Athens’ post office will be officially renamed for Judge James E. Horton Jr. at a ceremony slated for next month, the United States Postal Service announced Wednesday.

The public is invited to attend the rededication ceremony, set for 1 p.m. Wednesday, April 24, at the post office at 1110 W. Market St., Athens. The USPS said members of the Horton family, postal officials and community dignitaries will be in attendance.

Athens Mayor Ronnie Marks said the honor was “long overdue.” He also thanked the efforts of all those who helped make it happen, including Erich Snoke and Johns Davis, who sought to have a U.S. stamp made to honor Horton.

Efforts to honor Horton by the USPS took a giant step forward with a resolution offered by U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-5th. Brooks’ bill was co-sponsored by each of the six U.S. representatives from Alabama. The resolution was passed by both the U.S. House and Senate and signed by President Donald Trump.

“I’m excited for the community and for the Horton family,” Marks said.

The post office rededication represents the second significant honor for Horton in the last two years. In October 2017, a statue of Horton was installed on the lawn of the Limestone County Courthouse.

The Limestone County Bar Association decided to erect the statue, and the Judge Horton Monument Committee was established to raise the $60,000 in private donations needed to have the statue made. No government money was used for the project.

About Horton

Judge James Edwin Horton was born in Limestone County on Jan. 4, 1878. Despite having no formal education until he was eight or nine, Judge Horton was accepted to Vanderbilt University’s medical studies program and, later, to Cumberland University, where he earned his bachelor’s and law degrees.

He served in the Legislature until he took a court position in Limestone County. He was later elected circuit court judge for Alabama’s Eighth Judicial Circuit.

After re-election to a second term, Judge Horton was appointed to preside over the retrials of the highly controversial and nationally renowned Scottsboro Boys cases. The Scottsboro Boys cases involved nine African Americans, ages 13 to 20, wrongly accused of raping two white women on a train in 1931 as it traveled through Scottsboro and Jackson County.

In the first trials, eight of nine defendants were found guilty and sentenced to death, a verdict later reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. After a guilty verdict and death sentence during the second set of Scottsboro Boys trials, Judge Horton issued an order setting aside the jury’s guilty verdict against Haywood Patterson and ordered a new trial. In 2013, the Scottsboro Boys were formally pardoned under Alabama law.