Charles W. Pickering

Charles Willis Pickering, Sr. (born May 29, 1937 in Laurel, Mississippi, USA) is a retired federal judge who served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Judge Pickering received a B.A. from the University of Mississippi in 1959, and an LL.B. also from the University of Mississippi in 1961. Active in the Democratic Party of the State of Mississippi in the early 1960s, Judge Pickering switched to the Mississippi Republican Party in 1964. He claimed at the time that "the people of [Mississippi] were heaped with humiliation and embarrassment at the Democratic Convention" in Atlantic City after the national Democratic Party seated two civil rights activists from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party with the...