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The title was a cinch: “Darling, the truth shall set you free.”

The rest wasn’t. How do you capture in a scholarly paper the essence of a woman who was a first in many ways, whose style, dress, personality and flamboyance filled courtrooms where people came just to watch her work?

Judge Elreta Mellon Alexander-Ralston of Greensboro,  or “Judge A,” was elected a state district court judge in 1968, a first for a black woman. She already was the first black woman to graduate from Columbia Law School.

After practicing in New York, she came home to her native Greensboro, where she formed with three white lawyers the first integrated firm in the South. All sorts of people in jams hired her because of her legal know-how and her dramatic way of presenting it.

“She made for good copy,” says Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson of the N.C. Supreme Court, who is writing a paper on Alexander-Ralston.

“You can’t image what it took for her to be good copy; I feel like I owe my career to her.”

When Timmons-Goodson was a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill, Judge A spoke during a class.

“I remember saying afterward, 'I want to be like that when I grow up,’ ” says the justice, who is a trustee at Guilford College, which her daughter attends.

Judge A’s charisma worked the same way on others. Greensboro lawyer Joe Williams recalled at the time of the judge’s death in 1998 a school field trip his class took to the courthouse to watch justice in action.

“She walked into the court with a full-length mink coat on and a hat, and everyone shut up,” Williams said. “The whole class went back to school that day wanting to be lawyers.”

Recent courthouse renovations can’t remove Judge A stories that linger, such as the one about the white woman, who mistakenly thought Alexander was white and whispered that she feared her runaway daughter was with “colored boys.”

“Darling, have you looked at your judge?” the judge responded. 

She threatened to jail county commissioners because of conditions in the courthouse and jail. She rendered lesser verdicts to speeders to prevent insurance companies from raising rates. In 1974, she freed a scalper at the NCAA Final Four here because she said police didn’t bother scalpers at rock concerts.

She once glared at a college professor with a Ph.D. and asked, “Are you a nut?” The professor had pulled a fire alarm, emptying the courthouse.

He told Judge A he was exercising his right of political protest to show support for the Communist Workers Party, after five participants were killed during the party’s  “Death to the Klan” march in 1979.

Alexander exercised her authority by sending the professor to a state hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

She was a Republican (but not a conservative) when black Republicans were scarce.

In 1974, Alexander sought but failed to get the party’s nomination for the chief justice’s seat on the state Supreme Court. She was defeated in the primary by a fire equipment salesman who had not attended college or law school. Justice Susie Sharp, the Democratic candidate, won the election.

Many blamed race, but Timmons-Goodson sees other factors, too.

“Keep in mind her sex. A woman running for judge?” says the justice, adding that Republican leaders urged the judge to run as E.M. Alexander, emphasizing her Columbia degree.

“She wasn’t going to have any part of it,”  Timmons-Goodson says. “She ran the way she wanted to run.”

In court, her tongue-lashings left defendants shaking. Her trademark words of address were, “Darling, the truth shall set you free.” Timmons-Goodson says some defendants took her literally and spilled their guts, only to be carted off to jail.

Timmons-Goodson says Judge A pioneered legal reforms. As a result of her 1974  loss, credentials for being a judge were upgraded.

She invented “Judgment Day,” in which she deferred prosecution and dismissed charges against those who had stayed out of trouble for a certain time or completed community service. The concept is still used.

Timmons-Goodson hopes to get her paper about Alexander-Ralston in a legal journal, perhaps at Columbia.

She enjoys seeing faces light up when she interviews people about Judge A. She still seeks a few details.

Did the judge have a driver’s license? She always had a driver, which added to her regal persona.

She refused to answer to Lawyer Alexander, as many black people once addressed white and black lawyers. As for “Elreta,” forget it, even if you were her best friend, Timmons-Goodson says.

That may sound pompous,  but Timmons-Goodson says it took guts in those days for a black woman to demand such respect — and get it.

And she handled adversity well. “She was not scared,” Timmons-Goodson says.  She had a lot of confidence. She was phenomenal.

“The more I learn, the more fascinated I am, and my respect grows.” 

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net