See William Harold Flowers YouTube video

Throughout the 1940s, Harold Flowers was the leading advocate for civil rights in Arkansas. Harold Flowers set up the Committee on Negro Organizations (CNO) on March 10, 1940, to coordinate voter registration campaigns in the state. As a result of his efforts, the number of eligible black voters in Arkansas rose from 1.5 percent in 1940 to 17.3 percent by 1947.

In a 1947 case, Harold Flowers won a landmark victory in the courts by winning death sentence commutations for two brothers accused of killing two white men. The victory was partly due to his demanding and receiving the appointment of black jury members, who served for the first time in the county since Reconstruction.

In February 1948, Flowers was instrumental in the desegregation of the University Of Arkansas School Of Law by acting as counsel to the successful black applicant Silas Hunt.

In 1949, Flowers sued for the equalization of school facilities for black and white children in DeWitt Arkansas, thereby paving the way for school desegregation cases in Arkansas.

He was ordained as a United Methodist minister in 1971. And, he served as the pastor of the historic St. James United Methodist Church in Pine Bluff. In 1980, Governor Bill Clinton appointed him as an associate justice in the state court of appeals. A year later, the Arkansas Black Lawyers’ Association was renamed the W. Harold Flowers Law Society in his honor..