M.O. Litz

His birthplace in Tazewell County is on the Virginia-West Virginia border, where his grandfather Peter Gose Litz owned a large plantation.

In December 1922 he was appointed to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals,[2] by Republican governor Ephraim F. Morgan; in 1924 he gained election to a twelve-year term, which he served in full.

After being defeated for re-election in a Democratic wave in 1936,[3][2] he returned to private practice, this time in Charleston.

In 1928 Litz wrote the decision in a case known, coincidentally, as Brown vs. Board of Education, declaring that the City of Charleston could not segregate its public library by placing it under the control of the school board and claiming it was a school library.

[4] Litz married Judith Effler on October 27, 1908; they had five children.