A C Wharton
American politician
A C Wharton Jr. (born August 17, 1944) is an American educator, politician, and attorney who served as the 63rd mayor of Memphis, Tennessee and previously mayor of Shelby County. He was the second African American to serve as mayor of Shelby County.
Early life, education, and early career
A C Wharton was born and raised in Lebanon, Tennessee. A C Wharton shares his name with his father and grandfather, and named his eldest son by the same name. Wharton has stated that his first name is simply the letters "A" and "C" and does not stand for anything else.
He graduated from Tennessee State University with a degree in political science and earned a J.D. degree from the University of Mississippi. He became an academic, teaching at the university for 25 years.
In 1980, then-Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris appointed Wharton as Chief Shelby County Public Defender. His concern for the mentally ill in the criminal justice system resulted in the Jericho Initiative, which became a national model program.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “A C Wharton” is american politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wharton, American and politician, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4655695. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “A C Wharton” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.