City leaders want to rename one of St. 亚洲无码鈥 two city court buildings after the region鈥檚 first Black federal judge.
Judge Clyde S. Cahill fought to desegregate schools, exposed discriminatory sentencing guidelines and represented people protesting racism in his decades-long career. Now, a committee of aldermen has advanced a proposal to name the Civil Courts building at the northeast corner of Tucker Boulevard and Market Street after him.
鈥淭his man is a hero in this town,鈥 said St. 亚洲无码 Circuit Judge David C. Mason, who has led the charge in naming the building.
Cahill was born in 1923 in St. 亚洲无码. He graduated from Vashon High School as valedictorian, applied to Harvard University and was accepted but couldn鈥檛 afford the $600 required to get there, said his son, Randall Cahill, at an aldermanic committee meeting.
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Cahill joined the Army, flew planes and then returned home to St. 亚洲无码 in the 1940s. He graduated from St. 亚洲无码 University鈥檚 law school in 1951.
He worked for a short time in private practice before joining the circuit attorney鈥檚 office under Thomas F. Eagleton, who would later become a U.S. senator and namesake of the federal courthouse.
Cahill left the prosecutor鈥檚 office in the 1960s and went back to private practice, where he fought school segregation in St. 亚洲无码 and across the state, worked as a legal adviser to the NAACP and was part of a team that sued a major railway company over discriminatory employment practices, according to an article in Washington University鈥檚 law journal written by Mason.
He became a city circuit judge in 1975 and went out of his way to help jurors understand their role in deciding cases. Appeals courts repeatedly struck him down, but Cahill was undeterred.
President Jimmy Carter nominated Cahill to be a U.S. District Judge in 1980. He was confirmed later that year.
In that role, Cahill presided over a long-running lawsuit about conditions at the city jail, and his prodding eventually led to the building of a new facility.
In 1994, Cahill tossed charges against a man accused of crack cocaine possession after ruling that the federal law requiring longer sentences for crack compared with cocaine powder was unconstitutional. Cahill found the requirements unfairly targeted Black people and were the result of racism.
That ruling was overturned by an appeals court, but Mason said it was like 鈥渢hrowing a match into a pile of hay.鈥 It ignited conversation and debate, he said.
鈥淭hat is what I call judicial heroism,鈥 Mason said.
Cahill died in 2004. His son, Randall Cahill, told the aldermanic committee on Wednesday that he was remembered as a 鈥渃hampion of freedom鈥 who 鈥渁lways looked at the glass as being half-full.鈥
鈥淚 don鈥檛 think there could be a bigger honor for our family or for the city of St. 亚洲无码 than to name the Civil Courts building after my father,鈥 he said.
For Mason, the renaming of the building is part of a quest to right historical wrongs that go back to 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court stripped former slaves Dred and Harriet Scott of their freedoms.
The Scotts were two of hundreds of people who filed lawsuits in St. 亚洲无码 seeking their freedoms under a provision of Missouri law that said slaves were free if they spent enough time in a free state for their owners to gain residency.
But Mason said the Supreme Court鈥檚 decision on their case fomented racism and endorsed an attitude that left the accomplishments of Black people buried in the rubble of history.
In 2015, Mason proposed the idea of a 鈥淔reedom Suits鈥 memorial honoring those who filed for their freedoms to be erected behind the Civil Courts building. A sculpture was installed in 2022.
Now, he wants the building next to it to be named after Cahill and a portion of 11th Street 鈥 from Market to Chestnut streets 鈥 to be called Freedom Way.
鈥淚t鈥檚 great for St. 亚洲无码 to say a person like (Cahill) is going to be honored on one of our most prominent historic buildings,鈥 he said. 鈥淗e is a giant 鈥 an absolute giant 鈥 in our profession.鈥
Proposals for renaming the building and street must still be approved by the full Board of Aldermen. The Public Infrastructure and Utilities Committee unanimously recommended passage.