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Born into a prominent white Charleston family steeped in Confederate tradition, Judge Julius Waties Waring would become one of the South’s most courageous advocates for civil rights. Appointed to the federal bench in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Waring initially reflected the conservative values of his upbringing. But his experience on the bench—and his marriage to civil rights advocate Elizabeth Avery Waring—profoundly changed him.

From the 1940s through the early 1950s, Judge Waring issued a series of bold rulings that challenged the legal foundation of segregation. He ordered equal pay for Black and white teachers, struck down restrictions on Black voting rights, and ruled in favor of equal access to graduate education. These decisions sparked outrage in segregated South Carolina. Waring and his wife were shunned by white society, their home targeted with cross burnings and threats.

Waring’s most lasting impact came in Briggs v. Elliott, a 1951 school desegregation case brought by Black parents in Clarendon County, South Carolina. Though the three-judge panel upheld “separate but equal” schools, Waring dissented powerfully. He wrote: “Segregation is per se inequality.”