Legal News

Law Blog Obituary: Judge Harold Barefoot Sanders

By Dan Slater

Harold Barefoot Sanders Jr., the U.S. District Judge who oversaw the desegregation of Dallas schools, died yesterday at the age of 83. Judge Sanders, according to the Dallas Morning News, also directed the overhaul of state schools for mentally disabled people and served as a legislative counsel to President Lyndon Johnson.

“He was truly larger than life,” U.S. District Judge Jane Boyle said Sunday. “From the core, he symbolized civil rights. He knew that fairness took backbone, and that’s why he was able to make history.”

Sanders (University of Texas, UT Law) worked at the firm that would become Clark, West, Keller, Sanders and Butler from 1950 through 1961 while also serving in the Texas legislature. Then JFK appointed him the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas in 1961. From 1965 to 1967 he served Assistant Deputy Attorney General and Assistant AG. In 1967, President Johnson appointed him Legislative Counsel to the President to manage the White House legislative program. In 1969, he returned to Clark West where he stayed until President Carter elevated him to the federal bench in 1979.

Sanders’ oldest daughter, Janet Lea Sanders, is now a Massachusetts Superior Court judge.

Update: Per the reader’s question, Sanders’s middle name, Barefoot, had been his grandmother’s maiden name.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 22, 2008 (boomark / email).