Blacksonville 100 | People who moved Jacksonville and Florida’s legal community forward through their service and legal victories.
Published on February 23, 2026 at 6:08 pm
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BLACKSONVILLE | People who moved Jacksonville and Florida’s legal community forward through their service and legal victories.
Daniel Webster Perkins
Attorney | Daniel Webster Perkins practiced law in Jacksonville for more than 50 years. Born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in January 1879, he earned degrees from North Carolina State Normal College in 1897, Temple University in 1899 and Shaw University Law School in 1902. Perkins practiced in Knoxville, Tennessee, before he was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1914. He practiced in Tampa prior to settling in Jacksonville in 1919. In Jacksonville, he helped create the local Colored Lawyers Association, which was renamed the D.W. Perkins Bar Association in his honor in 1968.
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(Photo courtesy: University of North Florida, Eartha M.M. White Collection)
Joseph E. Lee
Attorney, elected official, Customs official, clergy | According to Florida’s First Black Lawyers (1869-1979), Joseph E. Lee was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 15, 1849. He graduated from the Institute for Colored Youth and earned his law degree from Howard in 1873. He moved to Jacksonville in 1873 and became the first Black lawyer to practice here. He represented Duval County in the Florida House of Representatives between 1875 and 1881. He also served as a municipal judge in 1888; Duval County clerk of the circuit court; and U.S. collector for the Port of Jacksonville between 1890 and 1894. Lee also served as a minister within the African Methodist Episcopal church. He died in March 1920 at age 70.
(Photo courtesy: University of North Florida, Eartha M.M. White Collection)
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Brian Davis
Judge | Jacksonville native Brian Davis grew up in the College Gardens neighborhood and graduated from Stanton High School prior to earning an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a law degree from the University of Florida. Davis was the first in his family to attend college. (According to The Florida-Times Union, Davis’ mother, Alveria, graduated from the University of North Florida in 1974, the same year Davis earned his degree from Princeton.) Davis was appointed as a circuit court judge in the Fourth Judicial Circuit in 1994. He was confirmed as a federal judge in 2013 and became a senior judge in 2023.
(Photo courtesy: Jacksonville Federal Court Bar Association)
Henry Lee Adams Jr.
Judge | Eastside native Henry Lee Adams Jr. graduated from Matthew W. Gilbert High School prior to earning a degree from Florida A&M in 1966 and a law degree from Howard in 1969. Adams served as a public defender and in private practice before becoming a judge. In 1979, he was the first Black judge to be appointed in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit. He was confirmed as a federal judge in November 1993 and became a senior judge in 2010. Adams is a former president of the D.W. Perkins Bar Association.
(Photo courtesy: Jacksonville Federal Court Bar Association)
Joseph Hatchett
Judge | The late Joseph Hatchett was the first Black person appointed to the Florida Supreme Court since Reconstruction, in 1975. In 1976 he retained his seat in an election, becoming the first Black person elected to statewide office from the South. Born in Clearwater, he earned his undergraduate degree from Florida A&M in 1954. Hatchett served in the U.S. Army prior to earning his law degree from Howard in 1959. He started his legal career in Daytona Beach and moved to Jacksonville in 1966 to serve as an assistant U.S. attorney. In 1971, he was appointed a federal magistrate judge in the Middle District of Florida. Hatchett died in April 2021 at age 88.
(Photo via Florida Memory)
Pauline M. Drake
Judge | Alabama native Pauline M. Drake graduated from Tuskegee University and earned her law degree from the University of Florida prior to moving to Jacksonville. On Aug. 13, 1998, she became the first Black woman appointed to serve as a county judge in Duval County. She served for 21 years before her retirement from the bench.
(Photo courtesy :The Florida Bar)
Rhonda Peoples-Waters
Judge | Rhonda Peoples-Waters became the first Black woman to be elected a Duval County judge, in 2021. Peoples-Waters earned her undergraduate degree from Fisk University and her law degree from the University of Florida. Throughout her decades-long legal career, Peoples-Waters has served as a prosecutor, within the Public Defender’s Office as well as private practice. She is a former president of the D.W. Perkins Bar Association; president of the Jacksonville Area Legal Aid Board of Directors; served on the Florida Bar Grievance Committee and volunteered in organizations that support the law, civil rights and education.
(Submitted, Rhonda Peoples-Waters)
Leander Shaw
Attorney, judge | The late Leander Shaw became the first Black person to serve as chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court in 1990. The Salem, Virginia, native earned his undergraduate degree from West Virginia State and his law degree from Howard prior to moving to Florida. Shaw served in the Korean War as an artillery officer after his time at West Virginia State and before his law studies. He taught law at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee the 1950s before moving to Jacksonville to establish private practice in 1960. Shaw served as a public defender, prosecutor and appellate judge prior to his appointment to the Florida Supreme Court in 1983. Shaw retired from the Florida Supreme Court in 2003 and died in December 2015 at age 85.
(Photo: Florida Memory)
Bernice Gaines Dorn
Attorney | Bernice Gaines Dorn became the first Black woman admitted to the Florida Bar in 1958. A Tallahassee native, she moved to Jacksonville as a child and graduated from Stanton High School in 1951. She earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Florida A&M University. She briefly practiced in Jacksonville after joining the bar before moving to Pennsylvania and Illinois. In a 2018 conversation with her daughter, Angela, a Harvard-educated attorney, Dorn said: “Psychologically, I did not have any thoughts about being the first Black woman to practice law in Florida because I did not even realize that I was in the process of making history. I never thought one way or another about whether there were Black women practicing law in Florida. I just assumed that there were.”
(Photo contributed by Dorn family)
This entry is part of Jacksonville Today‘s BLACKSONVILLE 100, a list of influential people with ties to Jacksonville, compiled on the centennial of Negro History Week. See the whole list.
