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Neely W. Shelton came to Arkansas from Tennessee, where he attended a law course and was admitted to practice law in 1903. Shelton was born in Starkville, Mississippi, in 1875 and attended school at the Agricultural and Mechanical College at Rodney, Mississippi. Thereafter, he taught school in Tennessee. Immediately after admission in Tennessee, Shelton moved to Arkansas and was admitted to practice law by the Jefferson County circuit court in April 1903. He was admitted to practice before the state Supreme Court on April 2, 1917. He practiced in Pine Bluff from 1903 to 1929.
Shelton married about 1903, to Marian B., who was born about 1871. The 1910 census listed six children: Carlo, Irene, Della, Eugene, Marian E., and Ella C. At that time, Shelton owned his own home. By 1920, the older three children had left the home and the couple had two more children: Wendell and Laurie Etta. In 1927 and 1929, he and his wife also owned and operated a radio sales and repair business. Shelton died in Pine Bluff on November 5, 1929.
Sources: Judith Kilpatrick, “(EXTRA)Ordinary Men: African-American Lawyers and Civil Rights in Arkansas Before 1950,” 53 Ark. Law Rev. 299, 347 ns350-351, 373, 380 n626 (2000); 1910, 1920 U.S. Census for Arkansas; Papers of the NAACP, Part I, G13, Branch Files, Pine Bluff, 1924-28 (Membership Report dtd 1/14/1928); AR Supreme Court Admission Records;