Clifford Durr

Who was Clifford Durr?

Clifford Judkins Durr was an Alabama lawyer who played an important role in defending activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras, and who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance requiring the segregation of passengers on buses in Montgomery that launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Durr was born into a patrician Alabama family. After studying at the University of Alabama he went to Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. He returned to the United States to study law, then joined a prominent law firm in Birmingham, Alabama in 1924. In 1926 he married Virginia Foster, whose sister would be the first wife of Hugo Black.