Atticus Dickson Kirby (1868-1960)

Portrait from the Jackson County Chronicles, Vol 31, No. 1, 2019.

  While the name "Atticus" may be familiar to most as the first name of the beloved character Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's  To Kill A Mockingbird, that curious first name is seldom to be found amongst the annals of American politics. Three-term Alabama state representative Atticus Dickson Kirby is an exception to that rule, as he is the first "Atticus" to found by this author who served in some political capacity. Kirby had the honor of representing two different counties in the legislature (his first and second terms being spaced 24 years apart) and in the late 1930s briefly served as probate judge for Jackson County. 

   A native of Chattanooga County, Georgia, Atticus Dickson Kirby was born in the town of Summerville on June 16, 1868, the son of Francis Andrew Kirby and the former Harriet Ann Shropshire. Prominent in politics in his own right, Francis A. Kirby (1824-1885) represented Summerville in the Georgia State Assembly for fourteen years (1854-68) and for two years held the post of state superior court judge. 

  Atticus Kirby's formative years were spent in the town of his birth, where he attended local schools. From 1889-90 he was a student at Emory University in Atlanta and for a four year period in the late 1880s was employed by an uncle, J.W. Bale, in the city of Rome. This was followed by an eight-year stint as a traveling salesman from 1893-1901, and in April of the latter year married in Scottsboro, Alabama to Zaida Brown (1873-1967). The couple's near six-decade marriage would be childless.

   Kirby and his wife settled in Huntsville following their marriage, where he operated a mercantile store, and two years after his resettlement he was elected as secretary of the Retail Grocer's Association of Huntsville.

A Kirby-Brown wedding notice from the Birmingham Age-Herald, April 4, 1901.

   Having first entered politics in 1901 with a brief stint as a town councilman in his native Summerville, Kirby made his first entrance onto the Alabama political stage in November 1906 when he was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives, polling 1,219 votes. One of two Madison County legislators elected for the 1907-11 term, Kirby was named to the committees on Commerce and Common Carriers, Education, Labor and Immigration, and Municipal Organization. In 1934, twenty-three years after the conclusion of his first term, Kirby made his second run for the legislature, this time from Jackson County. After winning the May Democratic primary, Kirby went on to win the November general election, polling 2,726 votes. The 1935-39 session saw Kirby named to four new committees, those being the Military, Manufacturing, Public Buildings and Institutions, and Public Roads and Highways.

  Midway through his second term Kirby was appointed by then-Governor Bibb Graves as Probate Judge of Jackson County, succeeding Judge Ray McAnelly, who had resigned. Kirby sat on the bench until November 1938, and in November 1942 won a third term in the statehouse. During the 1943-47 session, Kirby again served on the Committee on Commerce and Common Carriers and was also named to the committees on Public Health, Public Welfare and Corrective Institutions, and Revision of Laws.
   Following his final term in the legislature, Kirby and his wife Zaida removed back to Scottsboro, where they resided at Brownwood, Zaida Brown Kirby's ancestral family home. He celebrated his 90th birthday in 1958 and died aged 91 in January 1960. Kirby's wife Zaida survived him by several years and following her death at 94 in 1967 was interred alongside him at the Cedar Hill Cemetery in Scottsboro.