In 1934, when George Clifton Edwards, Jr. graduated from Harvard University with a master’s degree in literature, he had great plans for his future. He “wanted to help (1) end war; (2) end poverty; (3) end race injustice. In [his] spare time [he] thought [he] might try writing the great American novel.”¹ Nowhere in that idealistic list of goals was a venture into the practice or profession of law.

After all, his father, grandfather, and at least one uncle were attorneys, and that was enough for one family. In fact, his father, George C. Edwards, Sr., was working very hard at fulfilling his own mission to end war, poverty, and racial injustice. George, Sr. initially started his professional career as a teacher — including beginning a night school for the local mill workers² — before he was fired for his vocal interest in socialism and various extracurricular activities, one of which involved editing and publishing a pro-labor newspaper.³ After his dismissal, George, Sr. read law in his father’s office and was admitted to the Texas bar. His first criminal case was utterly horrific and ended without a trial when the African American defendant was forcibly removed from the courtroom and lynched by a mob.⁴ George, Sr. — never one to hide his light under a bushel — condemned the “frenzied barbarians” in a non-anonymous editorial in the weekly labor newspaper.⁵ Before long, George, Sr. was known as “the labor lawyer, the ACLU lawyer, the NAACP lawyer” in town; this was in addition to being an avowed socialist, in favor of Prohibition, and vehemently anti-KKK.⁶

George, Jr. was born in 1914, the baby of the family, the only son and youngest surviving child. The early years of the family were filled with tragedy as the older Edwards put their money where their mouths were and resided in the same cotton mill district as their night-school students.⁷ Their first two children — Purnell⁸ and Elva Gray⁹ — died of dysentery as infants, and both George, Sr. and his wife Octavia contracted tuberculosis.¹⁰ Not surprisingly, the parents were particularly protective over their two surviving children. George, Jr. recalled spending many days in bed, missing school, due to a cold or the thought of a cold or other childhood ailment.¹¹ In a contradictory fashion, these multiple missed days actually caused him to be leaps and bounds ahead of his classmates; both of his parents were trained teachers, and with nothing to do in a sickbed, George, Jr. read. At age 15, he graduated high school near the top of his class.¹²

That was also the same year he decided that he would not go into the law. He’d helped in his father’s law office most summers and watched some trials, even assisting in the investigation for one. But he also read — by parental command — Blackstone’s Commentaries. It was dry and unexciting, and he read it with “all the comprehension [he] would have brought to Sanskrit” and decided that the law was not for him.¹³

Instead, he headed off to Southern Methodist University, ready to study literature, set to become an author. He graduated in three years, again near the top of his class, and at 19 — when most of his peers were finishing their first year of college — George left Texas for Massachusetts to obtain a further degree in literature from Harvard.¹⁴ He was so eager to change the world and start his novel that he skipped the graduation ceremony in 1934.¹⁵

After a two-year stint as an organizer for the League for Industrial Democracy, a “social reform agency,”¹⁶ George relocated to Detroit. There are conflicting recollections about the move Midwest. Most regularly referenced is that George headed to Detroit to conduct research for his great American novel.¹⁷ And while that explanation would suit this article perfectly, it’s more likely that George moved to Detroit for the same reason that many people did in the 1930s: a good job in the auto industry.¹⁸

He arrived in the city during the labor union upheaval of the 1930s and promptly became involved with the UAW. Before long, George was using his organization skills to the benefit of the UAW, and even

tually he was appointed “national director of the Welfare Department of the [UAW].”¹⁹ In 1937, he took part in a sit-down strike and was sentenced to 30 days in jail for defying a court order to vacate the plant.²⁰ In an ironic twist, that sentencing judge, Circuit Judge Arthur Webster, would later hold George’s robe during the younger man’s swearing-in ceremony as a probate judge 14 years later.²¹

His dislike of Blackstone’s dry writing notwithstanding, George started attending classes at the Detroit College of Law, contrary to his earlier professional inclinations. He received a Certificate of Completion in 1944 and a Juris Doctor several years later,²² in between studies, service with the Detroit Housing Commission and the Detroit Common Council, and military service during World War II.²³

Upon his return from war, George returned to the law (practicing with Theodore Bohn, who would go on to his own judicial career)²⁴ and the Detroit Common Council, where he would serve four terms.²⁵ Of course, the next stepping-stone was the office of mayor, and George threw his hat into the race.

The city was at a crossroads. Heavy migration during the war years had doubled the Black population, and opposition to integration was forcing much of that portion of the population to live in densely populated enclaves east of Woodward Avenue. Accordingly, housing emerged as a principal issue in the election. With his vocal desire to “end racial injustice,” George didn’t stand a chance against the conservative city treasurer, Albert Cobo, a man now known for his divisive legacy.

In her 1998 book about Edwards, Bridging the River of Hatred, historian Mary Stolberg writes that Cobo “draped his opinions with a racially neutral patina, which did little to obscure his underlying racist message. His opposition to public housing was directed mostly at African American residents, and he was vocally against integrated housing.”²⁶ In contrast, Edwards saw his campaign as a “civic crusade,” which Stolberg described as a drive to “modernize city government, extend services to the poor and offer racial justice.”²⁷ His plans also included an ambitious wish list: improvement of the riverfront, expanding public recreational facilities, “construction of a municipal auditorium,” and even a new airport.²⁸ By the end of the election period, the results were surely not shocking to anyone: Cobo won in a landslide.²⁹ George — bitter by his loss — returned to the practice of law, and the media predicted his public career was at an end.³⁰

They were wrong; instead, he moved to another political arena. In September 1951, he “was appointed probate judge of the Wayne County”³¹ Juvenile Court, and in 1954, he was elected to the Wayne County Circuit Court.³² Two years later, he was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court³³ and subsequently reelected. He had made it. Without a doubt, it would be easier to end war, poverty, and race injustice at the top of the state’s legal community.

Then, to the shock of many, Justice Edwards resigned after less than five years of service. Surely the expectation was that he would continue his service for many more years and perhaps even reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Instead, at the height of his legal career, George resigned from the bench to take a nonjudicial, nonlegal position as Detroit Police Commissioner.

He was jumping out of a frying pan and into an active volcano. A little over a year before Edwards’ appointment, a declaration of “war on crime” commenced an infamous “crash program” that led to the arrest of 1,500 African American men over two months during a murder investigation.³⁴ Over the next several months, “more and more African Americans were unfairly interrogated, searched, arrested, and brutalized.”³⁵ In the midst of the crisis, Commissioner Edwards took charge of the “4,300 man [police] force.”³⁶

Edwards promised “‘vigorous law enforcement’ with equal treatment under the law, which he believe[d] would encourage more citizens … to assist the police department in fighting crime.”³⁷ Unfortunately, a key player was not interested in playing ball: “from the outset, the [police] department’s top commanders tried to undermine his efforts, seizing every opportunity to discredit him,”³⁸ including data manipulation.³⁹

Still, Edwards continued on, working to build the trust of the community through promises of greater police professionalism.⁴⁰ He wanted to provide higher wages and “promoted human relations training of officers so that they would understand”⁴¹ the constitutional rights of the city’s citizens and “be more sensitive to residents of different races and backgrounds.”⁴² He “pledged to hire more African American police officers … [and] guaranteed nondiscrimination in hiring” and “even promised to publicly discuss any case where the [department] rejected a qualified person because of race."⁴³ He vowed to “build bridges of understanding across the river of hate running through the city.”⁴⁴ The “multimedia digital exhibit” Detroit Under Fire noted that when Edwards resigned from his position at the end of 1963, it was “with a decidedly mixed legacy.”⁴⁵

Well before that time, Edwards was a well-known figure across the country, and there were rumors of a federal appointment.⁴⁶ He was nominated by President Kennedy to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. With Edwards’ history, the confirmation process must have been fascinating: “the ABA screening panel did what one official called ‘a double take’ when it discovered that [Edwards] once had been convicted of contempt of court”⁴⁷ — and his involvement in the League for Industrial Democracy and his father, “the best known Socialist in Texas.”⁴8 A Judiciary Committee member noted that Edwards’ nomination, coupled with another, “produced more letters of protest than any other judicial nominations.”⁴⁹ His confirmation was by no means a sure thing and even brought objections from the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover,⁵0 but in the end he was approved by the United States Senate via voice vote and sworn in on December 20, 1963. After a lifetime of work, it would be his last job. He served as Chief Judge of the Sixth Circuit from January 16, 1979, to September 30, 1983, and assumed senior status on January 15, 1985. By the end of Judge Edwards’ judicial career, he had written over 1,000 signed opinions.

Edwards died 10 years after assuming senior status, over 60 years after his graduation from Harvard. In the end, he didn’t end war or poverty or even racial injustice. Instead, he served as a “labor organizer, big city housing director, councilman, council president, lawyer, juvenile court judge, state circuit judge, state supreme court justice, Detroit police commissioner, and federal circuit judge,” all with a lifelong “passion for justice.”⁵¹ He never wrote the great American novel either; instead — as he later reminisced — he’d lived it.⁵²