About the Collection
J.L. Turner Sr. (1869-1951) was born in Dallas County where he was raised on a farm. Following high school graduation, Turner left Dallas County to attend Wiley College in the East Texas city of Marshall. He then moved to Chicago where he received his LL.B. degree in 1896 from the Kent College of Law, which later became the IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.
In 1898 Turner returned to Dallas and practiced law downtown at 155 Main Street with Joseph E. Wiley, probably Dallas’s second African-American attorney. Turner himself was only the third or fourth Black attorney ever to practice in Dallas at that time, and he maintained his practice until his death in 1951. In 1952 Dallas’s African-American attorneys recognized Turner’s significance when they formed the J.L. Turner Legal Association as a support group of the African-American bar.
Turner was very much a pioneer. By 1890, there were only 12 Black lawyers in the entire state of Texas, and as late as 1930, there were only 20. Having a law degree made Turner exceptional, particularly in the early years of his career. For most of the 19th century, candidates for admission to the bar usually lacked a formal legal education, having instead “read the law” under the tutelage of one or more older attorneys. Texas did not have a bar exam until 1903.
In 2016, George Keaton Jr., a Turner descendant, donated much of his family's archive of Turner materials to SMU. The archive is the source of most items in this collection. Many artifacts from the archive are available in the Underwood Library's exhibit on Mr. Turner.
Reference: John G. Browning & Carolyn Wright, We Stood on Their Shoulders: The First African American Attorneys in Texas, 59 How. L.J. 55 (2015).