Benjamin Franklin Cameron

Benjamin Franklin Cameron (December 14, 1890 – April 3, 1964) was an American jurist from the state of Mississippi. He served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1955 to 1964. The Fifth Circuit was a key court during the civil rights era in the 1950s and 1960s as it covered Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, all of which had varying levels of racial segregation. During his tenure, Cameron, a segregationist, often found himself in the minority of civil-rights cases, with a group of more liberal judges, known as the Fifth Circuit Four, overturning Jim Crow laws. Shortly before his death, he charged the Chief Judge of the circuit with purposefully assigning these judges to cases with the intent of overturning segregation.