Julius Waties Waring

Who was Julius Waties Waring?

Julius Waites Waring was a United States federal judge who played an important role in the early legal battles of the American Civil Rights Movement. Waring was born in Charleston, South Carolina, to Edward Perry Waring and Anna Thomasine Waties. He graduated second in his class with an A.B. from College of Charleston in 1900. He married his first wife, Annie Waring, in 1913. Their only daughter was Anne Waring Warren, who died without children.

After divorcing his first wife and marrying the Northern socialite Elizabeth Waring, Judge Waring quickly transitioned from a racial moderate to a proponent of radical change. Speaking at a Harlem church, he proclaimed: "The cancer of segregation will never be cured by the sedative of gradualism." He served as a Federal Judge assigned to the US District Court in Charleston, South Carolina from 1942-1952 and heard several pivotal civil rights cases.

The descendent of Southern aristocrats and the son of a Confederate veteran, Waring was an advocate of civil rights early in his career. After he divorced his first wife and married outspoken northern civil rights advocate Elizabeth Avery Waring in 1945, he quickly took up a radical position on civil rights issues that he maintained throughout the remainder of his career. Political, editorial and social leaders in South Carolina continued to criticize and shun Judge Waring and his wife to the point where he ultimately resigned from the bench and left Charleston altogether in 1952 and moved to New York where he died in office in 1968 at the age of 87. He is buried in the Waring family plot at Cemetery in Charleston.