Charlye Ola Farris

Charlye Ola Farris, the only daughter of public school educators James Randolph Farris, Sr. and Roberta Bell Farris, was born in Wichita Falls on June 30, 1929. She graduated as valedictorian of Booker T. Washington High School at age 15 and earned a degree in Political Science from Prairie View A & M College in 1948 at age eighteen. After teaching for a year, she pursued law, receiving her degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C., in 1953, where during her final year her class worked on Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. On Nov. 12, 1953, she became the first Black woman licensed to practice law in Texas. She opened a solo practice in Wichita Falls and became the first Black person, male or female, to actively practice law in Wichita County. Despite discrimination and many obstacles in Wichita County and in the legal profession, she was selected in 1954 to serve as county judge pro-tem, becoming the first Black person to serve as a judge in the South since Reconstruction. Over 56 years of legal practice, she served her community in numerous ways, earned many honors including the American Bar Association’s Margaret Brent Women Lawyers of Achievement award, and served on the Board of Regents of Midwestern State University, a school she had earlier been barred from attending because of her race.

Wichita Falls, Texas · United States