Growing up in segregated Port Arthur in
the 1950s and 1960s, Wilford Flowers
’72 lived in an all-black neighborhood
and went to all-black schools. His teachers taught
him that the world was changing, that he would
have opportunities his parents’ generation did not.
Flowers, now a state district judge in Austin
who as an African-American has broken racial
barriers in Texas’ capital city, says he got his first
taste of an integrated world at Lamar University.
Flowers began commuting to Lamar State
College of Technology in 1968. The difference
from his hometown was shocking, he recalls,
especially the 25-student English class he had early
on where he was the only non-white student.
But the students in that class and other
students and professors of different colors and
backgrounds taught Flowers that he could excel
in unfamiliar environments, lessons that he has
carried through his career.
“After all these years, you understand that
things are fine if everyone just gets to know each
other,” he said. “People are people.”
In 1977, Flowers became Travis County’s
first African-American assistant district attorney,
and his 1990 election to the 147th District Court
made him the county’s first black district judge.
His court handles felony cases such as murder
and robbery, and he has presided over the trials
of some of Austin’s worst criminals, including
Colton Pitonyak, a University of Texas at
Austin student convicted last year of killing a
21-year-old coed.
Flowers, 58, announced recently that he
is retiring when his current four-year term ends
in 2010.
He credits timing as much as ability
for his career of achievement: He was also
Travis County’s first black county court
judge and has been the only black first
assistant county attorney.
The groundwork for diversifying the
ranks of power in Austin and communities
across the nation had been laid with the
country’s civil rights movement by the time
Flowers graduated law school in 1976.
“I was in a good position to accomplish
these things,” he said.
The timing may have been right,
but Margaret Moore, a former prosecutor
who worked with Flowers in the district
attorney’s office and then hired him as her
top deputy when she was elected county
attorney, said Flowers excelled because he
was a hard worker, a quick study and a
good person whom people trust.
“You have to attribute that kind of
progress to the fact that Wil is such an outstanding
person and attorney,” said Moore.
Segregated upbringing
Flowers said his role model growing
up was his father, a Port Arthur refinery
worker who was a boisterous man—funny
and a bit of a braggart, someone you heard
before you saw. In those ways Thomas
Flowers was much different than his son,
whose cerebral demeanor on the bench has
served him well.
Judge Flowers said his father also had
a strong sense of right and wrong. With his
wife, Corine, Thomas Flowers taught the
virtues of hard work and the value of education
to his eight children, seven of whom
graduated from college, five with advanced
degrees.
Flowers’ childhood was comfortable if
not wealthy. His parents expected him to
do what was right, and neighbors looked
out for one another. He encountered segregation
when he went shopping downtown
or to a local beach where he was expected
to stay to one side, but it was not something
that particularly bothered him at the
time, he said.
“It was the norm,” Flowers said.
“That was America.”
Flowers studied economics at Lamar
and recalls drawing inspiration from one of
his first professors in the field, Sam Parigi.
“He made it really interesting,” Flowers said.
Parigi saw enough in Flowers to hire
him as a teaching assistant.
During his junior year, Flowers lived
on campus for the first time thanks to a job
as a dorm counselor at Brooks-Shivers
Hall, watching over students enrolled in a
program for the children of migrant farm
workers. Supervising the students, who were on campus under a government
program to earn high school equivalency
degrees, helped the future judge learn some
of his first lessons in leadership and conflict
resolution.
“Our students had more street sense
than the usual college students,” he said.
“With a little mediating I could usually
help them stay out of trouble.”
Flowers graduated from Lamar in
1972 and, after attending the University
of Texas School of Law, got a job under
the newly elected Travis County district attorney. Flowers rose to the rank of chief
prosecutor in the 147th Court, then led by
now-retired Judge Mace Thurman.
“He was a very intelligent and wellschooled
lawyer,” Thurman said. “I
thought he was probably one of the most
efficient and best prosecutors that I had in
my court.”
Travis County commissioners in 1987
appointed Flowers to head a newly created
County Court-at-Law, where he handled
misdemeanor cases. He served there until
winning his first of five elections to the
district court bench.
A no-nonsense judge
Flowers is known for running an
orderly and respectful courtroom and as
Travis County’s toughest judge on violent
criminals, according to lawyers. Flowers,
who will give second chances in some
nonviolent cases, said he strives to hold
criminals accountable and keep the
community safe and doesn’t consider, for
example, the effect prison may have on
a defendant. He also said he does not
consider the costs of locking people up.
“That is not my issue,” he said.
Flowers said he believes strongly that
victims of crime should be heard. That is
why, for example, he rejected a plea bargain
in 2006 for Charles Myers, who in
exchange for 10 years probation had admitted
to sneaking under his ex-girlfriend’s
house and planting a telephone listening
device there.
Myers’ ex-girlfriend wanted Myers
imprisoned for his decades-long pattern of
harassing women. Flowers agreed. A jury
convicted Myers of burglary of a habitation
and unlawful interception of a wire communication
and sentenced him to five years
in prison.
“He was one of those people who was
a star from the get-go,” said defense lawyer
Stephen Brittain, who worked with
Flowers as a prosecutor. “He just has a
quality of dealing with people and was an
excellent trial lawyer and, when it became
time, was an excellent judge.”
