A memoir

From the segregated South to the Supreme Court of Florida.

James E.C. Perry was born in New Bern, North Carolina in 1944 and became the eighty-fifth justice to sit on Florida’s highest court. Benchmarked is the account of that road, in his own words.

About the book Invite him to speak

The book

Benchmarked

Written with Mary E. Adkins and Kamilah Perry, Benchmarked traces a life that begins in the segregated South and ends on the bench of a state supreme court — by way of an HBCU, the United States Army, Columbia Law School, and thirty years of practice in Florida.

It is a personal book about a public life, and about what changed, what did not, and what it cost to move the line.

A life in brief

1944Born in New Bern, North Carolina
1966Graduates St. Augustine’s College — first in his family to finish college
1972Earns his law degree at Columbia Law School
2000Appointed to Florida’s Eighteenth Judicial Circuit, its first African American judge
2009Joins the Supreme Court of Florida as its eighty-fifth justice
2024Seminole County dedicates a courthouse annex in his name

Full biography

From the family and public record

The Journey in Photographs

The photographs that appear in Benchmarked, in the order they appear in the book — from the Craven Terrace Projects to the bench of the Supreme Court of Florida.