Willis James Brogden was born on October 18, 1877, in Wayne County, North Carolina. In August 1920, Brogden served as a character witness for members of the Durham Machine Gun Company who, in the month preceding, protected three Black men wrongfully accused of sexual assault from an Alamance County lynch mob. Brogden went on to serve as a justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court from 1925 until his death in Durham on October 29, 1935.