ADAH Board of Trustees, District 3
Judge (Ret.) Delores R. Boyd
DELORES R. BOYD, a native of Ramer in Montgomery County, grew up in Montgomery and was educated in its public schools. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Alabama, she received her law degree from the University of Virginia.
Boyd served as law clerk to the Honorable John C. Godbold, Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, before practicing law in Montgomery between 1976 and 2001. She partnered for 16 years with Howard A. Mandell in the Montgomery law firm of Mandell & Boyd, with a specialty in domestic relations, damage claims, employment discrimination, and federal litigation.
A Time magazine article on May 30, 1983, featured Boyd in the article, “Law: The New Women in Court – Five of the Best and Brightest in a Changing Profession.” In 1989 Boyd argued before the United States Supreme Court after being selected by Justice Anthony Kennedy to provide pro bono representation to an Alabama inmate whose appeal raised a significant constitutional issue of criminal procedure.
Boyd received a merit-based appointment as a United States Magistrate Judge and served the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama from September 2001 through December 2006. She now limits her professional practice to mediation and administrative adjudication. Highlights of Boyd’s service to the Bar and Bench include the Alabama Board of Bar Examiners (Bar Examiner, 1979-1982; Board Chairperson, 1995-1998); Merit Selection Panels for the Selection of United States Magistrate Judges in the Middle District of Alabama (Chairperson, 1986-87); founding member of the Boards of Directors for both the Legal Services Corporation of Alabama and the Alabama AppleSeed Foundation; Presiding Judge of the Montgomery Municipal Court.
She is a member of Leadership Montgomery (Class II) and the Board of Directors for the Family Sunshine Center, whose mission is to end domestic violence. She co-authored Jim Crow and Me: Stories from my Life as a Civil Rights Lawyer, by Solomon S. Seay, Jr. (New South Books, Nov. 2008). Her experience with school desegregation at Montgomery’s Sidney Lanier High School is profiled in Freedom’s Children: Young Civil Rights Activists Tell Their Own Stories (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1992).
Inducted into her high school Hall of Fame, she has been honored also by her college alma mater with the Outstanding Alumna Award in Communication Studies (2000) and the Outstanding Pioneer Award presented in 2003 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of desegregation at the University of Alabama. Boyd co-founded a specialty bookstore – Roots & Wings, A Cultural Bookplace, which operated in Montgomery from 1989 through 2001.
http://www.archives.alabama/gov/trustees/boyd.html
Created: January 26, 2012
