In March 1956 – nearly a century after the United States Supreme Court held the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was unconstitutional in Dred Scott v. Sanford (March 1857) – Theodore McMillian became Missouri's first African American state court judge. 

The great-grandson of a slave, McMillian earned degrees in mathematics and physics in 1941 from Lincoln University, the only accredited public four-year institution available for African Americans at the time. He then served as a signal corps officer for an African American division of the United States Army, achieving the rank of first lieutenant. Upon his discharge in 1946, he became one of the first black students to attend Saint Louis University School of Law and only the second to graduate. Although he graduated first in his class of 1949, he was unable to find employment, and so he formed a law firm with Alphonse Lynch, the first black to graduate from Saint Louis University's law school. 

In 1953, Edward Dowd hired McMillian as an assistant circuit attorney for the city of St. Louis. A well-respected prosecutor with a reputation for hard work and ethical standards, McMillian was appointed in 1956 by then-Governor Phil Donnelly to the St. Louis circuit court, making McMillian the first African American to serve as a state court judge in Missouri. In the fall of 1972, then-Governor Warren Hearnes elevated McMillian to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, making him Missouri's first black appellate judge.

When McMillian was appointed in October 1978 by then-President Jimmy Carter to serve as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, he became the first African American to serve as a federal judge at any level within the seven states comprising the circuit. He took senior status in July 2003 and continued serving in this capacity until his death in January 2006 just 10 days shy of his 87th birthday. Although he served as a mentor for many during his five decades of judicial service, including for many lawyers and judges of color striving to follow in his footsteps, McMillian's personal credo was: "It is more important to be human than to be important." For additional information about Judge McMillian, please read his biography available through the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit law library.

Judges for whom McMillian helped pave the way include Clyde Cahill, who joined the St. Louis circuit attorney's office in 1956 when McMillian was appointed to the circuit bench. Following a successful career in both state and federal positions, Cahill was appointed a St. Louis circuit judge in 1975. Five years later, he became the first African American to serve as a federal trial judge in Missouri when he was sworn in as a United States district judge for the Eastern District of Missouri. 

In 1965, Nathan B. Young Jr. was appointed municipal judge in St. Louis, the first African American to hold this position. A native of Tuskegee, Alabama, Young earned his law degree in 1918 from Yale Law School, moved to St. Louis in 1924 and, three years later, became a founding member of  the Mound City Bar Association, a prominent bar association for Black lawyers. 

On the other side of the state, Fernando Gaitan Jr. in November 1980 was appointed the second African American circuit judge in the state when he was appointed a circuit judge in Jackson County. (The first was Lewis Clymer, appointed a decade earlier.) In March 1986, he became the first African American judge appointed to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, and only the second Black appellate judge in the state's history behind McMillian. Five years later, he became the first African American judge appointed to the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri. 

In 1994, George W. Draper III became the first African American male judge to serve in St. Louis County when he was appointed associate circuit judge. He was elevated to circuit judge four years later. In 2000, he was appointed to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, for which he was the first Black chief judge from July 2004 through June 2005.

Despite the "first" forged by Judges McMillian and Gaitan, the state's high court did not have its first judge of color until October 1995, when then appellate judge Ronnie L. White of St. Louis was appointed to the Supreme Court of Missouri. He served as a state representative from 1990 to 1993 and, in 1994, was appointed to the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, where he served until his elevation to the Supreme Court. He served as Missouri's first Black chief justice from July 2003 through June 2005. He retired from the Court in July 2007 and returned to private practice for seven years, until he was confirmed as a federal trial judge in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri in July 2014. 

In October 2011, Judge George W. Draper III was appointed to the Supreme Court of Missouri – only the second judge of color to serve in the Court's 200-year history – and will complete his two year term as the state's second Black chief justice in June 2021.

By January 2021, there were more than 30 judges, across all levels of the state's court system, who identified as members of racial or ethnic minorities or as more than one race.
 

Image at top left: Judge Theodore McMillian, left, is sworn in as a St. Louis city circuit judge by Judge Waldo C. Mayfield in March 1956, from "The Honorable Theodore McMillian Leading the Way," a biography published by the U.S. Courts Library for the 8th Circuit. Image courtesy of the United States Circuit Court for the Eighth Circuit, St. Louis, Missouri.