He would continue to work as a lawyer for the rest of his life, still listing his profession as "attorney" on the 1930 census report.
(A magistrate or "squire" could issue warrants and hear minor criminal cases, perform marriages, and appoint guardians and administrators to help to settle estates.
He was returned to the court on March 12, 1897 (apparently to finish an unexpired term)[3] by a two-vote margin over a white Gold Democrat (Boyd was identified in the headline as a free silver man), and was again re-elected in August 1900 for his final six-year term, long after most African Americans in the South had ceased to win election to county or municipal positions.
In 1884, Boyd was nominated for the Tennessee Senate seat which represented Tipton and Fayette counties).
His opponent was a Confederate Army veteran, Houston Letcher Blackwell, former law partner of Congressman Charles Bryson Simonton.
Tactics such as Boyd complained of were on the rise in the black belt counties of West Tennessee.
By then a widower, he died of heart failure March 10, 1932, and was buried in the segregated Magnolia Cemetery in Mason.