Home | Background | Lawyers | Wiley Austin Branton | Contact
Benjamin F. (“B. Frank”) Adair was born in Arkansas in 1853, was literate, and earned his living as a lawyer in Woodruff County in 1880. In 1880, the Census reported him as 27 years of age and married to Dosie, with one child. In 1891, he served as state representative from Pulaski County in the Arkansas General Assembly. Unusual for his time, he was a Democrat. He is listed as an attorney in the Argenta (now North Little Rock, Pulaski County) City Directories of 1890. His politics apparently did not estrange him from other Black lawyers, as he was a member of the Wonder State Bar Association, a Black attorney organization, in 1901. He was a member of the Pine Bluff branch of the NAACP in 1937 and 1938. It is not known when he died.
Sources: Blake J. Wintory, African-American Legislators in the Arkansas General Assembly, 1868-1893, LXV Ark. Hist. Q. 385; Judith Kilpatrick, “(EXTRA)Ordinary Men: African-American Lawyers and Civil Rights in Arkansas Before 1950,” 53 Ark. Law Rev. 299, 302 n6, 331, 345 (2000); Papers of the NAACP, Part I, G13, Branch Files (Membership Report, 7/18/2937, letter to Wm Pickens, dated 6/27/1938); 1880 Arkansas Census;