March/April 2007 issue
In Memoriam: Judge George Howard
U. S. District Judge George
Howard, of the Eastern and
Western Districts of Arkansas,
died on Saturday, April 21st. He
was 82 years old. Judge Howard
was the first African-American in
Arkansas to become a federal
judge.
George Howard was born in Pine Bluff,
Arkansas, in 1924. From 1943 to 1946 he served
in the U.S. Navy. He received his undergraduate
degree from the University of Arkansas in 1953
and his law degree from the University of
Arkansas School of Law in 1954.
He then set up a practice in Pine Bluff, where he
worked until 1977. From 1969 to 1977, he also
served as the Chairman of the Arkansas State
Claims Commission. In 1976 he was appointed
as Special Associate Justice for the Arkansas
Supreme Court. He was then appointed as a
justice for the Arkansas Supreme Court and
served in the capacity through 1978. He
subsequently served as a judge for the Arkansas
Court of Appeals from 1979 to 1980, when he
was appointed as a U.S. District Judge for the
Eastern and Western Districts of Arkansas.
Judge Howard presided over several high profile
cases including some that resulted from the
Whitewater investigation. They included the
1996 Whitewater-related bank fraud and
conspiracy trial of former Governor Jim Guy
Tucker and Susan and James McDougal, in
which he ruled that President Clinton had to
testify as a defense witness by videotape.
In 2005, he issued a “final judgment” in the
long-running Vertac Chemical case - a
25-year-old lawsuit over the costs of cleaning up
a polluted area in Jacksonville that Vertac
abandoned in 1986.
Judge Howard is survived by his widow, the
former Vivian Smith, to whom he was married
for 60 years, and four children.