Matthew Perry - Moments of the Movement

The courtroom was the ultimate battleground in the war for equal rights for all of America’s citizens, and among the names of African-American lawyers who fought on this stage is that of Matthew J. Perry Jr. Perry was the first African-American lawyer from South Carolina to ascend to the federal bench, and the federal courthouse in Columbia now bears his name. But before all that, Perry was a young lawyer attempting to try cases in the deep South, often before biased and racist judges. Perry explains how he got around the judge who routinely found his clients guilty—before he even heard the evidence.