Elbert Tuttle; Judge in Key Civil Rights Cases

Elbert Tuttle, who issued landmark civil rights rulings on voting and school desegregation during a lengthy career as a federal appeals court judge, has died at the age of 98.

Tuttle died of prostate cancer at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta on Sunday evening, said his son, Dr. Elbert Tuttle Jr.

Tuttle was the chief judge of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans from 1960 to 1967. In 1961, the court ordered Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Hamilton Holmes admitted to the University of Georgia and ended segregated seating in bus depots in Mississippi.

In 1962, Tuttle’s court ordered the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith as its first black student and issued an injunction against a county registrar who was denying blacks the right to vote.

In May 1963, Tuttle ordered school officials in Birmingham, Ala., to allow 1,100 pupils to return to class after the local school board had expelled or suspended them for participating in civil rights demonstrations. “They stood a chance of not graduating, at a time when everyone was urging children to stay in school,” Tuttle said in a 1992 interview.

Tuttle also presided over a ruling that rejected gerrymandered voting districts in Tuskegee, Ala., and another Alabama case that led to the reapportionment of many state legislatures.

As chief judge of the 5th Circuit, he held unprecedented late-night emergency court sessions to issue decisions that supported the cause of the late Martin Luther King Jr.

Former President Jimmy Carter awarded Tuttle the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1981.

“He was a beacon light of judicial temperament, of personal courage and of commitment to the finest elements of justice in this country, at a time when it was not easy to do,” Carter said. “He’s always been a hero of mine.”

Tuttle became a judge on the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta after the 5th Circuit’s jurisdiction was changed in 1981. He stepped down from the bench in 1993, but continued to screen cases for the court until he retired last year as a senior judge.

Born in Pasadena, Tuttle grew up in Hawaii, where he attended the multiracial Punahou School, learning quickly that skin color was unimportant to a person’s abilities and character.

He earned a bachelor’s degree and a law degree from Cornell University, with time in between to work as a journalist on the New York Evening World and other publications. After law school, he and his brother-in-law, William A. Sutherland, set up a law practice in Atlanta. Tuttle, who served in both world wars, was awarded the Bronze Star, Legion of Merit and Purple Heart for his military service during World War II, when he served as an artillery commander in the Pacific. He fought on Guam and Okinawa and was wounded on the island of Ie Shima.

His wife of 74 years, Sara, died Nov. 26, 1994, at the age of 96. In addition to his son, he is survived by a daughter, Jane Harmon, nine grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.