The first black woman to earn a license to practice law in Texas has died. Charlye Farris died Thursday in Wichita Falls of cancer at age 80. Wichita County District Attorney Barry Macha, a friend, says Farris died at 5:15 p.m. Thursday with her son, Troy, at bedside. Macha tells the Wichita Falls Times Record News that Farris left Wichita Falls and Texas to attend law school in Denver because of her race. She returned to Wichita Falls, earned her law license in 1953 and became the first woman of any race to practice law in Wichita County. In 1954, she became a county judge pro tem, the first black woman to serve in a judicial position in the South since Reconstruction.
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