Jasper “Jack” Alston Atkins

Jasper (Jack) Alston Atkins, a native of Winston-Salem, NC received his B.A (magna cum laude) from Fisk University in 1919. He received his LL.B (cum laude) and J.D. in 1922 from Yale Law School where he served as editor of the Yale Law Journal. He practiced with the firm of Saddler, Atkins & Wesley in Muskogee and Tulsa, OK until he and Carter Wesley moved to Houston in 1927. In 1935, J.A. Atkins argued the case of Grovey v. Townsend, an early civil rights case involving the Texas primaries, before the U.S. Supreme Court and later cases against the North Carolina School system. He died June 28, 1982.