On Mobile Street, at various businesses, 15 African-American men regularly met and donated their own money to retain a local white attorney to represent them in the U.S. District Court in Hattiesburg in Rev. I.C. Peay et al. vs. Luther Cox, the first voting rights case filed in Mississippi. Filed on April 11, 1950, the lawsuit challenged Forrest County Circuit Clerk Luther Cox for refusing to register them as voters. The U.S. District Court dismissed the petitioners' case on October 13, 1950, but they appealed to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which on June 21, 1951, reversed the dismissal and ruled that the petitioners could only be required to read or interpret a section of the Mississippi Constitution, not both. The 15 men were Rev. Isaac C. Peay, Benjamin F. Bourn, Rufus Howze, Ratio Jones, Charles W. Smith, Rev. Johnnie H. Mayes, Rev. Charlemagne P. Payne, Theodore J. Fykes, Joe Knox, Sr., Milton Barnes, Sr., Alfonso Clark, Barry L. Neal, and E. Hammond Smith. The local attorney who represented them was former Chancery Court Judge T. Price Dale, and the appeal bond sureties were Frank Williams, Paul J. Weston, McKinley W. Jones, and L.A. Nash.