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Donald Russell's
senior photograph from the 1925 Garnet and Black yearbook. |
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Donald Stuart Russell was
born in Lafayette Springs, Mississippi, in 1906. His father
passed away when Russell was four, and, unable to keep the
family farm viable, Lula Russell moved with her children to
Chester, South Carolina, to be nearer her own parents. Russell
attended the public schools of Chester and took jobs as a
newspaper boy and at a drug store to help support his family.
Graduating from high school early, Russell entered the
University of South Carolina at the age of fifteen and put
himself through school by pumping gas at a filling station.
Asked in a 1992
oral history if he had always wanted a career in public service,
Russell recalled, “I was very ambitious. I don’t know that I knew
exactly which way I wanted to go. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer.
That attracted me from early years. But…I don’t know that I thought
of much beyond that. I didn’t grow up in a very metropolitan
situation, so I don’t know that you had any high aspirations of
things. You…did have the idea that you’d try to take advantage if
you did get an opportunity. That’s about the best you could do.” |
Virginia Utsey's
senior photograph from the 1927 Garnet and Black yearbook. |
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After his admission to the
bar, Russell began practicing in Union, South Carolina. A year
later he married his college sweetheart, Virginia Utsey of St.
George. In 1930, Russell joined the prestigious law practice of
Nichols, Wyche and Byrnes of Spartanburg. He had impressed the
firm by winning a case in which he was opposed by partner
Charles Cecil Wyche. Russell was running the practice alone by
1937, following the death of George Nichols and the appointments
of James F. Byrnes to the United States Supreme Court and Wyche
to the Federal District Court.
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