Called into military service during World War II, Thomas served in the United States Navy as a Lieutenant (from 1943 to 1946).
[1] In April 1961 he was assigned a case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Civil Rights Act of 1957 against the state of Alabama and the Dallas County voter registration office (then one man, but later led by Victor Atkins) which failed to register most black persons who wanted to vote in Selma while registering unqualified whites.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found he should have issued the injunction, although not overturning most of Thomas' factual findings about the intolerable slowdown against the Alabama officials.
Shortly after the school board rejected the request of John LeFlore on behalf of African American parents and the NAACP for integration of Mobile County's schools, the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in the U.S. District Court, contending that such racial segregation of children of service members and federal workers violated the 14th Amendment (Brookley Air Force Base on Mobile's southern border was one of the largest federal installations in the country).
Martin Luther King Jr., but Judge Thomas held a hearing on April 24, 1963, and required the school board to submit a desegregation plan.
Judge Thomas thus denied the parents' request for immediate relief, but after another hearing on November 14 again ordered a desegregation plan, but for the 1964-1965 school year.
Judge Thomas approved the plan, but after the white Mobile Citizens Council held a rally at which former Birmingham mayor Arthur Hanes and Montgomery's Leonard Wilson preached resistance, only two black students were scheduled to attend formerly all-white Murphy High School.
City commissioners Joseph N. Langan (a Democrat) and George E. McNally (a Republican) lectured 54 detained students about breaking the law.
[5] On June 18, 1964, the Fifth Circuit ordered the Mobile school board to proceed more swiftly, citing Armstrong v. Birmingham, so on July 31, Judge Thomas accepted the school board's new "freedom of choice" plan, which would continue until 1968, despite several appeals by the parent plaintiffs, as well as modifications by Judge Thomas.
By June 1967, the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the Birdie Mae Davis case, so Judge Thomas held further hearings and in August modified the freedom of choice plan.
However, on June 3, 1969, the Fifth Circuit again reversed Judge Thomas and directed him to consult with the U.S. Department of Education, as well as continued an injunction against renovating Howard Elementary and Toulminville High schools.
[8] When the HEW plan called for busing between the inner city and suburbs, the Mobile Register, long aligned against desegregation, covered many objectors, including U.S. Representative Jack Edwards and Sen. James Allen.
Nonetheless, the Fifth Circuit affirmed Judge Thomas's August 1 order on December 1, 1969,[9] only to be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 14, 1970.
On March 4, 1971, the Alabama legislature defied the federal courts by passing a Freedom of Choice act, and soon the Mobile School Board announced it would not follow Judge Thomas' order.