VISITING JUDGE IN LITTLE ROCK: I’m Just One of a Couple of Hundred

I, Ronald Norwood Davies, do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent on me as U.S. judge for the district of North Dakota according to the best of my abilities and understanding, agreeably to the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

BRISK, somber-eyed little (5 ft. 1 in., 140 Ibs.) Ronald Davies, North Dakota lawyer, took his oath as a U.S. District Judge in Fargo on Aug. 16, 1955, then turned to well-wishers with one of the shortest induction speeches on record: “I hope that I will have the courage to meet and discharge the responsibilities of my office.” Last week, plucked 870 miles from Fargo and set down in Little Rock by the impersonal workings of justice, Ronald Davies fulfilled his hopes.

Born 52 years ago in Crookston, Minn., Ronald Davies was one of the four children (a brother died of high-school football injuries) of Country Editor Norwood S. Davies and Minnie M. Quigley Davies, still sprightly at 77 (“She’d play bridge three nights a week yet.” says Judge Davies, “and all night if you’d stay with her”). Ronald delivered 125 copies of the daily Crookston Times for $1.50 a week, had his knuckles regularly rapped with a ruler in parochial school by a Sister Milburga. “God love her, she’s gone,” says Judge Davies. “I remember her very well. Instead of holding your palm up, you’d hold it down and you’d get it across the knuckles. I want you to know that hurt. It was something less than pleasant.” Davies’ grandfather, chief of police in East Grand Forks, across the North Dakota line from Crookston, often let Ronald tag along into court. Says Judge Davies: “I was absolutely fascinated watching that municipal judge and listening to those lawyers. From then on, that’s all I ever wanted to be.”

Chinaman’s chance

The Davies family moved to North Dakota in 1917. settled in Grand Forks, where Ronald became a high-school scatback (“I didn’t do too well through the line. They had to shake me loose”). He worked his way through the University of North Dakota (as a soda jerk and clothing-store clerk), ran the 100-yd. dash on the track team. “I was getting awfully tired of running second all the time,” he recalls. “Alongside the university there’s some railroad spurs. I got the idea that running through the spurs in the snow I’d have to lift my legs, I’d have to get strength, I’d have to get stamina. Any Chinaman can see that.” Result: a ten-flat 100 and a university record that managed to stand for five years.

Davies worked his way through law school at Washington’s Georgetown University, the first year by working the graveyard shift as a cop on the U.S. Capitol police force. Says he: “The chief had a motley aggregation. One fellow had one leg and I was only five foot one. The chief didn’t like that very well. I had a perfect record though—didn’t make an arrest.”

Lawyer’s Choice

Back in Grand Forks with $2.50 in his pocket, Davies opened a law office “about the size of a lavatory.” He won his first case, a suit for payment on a promissory note. Says he: “It wasn’t a very difficult case. The man owed the money.” In 1932 Davies was elected municipal judge (at $135 a month) in Grand Forks; he served two terms and retired in 1940 because “I didn’t want to get tagged with the title of police-court judge.” He entered the Army as a lieutenant in 1942, held down various Stateside desk jobs for four years, emerged as a lieutenant colonel (“That shows the Army wasn’t very fussy about the way it promoted people”). Returning to North Dakota, he built a prosperous general practice, worked hard for every civic drive and organization in sight (Elks, Knights of Columbus, American Legion, Forty and Eight, Exchange Club), and won statewide respect as executive director of the North Dakota Bar Association.

In 1955, after a poll of members listed Ronald Davies as top choice of the state bar association. President Eisenhower appointed him to the federal bench, where he quickly won a reputation as a no-nonsense judge who could cut incisively through legal complexities. (“There’s no one I’d rather have with me on a camping trip,” says a friend, “but I’d take any other judge in the state if I were in court and guilty.”) Then on Aug. 22, 1957, the Fargo Forum carried a brief notice tucked away on an inside page: “U.S. District Judge Ronald N. Davies of Fargo will leave Saturday for Little Rock, Ark. to preside at a term of the Eastern District of the U.S. Court of Arkansas. He will replace the presiding judge, who is ill.”

On His Knees

No sooner had Ronald Davies arrived in Little Rock than he was deep in the historic integration case brought on by Governor Orval Faubus’ defiance of the U.S. Government. Davies fully understood the delicacy of his situation: he kept to himself, left his Sam Peck Hotel room only to walk to the Federal Court Building across the street. Away from his friends and his family (he has two sons, three daughters), friendly, family-minded Ronald Davies began to understand for the first time what New York’s famed Judge Harold Medina once said to him: a judge is alone no matter how many people he may have around him.

During a ten-day recess in the Little Rock court proceedings. Ronald Davies hurried home to attend a daughter’s wedding (“I got there by the skin of my teeth, thank God”). His wife Mildred, who had been keeping “the radio blaring so I’ll know whether they’ve lynched him,” noticed that he had lost weight, that his collars were loose around his throat. She noticed something else: when Roman Catholic Ronald Davies knelt for prayer at his bedside, as he has done every night of his life, he remained on his knees longer than usual.

But when his brief breathing spell ended and he returned to Little Rock, Davies betrayed no personal feeling. One night last week, his day’s work ended, he sat shirtsleeved in his Federal Court Building chambers and spoke quietly of his role. “I have no delusions about myself,” said Davies. “I’m just one of a couple of hundred federal judges all over the country. That.’s all.” True enough. But it was Ronald Davies, the little judge from Fargo, who was in Little Rock representing the other men of the robe—and the law of the land.