James E. Henson, Sr., Esq.   

   In 1981, James E. Henson, Sr., Esq. became the

   first African American Assistant County Solicitor in

   the Howard County Office of Law.  In 1985 Henson

   co-founded the Waring Mitchell Law Society to

   galvanize the voice of African American lawyers in

   Howard County to address the unique challenges

   facing Black lawyers who were unfamiliar to the

   local legal establishment.   In 1989 Henson

   unsuccessfully sought a Howard County judgeship.

   In 1992, James E. Henson, Sr., then a Sr. Assistant

   County Solicitor and legal counsel to the Howard

   County Human Rights Commission, became the

   Administrator of the Howard County Office of

   Human Rights by appointment from County

   Executive Charles “Chuck” Ecker.

   In 1992 Henson publicly pushed for effective “race

   relations leadership at all levels of the county” in the

   aftermath of the Rodney King police officers verdict

   in Los Angeles, California.  (Howard County Times)

   A meeting of 22 prominent community leaders was

   promptly convened to address the treatment of the

   county’s minority population and recent incidents

   of KKK literature distribution; vandalism of a local

   black church and the spraying of disinfectant on a

   black student by a group of white students on a

   school bus. (Howard County Times)

   Henson, is the grandnephew of Matthew A. Henson,

   the famous African American Explorer who was first

   to reach the North Pole with Robert E. Peary’s

   expedition in 1909, and is the great-great nephew of

   Josiah Henson, the former slave from whose life

   Uncle Tom’s Cabin is derived and published by

   Harriet Beecher Stow in 1852.