Attorney Charles H. Matthews Dies : Broke Many Precedents for Blacks in Legal Profession

Charles Hearde Matthews Sr., a trailblazing black attorney with an impressive array of firsts, died Monday in a Culver City hospital. He was 78 and had been ill for some time, his sister, Miriam Matthews, said.

In 1980 Matthews, who was twice denied membership in the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. because of his race and later refused to join after the group dropped its color barrier, accepted an honorary membership.

By then he had been practicing law for 50 years, 14 of them (1931-45) in the district attorney’s office, where he had been the only black.

He was the only black in his class at the University of California, Berkeley, Law School, Boalt Hall, the first black on the Los Angeles Police Commission (1946-50) and the first of his race on the California State Law Revision Commission.

One of three children, he moved to Los Angeles in 1907 and attended Los Angeles High School and UCLA before completing his undergraduate studies at Berkeley. He ranked in the top seven of his law class and was elected to the board of the Law Review at Boalt Hall.

He moved into private practice in 1945 and retired in 1981.

When he accepted his honorary bar membership, it was at a joint luncheon of the Los Angeles County Bar and the John M. Langston Bar Assn., a black lawyers’ group that Matthews helped found.

Asked after the affair if he believed that there were traces of racism remaining in bar associations, Matthews replied, “I wouldn’t know because I have never attended any of their meetings.”

Besides his sister, he is survived by his wife, Patricia, son Charles H. Matthews Jr., stepsons Murvin and Michael Durkee, stepdaughter Charmaine Beatty and seven grandchildren. A funeral service will be held Friday at 2:30 at Angelus Funeral Home, Los Angeles.