Edward Douglass White

Edward Douglass White Jr. lived from November 3, 1845 to May 19, 1921 and was an American politician and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1894 to 1910 and as the ninth chief justice of the United States from 1910 until his death, twenty seven years on the bench in total. Born in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, the son of Louisiana governor Edward Douglass White Sr., he practiced law in New Orleans after graduating from the University of Louisiana, now Tulane University, fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and was captured in 1865. After the war he won election to the Louisiana State Senate, served on the Louisiana Supreme Court, and represented Louisiana in the United States Senate from 1891 to 1894 as a Democrat. President Grover Cleveland appointed him an associate justice in 1894, and in 1910 President William Howard Taft, a Republican, elevated him to chief justice, a choice that surprised many contemporaries. White sided with the majority in Plessy v. Ferguson, upholding state segregation under separate but equal, and wrote notable opinions in Talton v. Mayes, Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, Guinn v. United States and the Selective Draft Law Cases. He served as chief justice until his death in 1921, when he was succeeded by Taft himself.