Very sad news out of Memphis this morning, reporting the death of my friend Mike Cody. Much will be written and remembered about this good and accomplished man, but the obituary running in the Memphis Flyer is the most succinct so far.
W.J. Michael Cody had many roles in Tennessee’s largest city - lecturer, author, US attorney, candidate for mayor, one of Dr. King’s last lawyers in the final hours before an assassin took the civil rights leader away. But Mike was also a prominent figure in our state.
I interviewed Mike many times over the years, the first time catching him for breakfast in a cafe off the Peabody Hotel lobby. But my favorite visit was in 2017 to hear his stories for my book Crossing the Aisle, about Tennessee leaders who rose above political partisanship in the Eighties and Nineties. In our visit for the interview, his mind and memories were sharp as could be.
He had invited me to his law office, and I arranged to be there at a morning hour, wanting to be as unintrusive as possible to Mike’s legal work day, so the office was quiet, but Mike graciously seemed unhurried. When our session ended, he kindly took me on a personal tour of his office, in the storied firm of Burch, Porter and Johnson, at the corner of Second and Court. Mike’s own office was at the street level, in the imposing turret on the corner.
When I arrived, I remember asking about a particular photo on Mike’s office wall. (It’s the same image that’s running with the Flyer obit today.) In the black-and-white image, five men enter a federal courtroom in Memphis on April 4, 1968 - the King associates James Lawson and Andrew Young, accompanied by the lawyers Lucius Burch, Charlie Newman, and Mike Cody. They were there to address the injunction filed by local officials to bar King from returning to Memphis in his support of the fateful sanitation workers strike.
Elsewhere in the law office, Mike showed me the large room where Boss Ed Crump would meet with the city’s lobbyists to the state legislature, ever instructing them on what bills Memphis needed and which they should oppose. The colorful boss of Memphis was of course long gone on the morning of my visit - he died in 1954 - but it’s hard to learn any history of Memphis without the story coming back to Crump, even now.
Mike, a Democrat, served on the Memphis City Council from 1975 to 1977. Then, Senator Jim Sasser (who died last week) recommended Mike to President Jimmy Carter for appointment as the U.S. Attorney for West Tennessee. (Sasser told me Cody was his first recommendation for a Presidential appointment after his own Senate election in late 1976.) Mike would serve in this federal prosecutor role until 1981.
In 1984, he was named by the state Supreme Court to be Tennessee’s Attorney General, serving until 1988, bridging the terms of the governors Lamar Alexander and Ned McWherter.
Mike Cody held many titles over his good life of 88 years, but for me he was also a living symbol of justice and of doing what’s right.
Mike was a former law partner of mine. More importantly, a close friend. His life commitment to 'what is right' for all people was an inspiration to all of us who knew him.
What a heartfelt tribute. Please keep writing.