When George Levi Russell Jr. became the first African American to sit on the Circuit Court of Maryland in 1966, his courtroom was often full of spectators.

“Black folks would literally go and sit in this court just to watch this Black judge operate,” said Larry Gibson, a longtime friend and colleague. Gibson, a law school student at the time, was often among them.

It wasn’t the first time Gibson had seen a Black judge — he vividly remembered how incredible it was to see a Black man preside over a courtroom after growing up in a segregated city run by white people. He knew many of the visitors were having the same experience in Russell’s courtroom.

Russell, a man of many firsts who opened doors for Black lawyers across Baltimore and the state, died Saturday. He was 96.

After serving as an associate judge on the Supreme Bench of Baltimore in the mid-1960s, he became the first African American to sit on an appellate court in Maryland. Later, he was the first Black city solicitor of Baltimore, the first Black president of the Bar Association of Baltimore City and one of the first Black candidates for mayor.

The pioneering lawyer was also a champion of racial justice and Black history. In 1982, he established Harbor Bank, one of the country’s largest minority-owned banks. Four years later, in a nationwide first, he merged his all-Black law firm with a predominantly white firm. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he worked for more than a decade to open the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture.

“I want to demonstrate to those who come behind me that they can be successful with hard work, and it is their obligation to serve the community,” Russell said in a 2000 interview after being named a distinguished graduate of the University of Maryland law school. “In me, I want them to see a sermon rather than hear one.”

One of eight children, Russell was born March 19, 1929, in Baltimore. His mother was a homemaker, his father a postal worker, according to a biography in The HistoryMakers, a nonprofit institution chronicling Black history. His father always told him to aim high, so he decided in the third grade to become a lawyer, he said in a 2005 Baltimore Sun interview.

He attended Baltimore City public schools, graduating from Frederick Douglass High School in 1946. There, he served as the sports editor of the school newspaper and was a member of the debate team. As he grew older, he became more aware of the injustices that he and others faced because of their skin color; he recalled in the Sun interview that Black students were often given books already used by white classmates.

“They had pages that were marked over,” Russell said, troubled by the notion that Black students were treated as lesser than their white peers. “Some of the pages were torn.”

After high school, he studied economics at Lincoln University, a historically Black college in Pennsylvania, again joining the debate team. He also pledged Kappa Alpha Psi, a historically Black fraternity. He earned a law degree from the University of Maryland in 1954 and was drafted into the Army soon after. He practiced law while in the military and was in charge of courts, boards and special courts-martial, according to The HistoryMakers.

After his time in the Army, Russell became an associate at Brown, Allen, Watts & Murphy, one of the inaugural Black law firms in Baltimore and the first to have an office downtown. His career accelerated quickly from there, leading to many of his “firsts” in Baltimore and Maryland. Afterward, he was a partner at Russell & Thompson, and later Josey, Gibson, Allen and Mitchell.

“He leaves a legacy of a leader that says that we as a people, as a country, shouldn’t just focus on what is now or what seems to be happening, but on possibilities,” Gibson said. “So much of what he played a major role in getting done, people had difficulty understanding that it was really possible. I don’t even think he wanted to be a judge. I think he did it just to show that it could happen.”

Russell enjoyed creating paths for others to succeed, too, Gibson said. Whenever he accomplished one task, he just moved onto the next, determined to make an impact where he could. He ran for Baltimore mayor in 1971, coming second in the Democratic primary to the eventual mayor, William Donald Schaefer.

That year, there were two strong Black candidates on the ballot, Gibson said, and the results showed “the potential for a Black vote in the city, because up until then, our politics was pretty much effective, we thought, only in one part of the city.”

Russell always took time to mentor young Black lawyers. For three years, he met with Billy Murphy, now a prominent lawyer and civil rights advocate, every Saturday to talk legal strategy and areas for growth.

“He was the greatest lawyer of his time, Black or white,” Murphy said.

Over the years, Russell was also known for his charismatic demeanor and sense of humor. Once, Murphy recalled, he was working with a prosecutor who had a reputation for only speaking with notes in front of him. When the prosecutor was distracted, Russell snatched them up — and the prosecutor only realized his notes were missing when the judge asked him to speak.

The prosecutor froze, and the judge looked knowingly at Russell, Murphy recalled. “Mr. Russell,” the judge said, “you have his notes. Give him back his notes.”

That’s not to say Russell didn’t take his job seriously. He argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and represented a host of clients ranging from the police commissioner to a state senator. Murphy said he once saw Russell preparing for an appearance before the Supreme Court with books and papers spread out all over the floor of his office.

He was a hard worker who woke up early and went to bed early, in part because clients were impressed when they learned he was working on a case at 6 a.m., friends said. He always wore a white shirt under a suit and tie, with a shine on his shoes, Murphy said.

“He wanted to be the best-dressed person in the courtroom, and he also wanted to be the classiest person in the courtroom,” Murphy said. “But more than that, those were all tools to win, because it was tough for Black lawyers back in the day.”

Russell had an unshakeable moral compass that guided him through difficult decisions, including whether to allow the Ku Klux Klan to use what is now the Baltimore Convention Center. He decided they could. As city solicitor, he also defended the city against a lawsuit brought by the NAACP. He acknowledged that many African Americans didn’t understand his rationale.

Still, he remained a consistent advocate for racial equality and social advancement for Black Americans. In 1994, he was appointed chair of the Maryland Museum of African American History and Culture Commission, and he helped create the Maryland African American Museum Corporation.

The judge was arguably the biggest champion for the Lewis Museum, raising more than $30 million to build the institution downtown. Colleagues had considered purchasing an existing building, but “he was absolutely determined that the Black museum was going to be built new,” Gibson said. “It wasn’t going to be what he called a ‘hand-me-down building.’”

It opened in 2005.

“Had he not had the tenacity that he had, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum probably wouldn’t be standing today,” said Terri Lee Freeman, president of the Lewis Museum. “He was determined that this would not just be any throwaway building that they were going to give to the African American Museum, that it was going to be a state-of-the-art building and institution that was representative of the greatness of the contributions of African Americans in the state of Maryland.”

Though Freeman never personally met Russell, stories of his leadership still live within the institution, she said. She knows he was not a pushover.

“Before there was a National Museum of African American History and Culture, there was a Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, and that was because Mr. Russell led the charge that this needed to happen,” she said.

Russell is survived by his son, George Russell III, who followed in his father’s footsteps as a lawyer and is currently chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

The chief district judge, Murphy said, is “the best expression of his father.”

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