
Oscar Adams
Oscar Adams was the first African-American Alabama Supreme Court Justice and the first African American elected to statewide office in Alabama. In 1940, he graduated from A. H. Parker High School, originally known as Negro High School in Birmingham. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Talladega College in 1944, and a law degree at Howard University in 1947. He was admitted to the Alabama Bar that year and began specializing in civil rights cases, often on behalf of Fred Shuttlesworth’s Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights based in Birmingham. Adams was a member of the Central Committee that met at the A. G. Gaston Motel to develop social justice strategies. Appointed to the Alabama Supreme Court in 1980, he also taught classes in appellate and trial advocacy at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law.