep the federal government from intervening when racial discrimination occurred.

Eventually, in 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its own decision in the Hodges case in a footnote of Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, Co., a case dealing with equal access to housing.

Trieber also issued nationally important rulings on cases involving antitrust, railroad litigation, prohibition and mail fraud. Trieber often sat with the U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis and the Southern District of New York at the request of U.S. Chief Justice Howard Taft, who also was a former president.

"He did certain things regarding the Constitution and civil rights that not only most Arkansans disagreed with, but even many in the Bar in the North [did]. It wasn't until the civil-rights movement in the mid-20th century before the Supreme Court finally comes around to his way of thinking and seeing things," said Brent Aucoin history professor at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. "He was clearly ahead of his time."

Aucoin has a doctorate from the University of Arkansas and wrote A Rift in the Clouds: Race and the Southern Federal Judiciary, 1901-1910. Aucoin said he can't imagine a better person to name the Helena federal building for than Trieber.

"It's most appropriate that it would be named for him. He is a son of Helena for whom all those living there today can be proud," he said.

Former Rutgers University law school dean Rayman Solomon, a Helena native, said Trieber stood out among judges of his time.

"He was certainty a very prominent jurist and took some very courageous stands in his time as a judge," he said. "Nobody else had ever interpreted [the 13th Amendment] that way. It was partly important because it was imaginative and used the law in a different way."

For some time, a group of current and former Helena residents have worked to place a marker recognizing Trieber at the courthouse, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Solomon said he and his brother, David Solomon, wrote the text for the marker.

The sons of longtime Helena attorney David Solomon grew up hearing anecdotes about Trieber, a distant cousin on their father's side.

"Trieber is an important character," David Solomon said. "He's an interesting guy and deserves to be recognized."

Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Miller, who was among the group discussing a marker, said he decided to take the idea to Arkansas' other federal judges.

Offhand, Judge Leon Holmes questioned why the whole federal building wasn't named for Trieber and an idea was born, Miller said.

"Of course the group was very happy with that," he said.

The congressional delegation also was excited when he took the idea to them in April, Miller said, but asked for a show of support from the community before filing legislation.

Miller put the proposal before the Helena-West Helena City Council, which unanimously passed a resolution of support in May.

"It's amazing how many people in Phillips County had never heard of him," Miller said.

Miller, the only other federal judge selected from Helena, said he learned of Trieber when Miller first heard rumblings he might be picked to fill a federal judgeship opening.

"All these years in Helena, practicing law in Helena, that was the first time the name had come up," he said, calling Trieber a "profound individual who I think has just been lost in history."

U.S. Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., said he doesn't expect trouble getting the name approved, especially as people learn more about Trieber's life and work.

"I'm really excited about it. It's a story that sadly is not being told as well as it should be, so we're going to do our best to rectify that and make the people not only of Arkansas aware, but also the people throughout the United States about this really remarkable individual," he said. "Once the story of Judge Trieber becomes known, we shouldn't have any problem at all."

Crawford said he doesn't expect any trouble in the House either.

"There is no opposition to this that I am aware of. I think folks down in Helena and folks in Arkansas in general will be very, very proud of this," Crawford said. "At a time when it wasn't popular to advocate for African-Americans ... and [in] a geography where it wasn't popular, at a time where it was potentially detrimental to his own health and well-being ... he stood up for people."

SundayMonday on 07/12/2015

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