Simpson, John Milton Bryan, 1903-

John Milton Bryan Simpson was born in Kissimmee, Florida, on May 30, 1903. He graduated from the University of Florida Law School in 1926. He then moved to Jacksonville, where he ran a private practice and later worked as a judge in the Criminal Court of Record of Duval County from 1939 to 1946. During World War II he worked in France rebuilding local government. In 1950, President Harry S Truman appointed him to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. From 1962 to 1966 he served as chief judge for the U. S. District Court Middle District of Florida. He served on the U. S. Court of Appeals from 1966 until his death on August 22, 1987.

Simpson was known for his willingness to "listen to the Supreme Court and the national voice on civil rights and to ignore the local din that would drown it out" (Friedman 1965, 213). This was exemplified by his efforts to ensure the constitutional rights of St. Augustine's black citizens during a period of racial crisis in the mid 1960s, particularly in 1964. Judge Simpson enforced compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 amongst the city's business owners and law enforcement officers within days of its signing.

Judge Bryan Simpson's career spanned nearly fifty years but his defining work undoubtedly came in St. Augustine in the 1960s. The city was in a state of racial crisis, and while most federal judges at the time resisted the Supreme Court's orders to desegregate, Simpson strove to protect the constitutional rights of black citizens in St. Augustine.

Source: Leon Friedman (editor), Southern Justice, Pantheon Books, a division of Random House Publishing, New York, 1965.

From the guide to the Judge John Milton Bryan Simpson Papers, 1933-1983, (Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida)