[1] Emory enlisted in the United States Army at the age of 18 and served in the Quartermaster Corps in both the European and Pacific Theaters of World War II.

[3] He completed his residency in 1954, the same year St. Paul's became the first major hospital in Dallas to grant staff privileges to African American doctors.

He subsequently served as staff psychiatrist at the Terrell State Hospital and then as chief of psychiatric services at the Federal Correctional Institution in Seagoville, Texas.

After defending himself in court and arguing for the necessity of his actions to help addicts fight more severe drugs, he was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison.

[9] Emory was an active member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)'s Dallas branch, of which he became the executive director in 1993.

[1][10] In 1970, he served as the first African American president of the United Service Organizations's (USO) Dallas Council,[1][11] and was also a delegate to the White House Conference on Children and Youth in Washington, D.C., that same year.

[1][12] Emory was an advocate for the homeless, treatment for adult drug addicts, and voting rights for ex-convicts who served their prison sentences.

Diverging from the common attitude among African Americans, who tend to regard negatively the heritage of the slave-owning Confederacy, he joined the Sons of Confederate Veterans after discovering that he was likely descended from Capt.

[1] In 1998, Emory made national news when he expressed a desire to read a poem and lay a wreath on behalf of the Sons of Confederate Veterans at the newly dedicated African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. His request was denied, but he nevertheless laid a wreath discreetly during a midnight visit.

[15] Emory died January 28, 2003, one day shy of his 78th birthday, of complications from cancer at Methodist Medical Center in Dallas.

His funeral Mass was held at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Duncanville, Texas, and he was buried in southern Dallas County at Carver Cemetery.

"Dr. Emerson Emory's office is surely among the few in which a Confederate flag shares wall space with a photo of Hillary Rodham Clinton", wrote David Flick for The Dallas Morning News.