BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — J. Mason Davis, a Birmingham attorney whose legal work helped dismantle segregation in Alabama and whose civic leadership shaped generations of lawyers and advocates, has died. He was 90.
Davis established his own law practice in 1959 after attending Talladega College and the University at Buffalo School of Law, according to The Birmingham Times and United Way of Central Alabama. He became a prominent figure in the civil rights movement by representing students involved in the Huntsville lunch counter sit-ins of 1961 and 1962, cases that helped challenge segregation in public spaces.
In 1963, Davis served on Birmingham’s Community Affairs Committee, one of 23 Black members appointed to help ease racial tensions during a turbulent period in the city. He later broke barriers as the first African American president of the Birmingham Bar Association and as the first minority adjunct professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, where he taught from 1972 to 1997.
Davis also had a long civic and philanthropic record. He served as chair of the Birmingham Regional Chamber of Commerce and as a leader with the United Way of Central Alabama, which later created the J. Mason Davis Leadership Society in his honor.
A 1974 cover story in Time featured Davis and his family in an issue about Black middle-class life in America, and United Way of Central Alabama later highlighted that cover as part of a profile on his life and legacy. The magazine cover showed Davis, his wife June and their children as part of the article “Middle-Class Blacks: Making It in America.”
Davis received numerous honors during his lifetime, including a lifetime achievement award from the NAACP and induction into the Birmingham Business Hall of Fame.