[4] In 1884 he left Rome for Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he supported himself by working as a barber and at other odd jobs while he spent five years attending Howard High School.

[9] In 1892 he married Mattie S. Broyles (March 29, 1870 – July 15, 1934), a native of Dalton, Georgia whom he had met in Nashville, and they settled in Chattanooga where they remained until 1906.

[11] After leaving Chattanooga, Parden and his family moved briefly to Pueblo, Colorado and then settled in East St. Louis, Illinois.

[1] He intermittently engaged in writing, editing and public speaking, and was involved in local politics in East St. Louis and St.

[23] In 1906 Parden was asked to represent Ed Johnson, a black Chattanooga man who had been convicted of the rape of Nevada Taylor, a white woman, and sentenced to death.

[25] On March 17, 1906, Parden presented his petition before Justice John Marshall Harlan, arguing that the Johnson trial had included flagrant violations of the defendant's Constitutional rights.

[26] The following day the Court accepted the case, staying Johnson's sentence and ordering both sides to prepare for oral arguments.

[27] On the night of March 18, however, a mob in Chattanooga broke into the jail, kidnapped Johnson, and lynched him, hanging him from the Walnut Street bridge over the Tennessee River.

This independent group sought to navigate between East St. Louis's white political factions and gain more benefits for black residents; sociologist Elliot Rudwick has argued that "Bundy and his followers were demanding political equality" via access to the same pool of money and city jobs that was available to white voters.

[41] Parden was enlisted to convey to African-American saloon owners and participants in the gambling and prostitution businesses that if Mollman won the election, a crackdown on their establishments which had taken effect early in 1917 would be lifted.

[42] After Mollman's victory Parden, along with hundreds of other politically-involved African Americans, participated in a post-election banquet attended by the mayor and his allies.

[43] On July 2, 1917, East St. Louis was engulfed by a bloody race riot, characterized by violent attacks by white mobs on blacks to whom little protection was provided by law enforcement.

Although Noah Parden encouraged his client and one-time political rival Leroy Bundy to leave the city during the tense days before the riot, he himself remained at his home in East St. Louis, later testifying that on the night of July 1 he had responded to the arrival of a carload of white men cruising past his house in a Model T Ford and shooting from the car, by running to his own front door with a gun.

He had lost his post as Assistant State's Attorney after an initial outbreak of white-on-black violence in May 1917, when the Board of Supervisors abolished the position.

In 1924 Parden and other black Republicans supported the re-election campaign of Illinois governor Len Small, who not only appointed African Americans to public positions but had granted clemency to some of those convicted for their alleged roles in the riots.

[51] His only appearance before the court was in connection with the Ed Johnson case, during which he made an emergency appeal before Justice John Marshall Harlan in chambers.

[53] In his presentation, Parden argued that Johnson's trial had violated his Constitutional rights under the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Legal analyst Mark Curriden and attorney Leroy Phillips note that all of the issues of Constitutional interpretation raised by Parden were later accepted by the Supreme Court.

In terms of the Johnson case, Parden's most important argument was that the right to a fair trial guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment applied to state as well as federal courts.

[54] Parden was among a small number of African-American attorneys to present cases before the Supreme Court during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.