Three of his great-great-great-great grandfathers had served in the American Revolutionary War: Captain William Sanford (1734-1806) had carried dispatches to France before settling in Georgia, Major John Mason (1716-1785) had acted as Justice of Sussex County, Virginia during that time, and Private James McLemore (1718-1800) had also served the Revolutionary cause in Granville County, North Carolina.
[6] During World War I, Rives joined the Alabama National Guard, then served in the United States Army (1916 to 1919; commissioned a first lieutenant in 1917).
Based on his own reading and discussions with African American soldiers hospitalized with him, the younger Rives determined to confront issues involved in what many Southerners called "the race question."
[4] In 1919 Rives returned to private practice in Montgomery after his World War I service, and became involved in politics and the Democratic Party during the New Deal.
[4] Rives was nominated by President Harry S. Truman on April 12, 1951, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit vacated by Judge Leon Clarence McCord.
Rives was reassigned by operation of law to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on October 1, 1981, pursuant to 94 Stat.
By the time of the United States Supreme Court rulings concerning desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education, the other "Fifth Circuit Four" judges had all been appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower: Elbert P. Tuttle of Atlanta, Georgia, John Minor Wisdom of New Orleans, Louisiana, and John Robert Brown of Houston, Texas.
Granade struck down Alabama's prohibition on same-sex marriage, a decision eventually affirmed by the United States Supreme Court.