James Benton Parsons was the fourth of five children of evangelistic minister James B. Parsons and his second wife, music teacher Virgia Mason Parsons. Rev. Parsons worked for the United Christian Missionary Society and traveled throughout the Midwest. The family moved to Decatur from Champaign in 1923 because Champaign schools were racially segregated, and they heard that Decatur had a excellent school system which was racially integrated. The family attended and was active in Decatur’s Central Christian Church. During their transition to Decatur, the Parsons lived with the family of Ellsworth H. Dansby, Sr. for a month until their 1021 W. Howard Street house was ready. “Jimmy” Parsons was one of the few Black males to attend Decatur High School in the 1920s after attending Oakland Elementary and Roosevelt Junior High School. During this time his best friend was white classmate John Regan, who later served for many years as the attorney for the Decatur chapter of the NAACP.
Parsons was in the high school band and choir, and during a 1988 interview said he was paid to play the organ at St. Peter’s A.M.E. Church. When his high school band played in Springfield in 1928, the Leland Hotel restaurant’s Black waiters refused to allow Parsons to sit at lunch with his white bandmates. After failing to get this arrangement changed, Decatur band director Rex Rees pulled all of his students out of that restaurant in protest of the racial discrimination and gave them money to eat where they wished.
An excellent student in school, Parsons, the only Black student in his high school class of over two hundred, was named the senior class orator for its 1929 graduation ceremonies. The June 8, 1929, Decatur Herald reported about his presentation as follows: “James Parsons, class orator, was himself the living expression of his oration theme, ‘The Winning Personality.’ The tall colored boy exerted a magnetism that was felt immediately when he began his address and carried through a delivery in which he impressed the value of cultivating a personality which has charm and power applied for good. Young Parsons’ oration was acknowledged with a salvo of applause, prolonged and sincere.”
Parsons paid for his way through Millikin University by working various jobs at the Decatur Herald & Review and earned his B.A. in 1934. He wanted to be a lawyer since Jr. High School but still could not afford law school, so he joined the faculty of the historically Black Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he taught music and political science for six years, and served as acting head of the university’s Music Department from 1938 to 1940.
In 1940 he was enticed to join well-known music composer R. Nathaniel Dett at Bennett College, a Black women’s institution in Greensboro, North Carolina. When this opportunity did not turn out as he wished, he accepted a job with the Greensboro public school system as supervisor of instrumental music for that district’s segregated Black schools and as band director at Dudley High School.
In 1942 the United States Navy created a series of Negro service bands in which Blacks could serve at a higher rank than “messmen”. Parsons enlisted and served as bandmaster of one of these bands, from 1942 to 1944 in North Carolina and then through December 1945 in Honolulu After the war, in 1946 Parsons used the G.I. Bill’s funding for veteran’s education and earned an M.A. in political science from the University of Chicago. In 1949 he received his law degree there and went into private practice in Chicago until 1951 while also serving as assistant corporation counsel for that city’s government. From October 12, 1951 to September 1960 he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, starting under future Illinois governor Otto Kerner, Jr.
Parsons’ first federal assignment was to investigate and prosecute selective service violation cases related to the military draft. In an eighteen-month span he obtained sixty-three convictions. Fifteen of these were later appealed to higher courts, but all of the convictions were upheld. In 1955, working under Republican U.S. Attorney Robert Tieken, Parsons gained much publicity when he successfully convicted the head of the Illinois Communist Party, “a Negro,” Claude M. Lightfoot of violating the Smith Act, suggesting the violent overthrow of the democratic government. At the time, the then very conservative Chicago Tribune praised the Negro prosecutor who “manifestly believes the American way is superior to the communist way.” After the conviction Parsons opined, “There is one thing I know about the Communists that disturbs me as far as a Negro Communist is concerned – one of the party’s tactics is to use representatives of ethnic groups to exploit members of their own groups in the interest of the party.” Although saying that race had nothing to do with this case, Parsons’ boss Robert Tieken stated that Parsons “is a credit to his country, his profession, the office he holds, and his people. I am extremely proud to have him as a member of my staff.” [Lightfoot’s conviction in January 1955 was appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which reversed the conviction (355 U.S. 2 (1957)) resulting in Lightfoot's acquittal in 1961.]
In December 1952, Parsons married Amy Margaret Maxell of Chicago, whose family was said to have had connections to traditionally all-Black Wilberforce University. Since both spouses were older with established careers, they decided not to conceive any children. Instead, on December 10, 1957, they officially adopted Hans Dieter Kunz, a mixed-race boy from Germany who could speak almost no English when he came to them in 1955. Amy Parsons passed away in Chicago on July 22, 1967 at age 56 after losing her battle with cancer.
In December 1960, Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daly nominated Parsons to run for a vacant three-year spot on the Superior Court of Cook County. At the November 8, 1960 general election, Parsons defeated Black Republican Archibald J. Carey, a former United Nations alternate delegate, 1,073,247 to 905,654. Parsons started his new $32,000 a year judgeship in December 1960. While only serving in this position for ten months, he was featured in the Chicago newspapers nearly every day in June, July and August 1961 when he served as the judge hearing the infamous and sensitive Summerdale police scandal trial. Judge Parsons told the media, “My job is referee of law.”
While taking a weekend break from the trial, Parsons and his family were sleeping in at a vacation rental in Michigan when the phone awakened him at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 7, 1961. When grousing about who would bother him on his rare day off, Parsons remembered that the voice on the other end of the line said, “This is John F. Kennedy, and I’d like to announce to the world that I am nominating the first Negro to the U.S. District Court bench.” On Friday, September 23, 1961, James Benton Parsons was installed as judge of the United States District Court of the northern district of Illinois, the first Black person to receive a lifetime federal judge appointment. The former class orator said, “For me, this is not a moment of exaltation for courageous postulations. Rather, this is a moment of wonderment, of humility, of dedication.” He went on to serve with great distinction as a federal judge until he retired in September 1992.
On February 17, 1967, his former federal boss, now Governor Otto Kerner, proclaimed Judge James B. Parsons Day in Illinois. A week later, on February 26, Parsons returned to Decatur to attend the dedication of the new James B. Parsons Elementary School. He called the honor “a full expression of affection from Illinois’ finest town.” The school, he predicted, “will develop the capacity to live in tomorrow’s world of science and technology, and promote a new type of society respecting human dignity without regard to ethnic differences.” James Parsons died in Chicago in 1993 at 81 years old. He is buried at Greenwood Cemetery in Decatur, Illinois.
Prepared by Mark W. Sorensen, November 2025.
