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NCBA Elects New President-Elect
Article Date: 7/18/2007
President-Elect Charles Becton. | Charles L. Becton, a Raleigh attorney and longtime Durham resident, was elected president-elect of the North Carolina Bar Association Saturday at the 2007 NCBA Annual Meeting in Asheville.
Becton will succeed Greensboro attorney Janet Ward Black as the 114th president of the NCBA on Saturday, June 21, at the 2008 Annual Meeting in Atlantic Beach.
Mike Colombo, NCBA immediate past president, formally placed Becton’s name in nomination during the General Session. Colombo chairs the Past Presidents’ Council which nominated Becton. The nomination was seconded by current and former law partners Asa Bell and Jim Fuller, respectively.
In keeping with NCBA tradition, the past presidents ushered their new president-elect to the Grove Park Inn dais after Becton was elected by acclamation. The past presidents then stood by as he delivered a brief acceptance speech.
Becton will be the first African-American male to lead the NCBA, repeating a precedent he set in 1994 when he served as president of the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers. Judge Allyson K. Duncan of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals became the first African American to serve as president of the NCBA in 2003.
“I simply see this as a tremendous opportunity,” Becton said in regard to the historical significance of his election. “I intend to work hard whether I am the first or the 114th to be a role model to all in the legal profession without regard to race or gender or anything else.”
Charles Becton, left, accepts congratulations from Clark Smith. | A 1969 graduate of the Duke University School of Law, Becton has practiced law with the firm of Becton, Slifkin & Bell since 1990. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Howard University (1966) and received an LL.M. from the University of Virginia School of Law (1986).
Becton served on the N.C. Court of Appeals from 1981-90 and was named N.C. Appellate Judge of the Year in 1985.
He has received numerous other awards, the most recent being the ABA Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section’s Pursuit of Justice Award and the NCBA Litigation Section’s Advocate’s Award. He has also received the Justice William J. Brennan Jr. Trial Advocacy Award, the Roscoe Pound Foundation’s Richard S. Jacobson Award and the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers’ Trial Advocacy Award that was named in his honor.
An esteemed author and lecturer as well, Becton has served since 1976 as the John Scott Cansler Lecturer at the UNC School of Law and since 1980 as the Senior Lecturer in Law at the Duke University School of Law. It was also in 1980 that Becton served as president of the N.C. Association of Black Lawyers.
As president-elect of the NCBA, Becton will chair the Finance Committee in 2007-08. He served as a member of the NCBA Board of Governors from 2005-07 and as an NCBA Vice President in 1984-85.
Becton and his wife, Brenda, have three grown children: daughters Nicole and Michelle and a son, Kevin. Brenda Becton is retired from the practice of law and Nicole Becton practices law in Washington, D.C.
A native of Morehead City and the son of the late Edith Becton Nibbs, Becton spent his formative years in Ayden, where he graduated from South Ayden High School in 1962.
Upon completion of law school in 1969, he worked for one year with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in New York City. He then joined the Charlotte firm of Chambers Stein Ferguson & Lanning, which shortly thereafter opened a Chapel Hill office where Becton practiced until 1981.
Gov. Jim Hunt appointed Becton to the N.C. Court of Appeals in January 1981. He was then elected to complete the remaining two years of the unexpired term in 1982, and elected again in 1984 to a full term.
“Law has always been the vehicle through which I sought to serve the public,” Becton said in regard to his decision to become a judge. “As a litigator, I was able to help my clients; however, as an appellate judge, I would be able to help an entire class of people.”
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