James E. Ferguson II Dies At 82

[ad_1] by Mary Spiller August 30, 2025

Ferguson spent a long time preventing for racial justice by difficult college segregation, reversing wrongful convictions, and sparing prisoners from execution.

James E. Ferguson II, a civil rights lawyer who spent a long time preventing for racial justice by difficult college segregation, reversing wrongful convictions, and sparing prisoners from execution, died July 21 in Charlotte, N.C. He was 82. His son, James Ferguson III, mentioned the trigger was issues of Covid-19 and pneumonia.

Lengthy earlier than incomes his regulation diploma, Ferguson was lively within the civil rights motion, organizing classmates within the Jim Crow South to combine libraries, lunch counters, and different public areas. After graduating from Columbia Regulation Faculty in 1967—the place he recalled being one among fewer than 15 Black college students in a category of about 300—he joined Julius Chambers and Adam Stein to type Charlotte’s first racially built-in regulation agency, in accordance with The New York Instances.

“We weren’t training regulation within the summary,” Ferguson mentioned in Robert Samuel Smith’s e book Race, Labor & Civil Rights (2008). “We have been the authorized arm of the civil rights motion in North Carolina.”

In 1971, Ferguson helped persuade the U.S. Supreme Courtroom to uphold busing as a software for integrating public faculties in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Training. The unanimous ruling turned a nationwide mannequin for varsity desegregation efforts. Through the case, his regulation workplace was torched in an arson assault—no accidents or arrests adopted—however Ferguson by no means forgot the three a.m. telephone name alerting him to the blaze.

Ferguson additionally labored on landmark instances overturning wrongful convictions. He helped safe pardons for the Wilmington 10, who spent almost a decade in jail, and represented the Charlotte Three, whose lengthy sentences have been later commuted.

Partnering with the Innocence Undertaking, he launched DNA proof and new testimony that led to the 2004 exoneration of Darryl Hunt, who had spent 19 years imprisoned for a homicide he didn't commit.

“For those who do justice to Darryl Hunt, you will have completed justice to the state, to the prosecution, to your nation and yourselves,” Ferguson advised an all-white jury in the course of the case.

Starting in 2011, Ferguson additionally fought beneath North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act to cut back dying sentences for 4 inmates, succeeding in having their sentences modified to life imprisonment. “He endured abuses and threats however made everybody really feel seen and heard — that's the civil rights motion,” mentioned lawyer Sonya Pfeiffer, his regulation companion. “What he did for faculties throughout the nation was extraordinary.”

Past the courtroom, Ferguson skilled Black legal professionals in apartheid-era South Africa, lectured at Harvard Regulation Faculty, served as normal counsel for the ACLU, and led the North Carolina Academy of Trial Legal professionals.

“I simply need to really feel that I’ve completed all I can do to result in equality — for everyone,” Ferguson advised The Charlotte Submit in 2016. “That’s what life is about — attempting to create the society we expect we would like.”