Jesse J. McCrary Jr.

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Jesse J. McCrary (1937 - 2007) was a civil rights pioneer and the first African-American Florida cabinet member since Reconstruction. He was appointed Florida Secretary of State by Governor Reubin Askew in 1978. Mr. NcCrary was born on September 16, 1937 in Blitchton, Marion County, Florida. He died October 29, 2007 of lung cancer.

The son of a Baptist preacher, he attended Howard Academy in Ocala. There he was very active in sports, playing several sports and quarterbacking the school's championship football team. He was a political science major at FAMU, where he was a civil rights activist, organizing sit-ins in Tallahassee. He was also on the debate team, a member of the drama club and an ROTC cadet. He did a stint in Army Intelligence before graduating from FAMU law school in 1965.

Throughout his career, he achieved many firsts. In 1967, he became Florida's first assistant attorney general. He dealt with criminal appeals and advised the state Racing Commission. Three years later, he became the first black lawyer to argue a case, Williams v. State of Florida, before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a Southern state. The court decided in favor of the State of Florida, which was seeking to uphold a law allowing six person juries in non-capital criminal cases.

In the 1970's he was a partner in the law firm of McCrary, Ferguson and Leethrough. He issued a report critical of Opa-locka's government and police department, was the Dade County School Board's first black attorney, and was appointed by the governor as a judge on the Florida Industrial Commission. At the time, he was Florida's highest-paid black official. He was appointed Florida Secretary of State to finish the unexpired term of his predecessor, who had resigned to run for governor. As Secretary of State, he recommended judicial appointees to Governor Askew. Governor Askew appointed Florida's first black Circuit Court judges. He returned to private practice in 1979.

He continued his law practice and was active in the community in the 1980s and 1990s. He represented an embattled county commissioner in a public corruption scandal. He was the first African-American attorney to work for the Dade County Board of Education. ^[1] He was part of the effort to have the board allow single-member districts. In 1991, he served as the unpaid chair of a local community services organization which he saved form bankruptcy. In 2000, he was appointed to the Board of Miami Children's Hospital.^[2] In 2001, he was named to a commission that made recommendations to Senior Judge Lenore C. Nesbitt in a federal condemnationn suit brought by the National Park Service to acquire land for Everglades National Park. ^[3] In 2003, the Florida Legislator passed a resolution recognizing his work on ten landmark Florida Supreme Court cases.