On This Day In Alabama History: Appellate Judge Richard T. Rives Died

By Alabama NewsCenter Staff

October 27, 1982: Richard Taylor Rives, whose tenure on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was marked by several high-profile civil rights decisions, died in his hometown of Montgomery. As a young man, Rives’ views on race generally reflected his region and his times. But his later thinking evolved in large part because of the influence of his son, Richard Taylor Rives Jr., whose own attitudes on race took hold while studying overseas and then serving in the Pacific during World War II. After his son’s death in a car accident in 1949, the elder Reeves was appointed to the Fifth Circuit, which had jurisdiction over six Southern states. He used the position to influence decisions furthering racial equality. His first civil rights case on the court was Browder v. Gayle in 1956, which ended segregated busing in Montgomery and extended the principles of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education case beyond public schools. Many more were to follow. A year after being assigned to the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Rives died.

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