Judge Joseph Hatchett, history maker, bridge builder. Along the distinguished halls of the Court of Appeals in Atlanta, GA hangs a portrait painted by renowned artist Simmie Knox, the first African-American artist commissioned to paint the official Presidential portrait.

Judge Joseph Hatchett

The painting is not of the great civil rights champion Thurgood Marshall nor is it of former President Bill Clinton, although both have sat for portraits by Simmie Knox. This particular portrait is of a Floridian born to unskilled laborers during America’s Great Depression, a man of color who came of age at the height of the Jim Crow segregationist south, a man who fled north when institutions in his home state denied him access to higher education, a man who ultimately made history in the State of Florida and the deep south. The portrait is one of perseverance, dedication and the American dream personified in the likeness of Judge Joseph Woodrow Hatchett.

Judge Hatchett, not to be confused with the popular t.v. judge Glenda Hatchett, knocked down the first of many barriers in the mid 1970s when he was appointed by Governor Reubin O’D Askew to fill a vacancy on the Florida Supreme Court. His appointment by Governor Askew gave him the distinguished honor of becoming the first black to serve on the state’s highest court. In 1976, Hatchett made history yet again, by winning the popular vote of the people of Florida enabling him to continue to serve as a justice on the Supreme Court thus becoming the first black elected to statewide office in Florida and in the South. After serving four years as a justice on the state’s highest court Hatchett was appointed to the federal court of appeals, the first black man to serve as a judge in an appellate court in the deep south.

He would spend 24 of his 45 year legal career as a federal judge, the majority of the years dedicated to the appellate court. The expertise he gained from two decades of ruling on appeal cases would play a major part in his post retirement job at a prestigious Florida law firm where he heads the firm’s appellate practice and diversity committee.
"The committee seeks to diversify the firm by recruiting and retaining minority and women lawyers," Hatchett said. "We [the firm] have done very well in that respect, we received an award two years ago for our diversity efforts, but there is still a long, long way we need to go."

Hatchett notes the retention part is the missing factor in the efforts to diversify corporate law firms nationwide. Recruiting very heavily at his alma mater and the nation’s largest producer of black lawyers, Howard University, has been successful however keeping black lawyers in large firms for the long term has proved more challenging.

"They are leaving the large law firms to go into private practice, smaller firms, [or] to go into public service. Many of us think that is a result of a feeling of loneliness and a lack of mentoring. An African-American lawyer coming into a large law firm with 410 lawyers they are sort of lost and there are not many people around like them, they may need more support," Hatchett said.

This newest phase of Judge Hatchett’s legal career allows a unique blend of his professional experience as an appellate court judge and his life experience as a black American who has lived, survived and achieved during the extremes of this country’s changing social climate.
The position he now holds at a large prestigious law firm and the positions he recruits new black law school graduates for are positions that he never could have held as a young attorney in 1959. During that time all a black man could do in the type of firm where Hatchett now holds a position of leadership was clean. That reality makes his efforts to build bridges for those up and coming men and women of color more than just a job but a noble cause.