25 Facts About Clifford Durr

Clifford Judkins Durr was an Alabama lawyer who played an important role in defending activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras.

Clifford Durr was the lawyer who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance, due to the infamous segregation of passengers on buses in Montgomery.

Clifford Durr returned to the United States to study law, then joined a prominent law firm in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1924.

Clifford Judkins Durr was born on March 2,1899, in Montgomery, Alabama, to John Wesley Durr and Lucy Judkins Durr.

Clifford Durr's grandfather, John Weseley Durr, was a business agent for cotton growers, while his other grandfather, James Henry Judkins, was a plantation owner prior to the Civil War.

Clifford Durr started his college career at the University of Alabama where his fellow student body elected him President of his class.

Clifford Durr graduated from Oxford with a third-class honours Bachelor of Civil Law degree after electing to sit for the more challenging examination.

Clifford Durr began his career in law at the Martin, Thompson, Foster, and Turner Law firm located in Birmingham, Alabama.

Clifford Durr had risen to a full partner in his law firm by 1927.

Clifford Durr's income was such that he was little affected by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.

When members of the junior staff were laid off for financial reasons, Clifford Durr suggested that the more senior members of the firm, including himself, take a pay cut in order to avoid future firings.

Clifford Durr took the job, becoming a dedicated New Dealer in the process.

Clifford Durr resigned from that agency in 1941 after a series of disagreements with his superiors over their approval of agreements with defense contractors that allowed them to concentrate their monopoly position and derive windfall profits from war preparation efforts.

Clifford Durr campaigned to set aside frequencies for educational programs and to sell them to more diverse applicants, some of whom were attacked for their leftist politics.

Clifford Durr resigned from the FCC in 1948 after dissenting from its adoption of a loyalty oath demanded by the Truman administration.

Clifford Durr opened a law practice in Washington, DC after leaving the FCC.

Clifford Durr was one of the few lawyers willing to represent federal employees who had lost their jobs as a result of the loyalty oath program; he took many of their cases without charging them a fee.

Clifford Durr did not apply any litmus test of his own, choosing to represent both those who had been members of or closely aligned with the Communist Party and those falsely accused of membership.

Clifford Durr subsequently represented Frank Oppenheimer, brother of "father of the atomic bomb" Robert Oppenheimer, and several other scientists investigated for disloyalty by HUAC.

Clifford Durr continued to practice in Montgomery as counsel, along with a local attorney Fred Gray, for black citizens whose rights had been violated.

Clifford Durr was therefore ready in December, 1955, when police arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give her seat to a white man.

Clifford Durr called the jail when authorities refused to tell Nixon what the charges against Parks were and he and his wife accompanied Nixon to the jail when Nixon bailed her out.

Nixon and Clifford Durr then went to the Parks' home to discuss whether she was prepared to fight the charges against her.

Clifford Durr continued to represent activists in the Civil Rights Movement, supported by financial support from friends and philanthropists outside the South.

Clifford Durr lectured in the United States and abroad after his retirement.