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Wallace Leon Purifoy, Jr. was admitted to practice by the state supreme court on January 17, 1938, and practiced in Forrest City, Arkansas, in 1938. He attended Knoxville College in Tennessee, and the Chicago School of Law thereafter. In 1938, Purifoy was a member of the Wonder State Bar Association, a Black lawyers group. He still was in practice during the late 1950s and 1960s. In the 1960s, he worked with civil rights activist, Wiley A. Branton, of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, taking over many of Branton’s cases when Branton left the state to work in the Voter Education Project.
He was born October 9, 1896, and married Tolise Ganberry in 1927. He was active in helping young people with athletic activities. He died in December 1972, with his last residence in Forrest City, Arkansas. Nothing more is known about him.
Sources: Judith Kilpatrick, “(EXTRA)Ordinary Men: African-American Lawyers and Civil Rights in Arkansas Before 1950,” 53 Ark. Law Rev. 299, 359, 381 n630, 388, 394 (2000); e-mail from Wattis D. Gentry, dtd 8/28/2006,containing article: Fred Conley, 2002 Forrest City Athletic Hall of Fame, Lincoln Class: Rooks, Douglass and Purifoy, “http://www.thnews.com/archive/ar2002/spetember/sports9-18.html” (visited 10/15/2003); e-mail from Stephen, dtd 2/16/2009, citing http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com and http://vitals.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ca/death/search.cgi; letter dtd 12/22/1965 from Wiley A. Branton to the Honorable Lee Ward (listing Mrs. Purifoy as a contact in the First Congressional District of Arkansas);