Joseph Hatchett, the first Black Florida Supreme Court Justice, has died.
A graduate of Florida A&M University and Howard University School of Law, Hatchett was not allowed to stay in the Miami hotel where the bar exam he was taking was being held. However, not even Jim Crow could hold him back because, within 15 years, he would be a jurist on the Florida Supreme Court.
“His life represents an amazing commitment to fight for justice and equality at a time when the battle for both was stacked against him,” Rosemary Barkett, a former Florida Supreme Court justice and appellate judge, said in January at an event in which the Florida Supreme Court Historical Society honored Hatchett with a lifetime achievement award.
Hatchett’s career path is somewhat of the prototype that many people envision for themselves early on. After passing the bar, he first went into private practice in Daytona Beach, Florida. In 1966, he was appointed assistant United States attorney for the Middle District of Florida, and by 1967 he was the first assistant United States attorney. By 1971, he was a federal magistrate.
In 1976, Governor Reubin Askew appointed him to Florida’s highest court. But, his star would continue to rise, and in 1979, President Jimmy Carter appointed him to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Florida Supreme Court acknowledged Hatchett as the first African-American to serve in a federal circuit that had jurisdiction in the Deep South.
After he retired, he went to work for the NNACP as a lead attorney. He worked to preserve affirmative action-style programs for minorities and women.
His care for others and desire to see them succeed was a part of who he was as a person. The disgrace of not being allowed to check into that Miami hotel so many years before fueled his passion for inspiring those who come after him.
“His whole thing was ‘Let’s look at where the vaults of opportunity are and let’s do our job of intentionally opening those vaults of opportunity and taking the door off the hinges,’” said attorney H.T. Smith.
That is exactly what Hatchett did, for Smith and others. Smith ended up being Miami’s first African-American assistant public defender and first African-American assistant county attorney. He also owned the first Black law firm in downtown Miami.
Justice Joseph Hatchett was 88.
