Alberta Murphy, Attorney, Teacher, Civil Rights Activist, Dies

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Alberta Brown Murphy, attorney, teacher and civil rights activist, who died on May 11, 2005, was a woman of tremendous courage, intelligence, and compassion. She was born in Harrisonville, Missouri on Oct. 31, 1910, the daughter of Albert G. and Bess Cowden Brown. When she was very young, she moved with her family to San Benito, Texas, near Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley, where her father was a farmer. Her early childhood coincided with the border conflicts involving Pancho Villa and General Pershing. Villa’s men once shot at (and missed) her father, and Pershing’s soldiers camped on her family’s property. Growing up on the Texas-Mexico border, she learned to speak fluent Spanish.

After graduating from San Benito High School, Murphy received her undergraduate degree from Mary Hardin-Baylor College in Belton, Texas. She went on to earn a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University law school where she served on the editorial staff of the law review and was one of only two women in her class. Later she earned an LLB degree from The University of Alabama School of Law.

While in Washington, D.C. Murphy was an attorney in the office of the Solicitor of the United States Department of Agriculture and then practiced law in the firm of McFarland and Sellers. In 1947 she and her husband, Jay W. Murphy, whom she had met while both were law students at George Washington University, moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where her husband was on the faculty of The University of Alabama School of Law.

Once settled in Alabama, in addition to her private law practice, Murphy became involved in a variety of academic, political and civic matters, particularly in the area of civil rights. From 1961 to 1971 she was a popular instructor in the political science department at The University of Alabama. As a long-time member and president of the Tuscaloosa League of Women Voters, Murphy worked tirelessly, and without regard for her own personal safety, in voter registration throughout the state. The League of Women Voters of Alabama included her biography in its book, “Women Who Made a Difference in Alabama.” She was a founding member and served for four years as president of the Tuscaloosa Council on Human Relations, a group established in 1956 to promote improved race relations. In 1968 she was an organizing member and challenge delegate of the National Democratic Party of Alabama at the Chicago convention. She ran twice, in 1972 and 1974, for the Democratic Party nomination for Alabama’s 7th Congressional District.

As a Fulbright Scholar in 1966, Murphy participated in a study of legal services in Korea, and co-authored with her husband the book, “Legal Profession in Korea.” This was the first field study of the delivery of legal services in Korea, and involved extensive travel into the most remote areas of that country. While in Korea she was a lecturer on American government at Ewha University, and on constitutional law at Seoul National University.

In 1972 federal district court Judge Frank Johnson appointed Murphy to serve on the Bryce Human Rights Committee, a group that oversaw compliance with the court’s order requiring sweeping reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill in Alabama. The legal theory of a “constitutional right to treatment” for residents of mental institutions was developed one evening in her living room in a discussion among Alberta and Jay Murphy, visiting attorney George Dean, and Dr. Ray Fowler, then chair of The University of Alabama department of psychology. Tinsley E. Yarbrough describes that discussion in his biography, “Judge Frank Johnson and Human Rights in Alabama.”

Murphy’s law practice encompassed many areas of law, from criminal defense to general civil cases. She represented plaintiffs in some of the first and most extensive employment discrimination and civil rights lawsuits in the Tuscaloosa area. She also represented Thomas Reed of Macon County, then president of the Alabama NAACP, before the Alabama Supreme Court in a successful appeal of a criminal conviction and in a successful defense of a civil action to remove him from the Alabama House of Representatives. Not all of her practice was in the traditional area of civil rights. As a member of a team of attorneys representing two potential heirs, she helped to develop and apply the legal theory of “equitable adoption” that secured a portion of the estate of Howard Hughes for their clients.

Alberta Murphy is predeceased by her husband, Jay Murphy, and survived by her son, Stanley Jay Murphy, daughter-in-law Marita Kay Murphy, grandson Jay Thomas Murphy and step-grandson, Andrew Scott Bridges.

The family has requested that any memorial gifts be given to the Jay and Alberta Murphy Scholarship of The University of Alabama School of Law, and sent to Law Advancement, Box 870382, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0382. A memorial gathering will be held at 4 p.m. on Monday, May 23 at The University Club in Tuscaloosa.