While working as solicitor Seawell gained state-wide prominence for his aggressive efforts to prosecute the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), and was credited for ultimately pushing the organization out of Robeson County.
Governor Luther H. Hodges later made him a judge before appointing him Attorney General of North Carolina in 1958 to fill a vacancy.
As attorney general, Seawell felt that the decision of the United States Supreme Court, which he begrudgingly accepted, to desegregate schools in Brown v. Board of Education had to be respected and supported token integration efforts.
The following year Moore made him chair of a Committee on Law and Order, tasked with investigating the activities of the KKK.
[3] He then spent the next three years working for the North Carolina Commissioner of Paroles[2] before moving to Lumberton in January 1938 and joining a law firm.
[3] While serving as solicitor, Seawell worked closely with Robeson County Sheriff Malcolm McLeod to shut down illegal distilleries and arrest bootleggers.
[13] In 1950, he told Imperial Wizard Thomas L. Hamilton of the Association of Carolina Klans to leave his solicitorial district or face legal action.
[14] In February 1952, Seawell, using a membership roster seized from a KKK recruiter,[15] arrested 16 klansmen for violating an 1868 state statute prohibiting participation in secret political societies.
"[18] In response to reports that klansmen were abducting people from their homes and taking them to South Carolina to flog them, Seawell issued a threat to the group, stating that anyone caught doing so would be charged with first-degree burglary, a crime then punishable by death.
[17] In March 1952, a cross was burned on the front lawn of Seawell's home, although police attributed the incident to pranksters and doubted that klansmen were responsible.
[13] On June 4, 1955, Governor Luther H. Hodges appointed Seawell to be the judge of North Carolina's new 16th Judicial District representing Robeson and Scotland counties.
[24] Shortly after assuming office, Seawell declared his opposition to the strategy of "massive resistance", whereby governments would close public schools rather than follow court orders to racially desegregate them.
He felt that the decision of the United States Supreme Court to integrate schools in Brown v. Board of Education had to be respected.
[25][26] While personally disappointed with the outcome of the case, he felt it would be easier to defend North Carolina's actions in court if he took a moderate approach towards segregation,[27] and he supported token integration efforts.
[33] Seawell attempted to use the hearing to present himself as more racially conservative, specifically by intensely questioning civil rights activist Robert F. Williams on the witness stand.
[34] Seawell subsequently denounced some civil rights groups, chiefly those who had intervened in the "Kissing Case", as a greater threat to peace in North Carolina than the KKK.
[37] He ran as a fiscal conservative,[28] emphasizing industrialization as a means of improving North Carolinians' wages and supporting public schools.
Senators recommended that President John F. Kennedy nominate Seawell to the second federal judgeship of North Carolina's U.S. Middle District.
[47] In January 1966 Moore appointed Seawell chairman of a Committee on Law and Order, tasked with investigating the activities of the KKK.