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Legal Legends of Color Award Honorees

The ninth annual Legal Legends of Color Awards Celebration will take place Thursday, June 20. The Legal Legends of Color Awards Celebration demonstrates the NCBA’s commitment to embracing diversity and inclusion in the legal profession. The celebration is a time to recognize and honor attorneys and other legal professionals of color whose legacies represent ceilings broken for all attorneys who follow in their footsteps and whose impacts on the legal profession are undeniable.

2024 Legal Legends of Color Award Honorees
The Honorable James Andrew Wynn
Charles L. Becton
The Honorable Patrice A. Hinnant (Ret.)
Cindy Marie Patton
Karl Adkins (posthumously)

The Honorable James Andrew Wynn

The Honorable James Andrew Wynn is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (B.A.), Marquette University School of Law (J.D.), and the University of Virginia School of Law (L.L.M.).

Since 2010, the Honorable Wynn has served on the United States Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. From 1990 to 2010, he was a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals and briefly was a justice on the Supreme Court of North Carolina in 1998. He was a lawyer and military judge in the United States Navy JAG Corps reserves from 1979 to 2009 (Navy Captain with numerous personal awards). Before becoming a judge, he was in the law firm of Fitch, Butterfield, and Wynn, located in Wilson & Greenville, North Carolina.

He has received numerous recognitions, such as the American Law Institute (member); the American Bar Association (ABA Spirit of Excellence Award, Chair of the Commission on Human Rights & Chair of the Judicial Division); the American Bar Endowment Board (member); the Uniform Law Commission (life member); National Bar Association (Alexander Award), the North Carolina Bar Association (Liberty Bell Award). He currently serves on the Marquette University Board of Trustees. His other activities include: U.S. State Department’s International Speaker; Senior Lecturing Fellow, Duke University Law School; Hallows Lecture, Marquette University Law School; Madison Lecture, New York University Law School; Instructor, New Appellate Judges Seminar, New York University Law School; Lecturer, Section 1983 Civil Rights Seminar, Practising Law Institute (PLI), New York City.

Charles L. Becton

Charles L. Becton received his B.A. degree from Howard University in 1966, his J.D. degree from Duke University School of Law in 1969, and his L.L.M. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1986. For nine years, from 1981 to 1990, he was a Judge in the North Carolina Court of Appeals, and in 1985 he was named North Carolina Appellate Judge of the Year. For 30 years, Becton was a litigator who tried scores of major Criminal and Civil Trials. Becton has been included in The Best Lawyers of America since 1993, and he is a Fellow in the American College of Trial Lawyers, the American Board of Trial Attorneys and the International Society of Barristers. He was President of the North Carolina Bar Association in 2008, the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers in 1995, and President of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers in 1980.

Becton was one of ten attorneys selected to demonstrate trial advocacy skills on an ATLA/ABA/NITA video series, Winning at Trial, in April 1986; one of twelve attorneys selected to demonstrate cross-examination skills on an ABA/NITA video project, Mastering the Art of Cross Examination, in June 1986; one of eight attorneys selected to demonstrate trial advocacy skills on an ATLA Video Series “Anatomy of a Personal Injury Lawsuit” in October 1993; and one of a select number of attorneys to demonstrate trial advocacy skills at the American Folklife Festival in 1986.

During the past 35 years, Becton has taught trial advocacy skills to more than 40,000 lawyers, and he has served as the John Scott Cansler Lecturer at the University of North Carolina School of Law, and as a Senior Lecturer in Law, as well as a Professor of the Practice, at Duke University Law School. He has taught and lectured at trial advocacy skills institutes across the country, in Canada, and in the Republic of South Africa. From 2016-2020, Becton served as the RJR Nabisco Endowed Chair at North Carolina Central School of Law where he taught Rhetoric and Advocacy.

Becton has received numerous awards including three national trial advocacy teaching awards. In January 1988, Becton received the William J. Brennan, Jr. Trial Advocacy Award for his work in improving the skills of trial lawyers. In June 1990, Becton was the first recipient of the Charles L. Becton Trial Advocacy Award given annually by the North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers. In July 1990, Becton was a co-recipient of the Roscoe Pound Foundation’s Richard S. Jacobson Award from the Association of Trial Lawyers of America recognizing the nation’s best trial advocacy teacher.

In January 1990, he received the North Carolina Association of Educators “Excellence in Equity” Award. In May 1995, Becton received the South Carolina Trial Jury Foundation’s Distinguished Service Award. In October 1995, Becton received the Robert Keeton NITA Trial Advocacy Teaching Award.

In May 2006, Becton was the first recipient of The Advocate’s Award from the NC Bar Association Litigation Section. In October 2006, he was appointed to the NC Innocence Inquiry Commission, and he received the American Bar Association’s Torts and Insurance Practice Section’s Pursuit of Justice Award.

In 2013, Becton received the Elon University School of Law Leadership in the Law Award. In 2013 and 2014, Becton was asked to lead institutions of higher education. He served as Interim Chancellor at North Carolina Central University 2013-14 and as Interim Chancellor at Elizabeth City former Administrative Law Judge Brenda Becton, and they have three children — Nicole, Kevin and Michelle.

The Honorable Patrice A. Hinnant (Ret.)

The Honorable Patrice A. Hinnant (Ret.) is an attorney who serves as a State Bar Councilor following twenty-two years of judicial service, including nine years as a Guilford County Resident Superior Court Judge and thirteen years on the Guilford County District Court. She began her career as an Assistant Public Defender in Greensboro. She is a graduate of Spelman College, North Carolina Central University School of Law and has done additional study at the National Judicial College, the North Carolina School of Government and Shaw University Divinity School.

The Honorable Hinnant served the legal profession as a board member and secretary of the North Carolina Conference of Superior Court Judges for seven years; board member and Vice President of the North Carolina Bar Association; board member and Vice President of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers; President of the Greensboro Bar Association; National Bar Association, past Board member and Judicial Council Chair; American Bar Association Judicial Division and Commission on Youth at Risk; and, Guilford Inn of Court Master. She is currently affiliated with the American Bar Association; National Bar Association; North Carolina Bar Association; North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers: Guilford County Association of Black Lawyers; and, Greensboro Bar Association. She is a graduate of Leadership Greensboro and is a Fellow of the NC Institute of Political Leadership.

She has a pioneering presence in the Guilford County legal community as the first Black female Assistant Public Defender, the first female elected District Court Judge from the Democratic Party, the first Black female and first sitting judge elected President of the Greensboro Bar Association, first Black female Resident Superior Court Judge, and First Black female elected State Bar Councilor. Her presence in each position opened the door for others to soon follow.

The Honorable Hinnant takes pleasure in community service and is currently active with the Greensboro Club of Rotary International for which she is a board member, President-Elect Nominee (2025-26) and Paul Harris Fellow; The Links, Incorporated, past Vice President of Programs of the Greensboro Chapter and past Chair of the Ethics and Standards Committee of the National Executive Council; The Junior League of Greensboro, Past President and Sustainer board member; and, the Greensboro Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, having served as chapter President and on the National Executive Board as Co-chair of the Social Action Commission among other sorority regional and national positions. In each of the organizations, she has received awards for service.
Additionally, the Honorable Hinnant currently serves on the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University Board of Visitors and the North Carolina Governor’s Mansion Fine Arts Committee.

Likewise, as a community servant through the years, she has participated on numerous boards including Board of Trustees for Moses Cone Memorial Hospital; Board of Directors for Moses Cone/Wesley Long Community Health Foundation; Board of Directors for the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro; Community Advisory Board for Bankers Trust (now Truist Bank); the Commissions of The Carolina Theatre, Bryan Park and Center City Park, including Chair of both the United Arts Council of Greensboro (now Arts Greensboro) and Youth Services Bureau of Greensboro (now Youth Focus); and other Boards too numerous to name. She has served as a state appointee to the Guilford County Board of Elections and the North Carolina Low-Level Radioactive Waste Authority.

Similarly in the civic arena, she pioneered as the first Black Chair of the United Arts Council of Greensboro (now Arts Greensboro), the first Black President of the Junior League of Greensboro and the first Black Chair of Youth Services Bureau (renamed Youth Focus) and upcoming first Black female president of the Greensboro Rotary Club.

She has traveled on sorority-organized mission trips to South Africa and Swaziland; faith community-organized trips to Israel, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Southern Civil Rights Tour through Selma, Montgomery, Birmingham and Atlanta; Rotary International organized trip for polio eradication to India; Bar organized trips to England, Senegal, Ivory Coast (Cote D’Ivoire), Cuba and multiple Caribbean and Central American countries in addition to personal study travel in Europe. She credits those exposures with expanding consciousness of the human condition, the significance of societal reliance on the rule of law and justice, the hope for peace, and a universal desire to know joy, good health and comfort.

She strives to live a life of purpose and to make a difference in the world. The motto of her college is ‘Our Whole School for Christ’; it was there that she was encouraged to bloom in her native soil of North Carolina, to extend sisterly friendship in collaborations and to give service to various community arenas of encounter.

The Honorable Hinnant, a native and resident of Greensboro, is a Christian and enjoys travel, college and professional sports, old movies, reading, spending time with friends, family genealogy, pet care and ‘piddling in the yard’.

Cindy Marie Patton

Cindy Marie Patton earned a BA in Psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and worked for ten years in private industry. Feeling the need to do more for her community, she decided to go to law school and obtained a law degree from the University of North Carolina School of Law. While in law school, she was a member of the Jessup International Moot Court and the Order of Barristers.

After graduation, Patton became a staff attorney for Legal Services of Southern Piedmont, in Charlotte where she had interned after her first year of law school. While an intern, she saw the impact that the Legal Services attorneys made in people’s lives and decided that providing legal services to individuals who could not afford attorneys was the career path for her. Patton became an active member of the North Carolina State Bar and established a remarkable legal career advocating for North Carolina residents’ rights and access to justice since graduating in 1992. While at Legal Services she became the Team Leader for the family law unit and later was promoted to Managing Attorney. In 2002, she left Legal Services of Southern Piedmont and joined the newly created Legal Aid of North Carolina where she continued her role as the Managing Attorney at the Charlotte office. For more than 30 years, she represented low-income residents in Mecklenburg County, NC. As a Legal Aid attorney, Patton provided legal services in areas including landlord/tenant, domestic violence, unemployment benefits, bankruptcy, and consumer law.

Patton broke the ceiling by becoming the first female and the first African American Managing Attorney of Legal Aid of North Carolina’s Charlotte Office. Under her leadership as Managing Attorney, staff grew exponentially and expanded legal services. Under Cindy’s direction, the Charlotte Office’s Housing Unit which defends evictions, advocates for tenants’ rights, and prevents homelessness grew from a staff of five, which assisted approximately three hundred clients a year, to a staff of nineteen which now assists about 1,700 clients a year. The Office acquired a new building in East Charlotte to house its expanded staff and to continue advocating for equal justice. Patton’s vision and tireless efforts to build relationships with local government, private businesses, the local bar, and the community at large played a pivotal role in the Charlotte Office’s expansion.

In addition to positively impacting the residents of Mecklenburg County, Patton had a tremendous impact on her staff. After the Office expansion, she managed and inspired over thirty attorneys, paralegals, and support staff who provide civil legal services to Mecklenburg County’s low-income population. Charlotte Office staff report that she exuded an aura of calm wisdom and worked hard to create a positive and supportive environment in the Office as staff engaged in extremely demanding work. The attorneys in her Office stated that Patton trusted and respected her staff, helped them gain the necessary tools to succeed, and invested in their professional development. Some staff whom Patton previously supervised have benefited from her guidance as they pursued their career paths and became judges, legal directors of domestic violence organizations, and active members of the legal community.

Patton is a phenomenal leader imbuing attorneys, paralegals, students, and volunteers with a sense of social justice and empathy for those who face adversity. Her accomplishments demonstrate excellence and exemplary service to a multitude of Mecklenburg County residents. Cindy’s example paved the way for other legal advocates to follow in her inspirational footsteps.

Karl Adkins (posthumously)

Karl Adkins was a husband, father and grandfather who was loved and cherished by Carrietta, his wife of 52 years, his daughters Brandie Harris (Ben Harris) and Kristan Adkins (Dana Lumsden) and his beloved grandchildren, Karly and Maxwell.

Adkins attended UNC-Chapel Hill for his undergraduate work. During the summer of his junior year, Karl worked for Youth Educational Services. He convinced Carrietta, a school and church friend since ninth grade, to volunteer daily to teach dance to children participating in the non-profit camp. Because he liked the way she worked with children, he asked her out to dinner. They were engaged three months later when he gave her a diamond ring circled around the glass stopper of a perfume bottle. They married in 1969.

Adkins was the 1968 recipient of the distinguished John Hay Whitney Fellowship to attend the University of Michigan Law School. After receiving, his Juris Doctor Degree in 1971, Karl clerked for District Court Judge Damon Keith in Detroit, Michigan. Immediately after his clerkship, he moved to Charlotte where he was hired by Chambers, Stein, Ferguson and Lanning. At the time, fifteen attorneys were working in the Charlotte and Chapel Hill offices.

The firm had a national and international reputation in school desegregation, employment discrimination, voting rights, general civil rights litigation and criminal defense. Karl focused his practice on criminal defense and personal injury. Karl and Jim Fuller, a former law partner, were co-counsel for the now-famous Ronnie Long case. Fuller describes Karl’s closing argument as the best he had seen. They were haunted by losing the case and worked with others to obtain Long’s release and wrongful conviction after forty-four years in prison. After thirty-two years, Karl left the firm when he was appointed as a Superior Court Judge by Governor Mike Easley in 2005. He relished being a judge and served for three years. There were many highlights in his legal career including: President, Board of Directors of Legal Services of Southern Piedmont; Member of the North Carolina Board of Law Examiners; President of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers; and North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers (Member of the Board of Governors).

Adkins and his wife were fortunate to be able to enjoy fourteen retired years together. Adkins read voraciously and played golf often with the Charlotte Golfing Seniors and friends. He loved seeing plants grow and added some new plants to his yard every spring. The couple traveled extensively and cherished precious times with their family, especially Karly and Maxwell.

Adkins taught his family many lessons: to be supportive of others, to be tenacious in going after dreams, to be proactive in admitting and correcting mistakes, to listen fully with your ears and heart, to use good grammar, to go after a bargain and to boldly use titles bestowed upon you like “King” and “Judge.” He leaves a rich legacy of perseverance, thoughtfulness and love.

Previous Legal Legends of Color Honorees

  • 2023 Honorees – Judge Joe L. Webster, Judge Addie M. Harris Rawls (Ret.), Former Rep. Annie, Brown Kennedy (posthumously), Secretary Pamela B. Cashwell, Brenda Ford Harding
  • 2022 Honorees – Judge Ola M. Lewis (posthumously), Attorney Arlinda F. Locklear, Attorney Margaret Dudley, Attorney Georgia Jacquez Lewis
  • 2021 Honorees – Judge Elreta Melton Alexander (posthumously), Attorney Karen Bethea-Shields, Judge Wanda G. Bryant, Professor James E. Coleman, Jr., Attorney Julian Pierce (posthumously)
  • 2020 Honorees – Judge Yvonne Mims Evans, Attorney Anthony Fox, Attorney J. Kenneth Lee* (posthumously), Senator Dan T. Blue, Jr., Professor George R. Johnson, Jr.
  • 2019 Honorees – Professor Charles Daye, Former U.S. Attorney Janice McKenzie Cole, Former Legislator H. M. “Mickey” Michaux Jr., Judge Sammie Chess, Attorney Julius Chambers (posthumously)
  • 2018 Honorees – Judge Shirley Fulton, Judge Paul Jones, Attorney Glenn Adams, Attorney Victor Boone
  • 2017 Honorees – Judge Albert Diaz, Former Justice Patricia Timmons-Goodson, Professor Irving Joyner
  • 2016 Honorees – Chief Justice Cheri Lynn Beasley, Former Chief Justice Henry E. Frye, Attorney James E. “Fergie” Ferguson II