. The pretext was that but for the Korean War, Ervin would have attended the University of Florida law school in time to be automatically licensed under what was called a "diploma privilege."
Hadn't Hawkins wanted to attend Florida even earlier? Didn't he have thousands of pages of evidence to prove it? Hadn't he earned the same break as Ben Ervin?
Of course he had, and in 1976 the Florida Supreme Court admitted him to the practice of law. He was nearly 70 years old.
There was more intrigue to that decision than the court wanted known. Digging deep into Florida archives, Harley Herman, a white lawyer in Lake County, found early drafts in which the majority intended only to let Hawkins take the Bar exam. But there was now a black justice on the court, Joseph Hatchett, who thought Hawkins deserved to be admitted outright just like Ben Ervin. He wrote a blistering 12-page dissent that detailed "the injustice members of this Court once willfully wrought" with their "lawlessness on the part of men sworn to uphold the law." One of those lawless men, B.K. Roberts, was still there. The majority gave in to Hatchett, who diplomatically withdrew his dissent. Soon after, Roberts retired. President Jimmy Carter appointed Hatchett to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Hawkins saga would not have a happy ending. He was unprepared for the sole practice he attempted. He made ethical mistakes, in a criminal case for which he wasn't even paid, that led to the court putting him on professional probation. After a second series of violations, in which he mishandled his nephew's guardianship, Hawkins faced disbarment and resigned. "When I get to heaven," he told the court, "I want to be a member of the Florida Bar."
"What he was feeling inwardly, he kept to himself," Barton said. "Outwardly he was jolly, and he would make you laugh, tell jokes all the time."
"I know what I did. I integrated schools in Florida. No one can take that away from me," he said a few months before he died of a stroke in 1988.
Only three white people attended Hawkins' funeral. Herman and his wife were two of them. The white lawyer began a campaign to rehabilitate Hawkins' reputation. It would virtually destroy Herman's Lake County practice - he is now with an Orlando firm - but on his petition the Florida Supreme Court eight months later restored Hawkins posthumously to membership in the Florida Bar. Among the reasons: ". . . so that the errors in judgment made by Hawkins in his unsuccessful attempt to begin to practice law as a man in his seventies, do not overshadow the value of his service to humanity . . ."
"This decision sets no precedent," said the court, "because it is unique." According to Herman, only one other lawyer in the history of the world was readmitted posthumously to the profession of law: Mahatma Gandhi.
Leander Shaw took part in the unanimous decision. Two years later, the court's tradition of rotation by seniority made him the first black chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court.
Collins and Hawkins had never met. But on the day the Supreme Court restored Hawkins to good standing in the Bar, the former governor thanked Herman for filing the petition.
That year also, the Legislature named the University of Florida's third-year law clinic, whose students represent indigent clients, "The Virgil Darnell Hawkins Civil Legal Clinic." Florida State University named a collection of law books for him. In 1999, at a formal ceremony, the court apologized for its "great mistake" in having kept him out of the Florida law school. In May 2001, following a unanimous vote by the Faculty Senate, the University of Florida gave Hawkins its first posthumous degree.
They will be remembering all this at the Florida Supreme Court Monday, where the portraits of Terrell, Mathews, Roberts and all other former justices will bear silent witness from the walls. There's no picture of Hawkins in that gallery, but no one who ever knew him doubts that he will be watching too.