By Kayden Breedlove
Community, friends and family are the core of alumnus Joshua S. Horton’s (BA 15, JD 17) life. Through his career-spanning focus, including consumer fraud and corrupt patient treatment facilities, Horton looks to continue to carry justice to those who need it.
Growing up in Atlanta, Horton faced an adverse childhood. After losing his father at an early age, education was not a priority. However, when he turned 27 his grandmother asked him if he wanted to move to Fulton, Mississippi, where she lived in an inherited family home.
Deciding to move, Horton packed his things and moved to Fulton, eventually enrolling in Itawamba Community College where he began to make his first connections to Ole Miss. At a law event called Constitution Day held at the college, Horton met District Judge Michael P. Mills (BA 78, JD 80).
“I heard him give a talk at our Constitution Day,” Horton said. “That was when I realized that there was a chance that I could go to law school.”
With law school as his goal, Horton began to consider the next steps of his undergraduate journey and where to go. With his father being an Alabama native, he felt pulled to go to the University of Alabama. But after spending time in Mississippi and being recruited to Ole Miss, he felt that he knew what he needed to do.
“I wanted to go to Alabama and got in,” he said. “But Ole Miss offered me a full ride on a Luckyday scholarship, and there was just no way I could turn that down. I visited the campus and fell in love with it and the people.”
Horton chose to major in sociology with a minor in political science upon his entry into the university. He described both of the subjects as heavy influences for the world of law and felt like they could help create a solid foundation for his career. By the time he graduated with his bachelor’s degree, he had earned the title ‘Outstanding Senior’ in the sociology department and Phi Beta Kappa in his class.
After that success, Horton decided to tackle law school. Among several doubters, former UM Law School Dean Richard Gershon stood out as a supporter and pushed Horton to believe that he could be successful in the field of law.
“They told me based on my history that I would probably never be a lawyer,” Horton said. “Other people had told me that, but Dean Gershon told me, ‘I believe in you. I think that you can.’ And he decided to accept my admission into Ole Miss Law. So, I decided to stay, and it was fantastic.”
Horton, already passionate about helping others, became more involved in the area of substance abuse. He and a few others in the university, including William Magee, were involved in a nonprofit that Horton started with the law school called Southern Recovery Advocacy.
Through this project and others, Horton spoke out about substance abuse and its victims. He gave a TEDx Talk at the university in 2018 titled, “No Matter What.” In this talk he advocated for the establishment of restorative communities for those affected by substance abuse and the attitudes surrounding it, using his own journey as support.
While still in school, Horton met an attorney from Palm Beach, Florida, whose practice at the time focused on going after the corrupt businesses and practices of treatment centers. Because of the Affordable Care Act, several people were covered under insurance until they turned 26. This resulted in the creation of predatory practices involving recovery centers.
“They would recruit people into their recovery centers, giving them cigarettes and plane tickets and actual drugs to relapse to put them in a higher level of care, and then getting kickbacks from all these different entities that were moving each other around,” Horton said. “And it was killing the kids.”
Horton joined the cause in South Florida and went on to establish his own practice in consumer fraud. Though the practice and its purpose called Horton to Florida, he says that he knew that he wanted to return to Oxford one day.
“Ole Miss and Oxford just have such a huge chunk of my heart,” he said. “It’s why I chose to get married there in June.”
It was a deeply personal choice for Horton and his wife to hold their wedding in Oxford, with family and friends from the community joining them to celebrate.
“I had people from the university, family, friends from the law school and undergraduate there,” Horton said. “I didn’t always have much of a family so, they’re kind of like my family there. And like I said, they taught me how to be successful in life.”
When looking towards the future, Horton has already made quite a few steps towards some of the bigger goals that he has in mind. With the creation of his own practice in southern Florida, he hopes to continue to establish himself in the business of law, as well as the practice of law.
“I would love to get a LLM for university and law to work towards that goal of mine of getting back into academia sometime in the future,” Horton said. “I want to pass on the knowledge of the things that we’re doing. I was always told to have one hand reaching forward for help and have the other reaching back to pass on help to the next person.”
To those looking to explore a similar career path, Horton stressed the importance of humility and community as success factors.
“Focus on the task in front of you, and make sure that you do the small things as perfectly as you can do them,” he said. “If you lay down a brick one-at-a-time and focus on laying it as well as you can, eventually you’ll look back and see a strong brick wall. Small steps will lead you to big places.”
