by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
In an effort to help develop minority bar associations across Florida, the Florida Bar’s Young Lawyers Section recently chose one local voluntary bar to receive a special grant.
The D. W. Perkins Bar Association, Jacksonville’s black lawyers’ bar association, was presented last week with a check for $500. Juanita Powell, president of the D. W. Perkins Bar Association, said the grant will be used to fund two upcoming community programs being organized by the Perkins Bar.
Powell said one of the programs will be a hurricane preparedness workshop to be held in the Gateway neighborhood on the Northside. The other program, also to be held in the Gateway neighborhood, will be a debtors workshop. Powell said the two programs might possibly be combined to attract more participants.
The grant check was presented by local attorneys Curry Pajcic and Kevin Cook, who are also chairman and member, respectively, of the Florida Bar Young Lawyer’s Division’s awards committee.
Pajcic said this grant is important because there are certain areas of the Florida Bar that have an under-representation of minorities.
“We take it very seriously at the Florida Bar,” he said. “This is a way to ensure that we are encouraging participation and accumulating representation in all sections of the Bar as well as in the community.
“Juanita (Powell) and (Perkins Bar past president) Dexter (Van Davis) are outstanding members of the Florida Bar as well as outstanding members of the community. We could not be more proud of Juanita and Dexter and the D. W. Perkins Bar Association.”
Cook said he is equally proud that the Perkins Bar was unanimously chosen to receive the grant.
“The Perkins Bar has always demonstrated a commitment to the community and excelled in service not only to the minority community, but to the community at large,” said Cook.
Previously named the Colored Lawyers Bar, the D. W. Perkins Bar Association is named after Daniel Webster Perkins, one of the first African-Americans to be allowed into the Florida Bar.
Perkins started practicing law in Jacksonville in 1919 after moving from Tampa where he also practiced. After receiving his undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, Perkins went to Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C. where he received his juris doctorate.
In 1913, Perkins made his first appearance in front of the Florida Supreme Court and appeared again 1915 where he argued that blacks should be allowed to sit on a jury.