C. Sterling Hutcheson

Sterling Hutcheson served on the federal bench in the 1940s and 50s as a district court judge. A native of Mecklenberg County and a 1917 graduate of the College of William and Mary, he served for eleven years as a U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia before going on the federal bench in 1944. Hutcheson was a member of the three-judge panel on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that heard the Dorothy Davis case in February 1952. The court panel found no harm in segregated schools and upheld the segregation statutes as constitutional. Hutcheson opposed school desegregation and his court was resistant to issuing desegregation orders to comply with Brown v. Board of Education. Hutcheson retired from the federal bench in 1960.