Devereaux Fore McClatchey, III (1906-1993)

From the 1969-70 Georgia Official Register.

   An Atlanta based attorney for over forty years, Devereaux Fore McClatchey made substantial inroads into Georgia educational and political circles, being a member of the Atlanta Board of Education for two decades (including four years as its president), and also served multiple terms in the state house of representatives. Born into a family with prominent Georgia roots, Devereaux Fore McClatchey III was born in Marietta, Georgia on June 1, 1906, the son of Devereaux Fore Jr. and Leone (Autrey) McClatchey. A distinguished figure in his own right, Devereaux F. McClatchey Jr. served as reading clerk for the Georgia House of Representatives from 1898-1915 and followed this post with a sixteen-year stint as Secretary of the Georgia Senate, 1915-1931.

   Removing to Atlanta with his family at the age of 8, McClatchey attended the Boys High School of that city and graduated from Emory University in the class of 1925. He would return to Emory to earn his law degree and after four years of study graduated with his LL.B degree in 1929. In July 1930 McClatchey married to Dorothy E. Methvin (1907-2009) in New Orleans, Louisiana and the couple's sixty-three-year union saw the births of two children, Eve Leah (born 1936) and Devereaux Fore IV (born 1941.) 

   Several years following his marriage McClatchey joined the Atlanta based law firm of Kilpatrick, Cody, Rogers, McClatchey, and Regenstein, with which he would be affiliated until his retirement in 1976. His status as a leading Atlanta lawyer saw him retain memberships in the Atlanta Lawyers Club, the American Bar Association, and the American Law Institute, and from 1951-52 held the presidency of the Atlanta Bar Association. He would occupy a similar post in the Emory Law alumni organization in 1955.

   Devereaux McClatchey's first entrance into public service came in 1936 when he was elected to the Atlanta Board of Education. He took his seat in 1937 and would serve on this board until 1957, and from 1953-57 served as board president. McClatchey's time in this post came at a watershed moment in American Civil Rights history, and following the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education, a number of Atlanta citizens petitioned the board to "comply with the ruling and integrate." As president of the board during the era of Jim Crow (an era that saw laws that forbade integration), McClatchey and four other school board members issued a resolution, detailing that

"The sole purpose and intent of this board is to protect and improve the school system...Each pupil should have an equal opportunity for education, and all pupils should receive the best possible education. We regard with apprehension any development any development that might in its application tend to interrupt or damage the educational program, or reduce the educational opportunities of any one group of Atlanta's more than 100,000 school children."

   Following this resolution, the Atlanta Board of Education decided that "it could not make or change laws but only preserve the system until conflicts in laws are replaced." In 1956 McClatchey would lose his bid for reelection as school board president to A.C. Latimer (1914-1971). Latimer's tenure as board president saw his name enter the history books as the Latimer in Calhoun et al v. Latimer, a 1958 lawsuit filed against the Atlanta school system for failing to comply with Brown vs. Board of Education. Atlanta schools would finally be integrated in 1961 when the "Atlanta Nine" enrolled as students at four all-white city schools.
   Devereaux McClatchey returned to his law practice after leaving the school board and in 1965 was elected as a Democrat to the Georgia House of Representatives, besting Republican nominee William A. Brown by a vote 1,802 to 1,108. McClatchey's first term in the legislature saw him sit on the Special Judiciary committee's Code Revision sub-committee and the Insurance Committee's subcommittee on Fire, Casualty, and Allied Lines. He would serve two more terms in the statehouse 1967-68 and 1969-70 before retiring from office.
   After retiring from the practice of law in 1976 McClatchey was awarded Emory University's distinguished law alumnus award in 1990 and remained active well into his twilight years, including teaching Sunday school at the First Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. Devereaux F. McClatchey died in LaGrange, Georgia on August 30, 1993, aged 87. He was survived by his wife Dorothy, who lived to become a centenarian, dying in June 2009, shortly after her 102nd birthday. Both were interred at Atlanta's famed Oakwood Cemetery.

From the Atlanta Constitution, August 31, 1993.