His elder brother Frederic W. Boatwright eventually became president of the Richmond College where he served 51 years and for whom the main library is named.
[4][5][citation needed] His son John Jr. was a lawyer and secretary of the Gray Commission and later for the Virginia legislature helping it adopt uniform state laws.
Boatwright helped write and implement many of the Massive Resistance laws which were passed in a special section of the Virginia General Assembly called by Governor Thomas B. Stanley in August 1956.
(Mays defended segregation in several legal cases, including the anti-NAACP legislation later sponsored by John Boatwright Sr., as well as sat on the University of Richmond board of directors).
The principal draftsman, Fenwick, represented Arlington (one of the school districts being sued, and which by June had issued a plan proposing to accept the judicial desegregation order).
[6] In March 1957 the Boatwright Committee formally opined that various segregationist organizations did not commit the expanded legal offenses of champerty, maintenance, barratry, running and capping, nor the unauthorized practice of law.
The commission did not hold any public hearings at this time, but participated in the NAACP litigation, which included testimony by attorney witnesses as well as parents of client plaintiffs.
Thomson and delegates Francis B. Gouldman of Fredericksburg and Frank P. Moncure of Stafford were added, together with Senator Joseph C. Hutcheson of Lawrenceville(former president of the Commonwealth's Attorney Association).
The report complained that the Virginia State Bar was spending more than $5000 on a Jamestown commemoration and $6250 on a new continuing legal education program, but not "ridding it of those unethical influences which discredit all lawyers, in bringing about the punishment of those engaged in the unauthorized practice of law".
Both Tucker of Emporia and "Bernard M. Savage of Baltimore" had been mentioned in the committee's 1957 report, but Tucker only in the "Offense of Unprofessional Conduct" section, together with future 4th Circuit Court of Appeals judge Spottswood W. Robinson III and Hill (for both of whom the Richmond federal courthouse is now named), and seven other lawyers from Norfolk, Alexandria, Richmond and Newport News.
Hill and Robinson were also initially accused of barratry, together with NAACP entities and men from Baltimore, Richmond and Portsmouth who like Walker and Banks, may not have been attorneys.