JAMES C. CRAVEN Aug. 7, 1925-Jan. 12, 2015
Champion of justice
Even as he tilted at windmills, James C. Craven, who died on Monday at 89, made a difference.
As a state appellate court judge and proud liberal, he wrote a lot of dissents during his years on the bench that began in 1964. As a lawyer in private practice, he transformed Springfield, suing the city in the 1980s to end a commission form of government that effectively prevented blacks from winning elective office.
He was the first in his family to go to college. All four of his children became lawyers. Their training began at the dinner table.
“He would say ‘OK, here’s the case I had today,’” recalled his son, Don Craven. “And he would give us a very simple breakdown of the cases he was working on. … We were brainwashed, if you will, at an early age.”
He was born in Greenfield, Tenn., one of five children in a working class household. When he was still a schoolboy, the family moved to Chicago, where his father took a job in a wire factory. He never forgot what it was like to be different.
“He had vivid memories of showing up in school in Chicago wearing the overalls that moved with them from Tennessee,” Don Craven recalled.
James Craven became a judge when he was 39 and walked away when he was 55. He later explained that he wanted more action. He got it.
After an unsuccessful run for the state Supreme Court, he sued the city in the first federal Voting Rights Act lawsuit filed north of the Mason-Dixon line. Reaction was mixed.
“When you start putting together testimony on this type of discrimination in a town, it becomes very divisive,” Don Craven recalls. “He got ‘Dear Nigger Lover’ letters. ‘I hope you die with your boots on.’ Those kinds of letters. He also got thankyou’s from all parts of the community.”
After prevailing in Springfield, Craven filed similar lawsuits in Danville, Peoria, Chicago Heights and Stockton, Calif. He also became a friend of the media, providing legal assistance to journalism students at the University of Illinois Springfield as well as the working press via the Illinois Broadcasters Association and the Illinois Press Association.
Craven and his wife, Gloria, moved to Oregon in 1999, where a daughter lived, to escape humid summers and enjoy a less-conservative political climate. He later moved to Bellingham in Washington state, where he died due to complications from surgery. –Bruce Rushton
