Styles Linton Hutchins, 21 November 1852 - 7 September 1950
Styles L. Hutchins
from composite photograph of
TN House of Representatives,
45th General Assembly, 1887-1888,
TSLA Collection.
A Chattanooga attorney, he was elected to represent Hamilton County in the 45th Tennessee General Assembly, 1887-1888.
Styles Hutchins, Monroe Gooden, and Samuel McElwee were the last African Americans to serve in the General Assembly until Representative A. W Willis, Jr., was elected in Shelby County in 1964.
Styles Linton Hutchins was born in Lawrenceville, Georgia, in 1852. The son of a wealthy artist, he was one of the first black graduates of Atlanta University (1875). A year later he earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina Law School and was admitted to the South Carolina bar. He served as a Republican state judge, resigning with the Democrats' return to power.
Returning to Georgia to open a law practice, Hutchins overcame opposition from the legislature to become the first African American attorney admitted to the Georgia bar.
In 1881 he opened a law practice in Chattanooga, also taking on the editorship of The Independent Age, a popular black newspaper. A valiant spokesman for civil rights, he ran for the legislature in 1886, winning by eight votes!
A tireless legislator, Hutchins served on the Education and New Counties committees and was successful in passing laws to repeal poll taxes in Chattanooga and to prevent criminals convicted in other states from testifying in Tennessee courts. His bill to limit the use of convict labor was not successful.
After his legislative term, Hutchins returned to his law practice, held a patronage position in the revenue department of the U.S. Treasury, and became deeply involved in church work. He was known throughout Tennessee and Georgia as a fiery preacher who often used his sermons to denounce racism in the South.
In 1906 Hutchins was involved in one of the most famous lynching cases in history. Hired to appeal the rape conviction of a black man named Ed Johnson, Hutchins and his law partner, Noah W. Parden, carried the appeal as high as the Supreme Court, who agreed to hear it and issued a stay of execution. As the lawyers celebrated their victory, a mob broke into the Hamilton County jail, dragged Johnson through the city, beat him cruelly, and hanged him from a bridge.
Hutchins and Parden immediately urged federal officials to file suit against the sheriff and members of the mob. In this famous and precedent-setting case, the Supreme Court found Sheriff Shipp and others guilty. After serving only a brief sentence, however, Shipp returned home to a hero's welcome, while Hutchins and Parden were forced to leave town for their own safety. In 1910 Hutchins was practicing law in Peoria, Illinois; the 1920 Census lists him as the owner/operator of a Kewanee, Illinois, barbershop. He died in 1950, nearly 98.