Joseph Woodrow Hatchett poses with family members in 1975. Credit: Mark Foley via State Library and Archives of Florida
My all-time favorite judge has died. He was only 88 years old. I had hoped he would live forever.
Judge Joseph Woodrow Hatchett, a Clearwater native, was our first Black Supreme Court Justice, appointed to the court in 1975 by then Gov. Reubin Askew. He died Friday.
He was a soft spoken, low key sort of man who graduated from Florida A & M, one of our best known historically Black universities, and went on to get his law degree from Howard University.
He was one of several prominent lawyers who fought for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the 1960s and served as an assistant United States attorney for the Middle District of Florida for several years.