Francoise Hamlin Receives Lillian Smith Book Award for 2013

Francoise N. Hamlin is the Hans Rothfels Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at Brown University. She earned her Ph.D. at Yale, a Master’s Degree at the University of London, and a Bachelor’s Degree at Essex University. She is the recipient of a C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize along with two other notable prizes for her graduate research and is the 2012 recipient of the Berkshire Conference Best Book Prize. 

 Dr. Hamline’s book is entitled Crossroads at Clarksdale: The Black Freedom Struggle in the Mississippi Delta after World War II.  She begins her introduction with a quote from civil rights leader Aaron Henry, who said in 1963: “Ours is one hell of a story, but freedom is worth every adversity.” Dr. Hamline tells Henry’s story alongside that of a very different kind of activist. Vera Mae Piggy’s work as a beautician gave her both the economic independence and the opportunity to organize. “Two kinds of work were occurring,” Dr. Hamline writes: “the work of creating beauty, and the work of creating a movement.” Dr. Hamline weaves together themes of race, gender and class that flow through a compelling and illuminating narrative. She concludes her book with a personal and very moving epilog that brings Clarksdale’s history up to the present.

Crossroads at Clarksdale is excellent scholarship. It is important work. But it’s also beautifully written and really a great read and we recommend it to everyone. 
In receiving a Lillian Smith Book Award for 2013, Dr. Hamlin remarked as follows:   

I was a British high school exchange student in Clarkdale Mississippi - not the place that I had chosen to be, but the place where the organizers of the exchange program thought I would feel at home. I was the first and perhaps the last black exchange student to come to Clarksdale from England, and it’s clear that the American based exchange company didn’t know what to do with me. So rather than place me in a home in a city similar to London, where I grew up, I ended up in the Mississippi delta and lived with an amazing black woman who worked as a domestic worker her entire life.  That experience changed my life.

Upon my return to England, I forfeited a guaranteed spot to read law at the University of London and instead took up U.S. Studies in an effort to understand what I had seen, what I had experienced, and what I felt. That first degree led to a couple more, and this book is a culmination of that experience. It narrates the black mass movement in Clarksdale from the founding of the local NAACP branch following the rape of two young black women to the turn of this century when President Bill Clinton toured Clarksdale as part of his New Markets Initiative.

That year as an exchange student taught me about race, how it was a social construct, and how I was an anomaly in the U.S. racial system. I also realized that the history taught in the schools didn’t reflect the history that I knew to be true just by living there, and from the U.S. History that I had learned in the British classroom.  Moreover, my peers had no clue about the extraordinary activities of the people in their own community.  No sense of outrage existed in what I could see then as inequality of opportunity.  Lee Academy, the private school created soon after the public schools desegregated in 1970, was literally up the road and we would pass it every day on the school bus, and I seemed to be the only one who was horrified by the irony.

We had to study Mississippi History, as it was a requirement for all Seniors, and I remember my confusion at the insufficient treatment of slavery, particularly the fact that slave labor had cleared the Delta land which the County occupied.  Rather than focusing on the founding of Coahoma County, our studies pretty much focused on the leading white families.  As the curriculum moved into the 20^th Century, the history of the Civil Rights Movement focused, albeit too briefly for my liking, on Dr. Martin Luther King.  The students, including myself, had no clue that a vibrant movement had happened in Clarksdale and that all of the organizers of that movement were still alive. In fact Dr. King came to Clarksdale only a handful of times during his activist career, and he never stayed overnight. 

None of it sat well with me, even then when I really didn’t know very much.  I always felt uncomfortable with the over attention I received from the teachers and even the local press, but at the same time I really fell in love with the place. Mississippi is a beautiful state with all its ugly scars and wounds that still fester. I love it so much that I now take students there every Spring Break, so that I can share with them what I learned about the U.S. and Mississippi and then guide them through their own self-discovery. Mississippi transformed me and, for that, I am forever grateful.

This project on the Civil Rights Movement kind of snuck up on me. The experience during my exchange year made me want to learned more about race in the U.S., but I thought I was finished with Mississippi. It was only in graduate school that an oral history project brought me back to the Delta. It was only then that I started reading more about the movement in Mississippi and realized that very little scholarship existed about Clarksdale and that the local story varied from the SNCC-centered narrative that I had read. I the late 1990s there was already a huge amount of movement scholarship so, as a graduate student I was very hesitant to add more. But the story kept coming back, and the oral history project developed because I started talking to people in Clarksdale. From there I learned about Aaron Henry and Ms. Vera Piggy.  So I would like to believe that the story chose me to be its narrator.

This book started as a dissertation and I made one decision straightaway. Even though I was writing it for a committee that demanded a certain academic sophistication in language, I wanted to make sure that the people I wrote about would be able to understand it, accept it, see themselves in this book, and claim it as theirs.  Too often I’ve talked to movement participants and veterans - particularly African-Americans - who have complained about how their stories were distorted or that no one had ever talked to them about their own experiences.  We have this huge cache of movement scholarship and more keeps coming, but these veterans only endorse a small portion of the work. And I wanted mine to be accessible. I wanted my host mother, Ms. Corrine Bradley, who lived and died in the Delta with an eighth grade education and a Ph.D. in common sense, to be able to read it. She died in 2005 and never got to see the book.

Validation came from movement activists. Validation came from the academy and from professional organizations, and this has helped me to do my work and be very successful and I’m very grateful for that. But having movement activity confirm the stories, the tone, the general framework let me know that I was on to something. Ms. Vera Piggy’s daughter is a principal character in the Clarksdale story and she’s very reluctant to re-live that past buy she read the entire manuscript and called me when she was finished and told me to sit down while she read to me her scripted response about how much the research meant to her.  Charlie Cobb, a SNCC worker who is an author himself, read the book and has supported it. My work on this book took a while for many reasons, but first among them was the time it took to invest in people’s lives so that they could tell you their truths and trust you with their stories.

This prize means a lot to me too because it reflects the accessibility of the book beyond academic circles, and that was my goal. Oral history became the main way to understand Clarksdale. Archival documents might pinpoint dates, times, people, but voices and memory adds meat to these bones, and that was also the hardest part of the project.  These voices complicate movement history. They sometimes contradict long-held notions, like the notion that African-Americans desired the integration of schools, when in reality they desired equal funding, equal resources, equal respect, equal representation on the school boards. With the local history I cover many themes, like black leadership, particularly juxtaposing the leadership of Aaron Henry (a World War II veteran and pharmacist who spearheaded the formation of the local NAACP branch and went on to head the local state conference and moved into public office) and Vera Piggy (a beautician, a mother, secretary of the local branch and the state youth council advisor). That juxtaposition reveals the variety of leadership and the consequent strains and tensions.

Through Mrs. Piggy I also discussed “women’s work” – “activist mothering” - not a feminist model of women’s work, but a way in which some African American women activists extended notions of “mothering” to their civil rights work and exercised great leverage from within their gendered social status. I also And then at the end I considered notions of success: how is it that President Clinton stopped in Clarksdale – one of only five stops in a national tour of economically depressed areas?  After a rich story of activism and organizing that I was writing with these valleys of defeat and peaks of success. How do we define success? Can we define success?

  
As we are in the midst of 50-year anniversaries of many of the popularly-perceived landmarks of the movement - we have just crossed the 50^th Anniversary of the March on Washington and next summer is the 50^th Anniversary of the Mississippi Freedom Summer – my book feels very timely, but perhaps that’s just coincidence. It celebrates, challenges, and complicates. There is definitely a lot more work to be done.

This project has brought many full-circle moments for me. The most important one is that I am able to explain what I saw in the 1990’s. I have some answers I have a lot more questions. I have something to give back to the community that gave me a home for a year. This award provides another full circle. The dissertation from which this book emerged is titled The Book Hasn’t Closed, the Story Isn’t finished, Continuing Histories of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a title I had used almost from the beginning because it said what I was trying to do: not a history that had a triumphant end, but an ongoing story of human interaction and conflict, failures and successes. At the end of my dissertation research, as I read more secondary sources to incorporate and enlarge the range of voices and opinion s in the South, I found a quotation which I incorporated into the original epilog as an epigraph: “I have not ended this story, for there is no end.”           

It was the perfect quote that supported the title that I already had. Lillian Smith wrote those words in 1964 in her book Our Faces, Our Words. The quote didn’t survive the re-write or make it into the book. Neither did the dissertation title.  But Lillian Smith’s her sentiment is definitely a part of it. Winning this award in her name brings me full circle.  

  

Carnes Sworn in as 11th Circuit Judge

R. Robin McDonald

Daily Report, August 5, 2014

Julie Carnes made her departure as the Northern District of Georgia's chief judge official last week when she was sworn in during a private ceremony as the newest circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, according to court executives.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash Jr. replaced Carnes as the district's chief judge, said District Court Executive James Hatten.

The judges and staff of the Northern District will bid a formal farewell to Carnes in an Aug. 14 ceremony. But Carnes will continue to preside over cases in the Northern District until mid-August by special designation, Hatten said.

On Monday, Carnes was on the district court bench in her old courtroom to sentence nearly a dozen former law enforcement officers who had pleaded guilty to charges that they acted as informants and provided security—often while wearing their uniforms and driving patrol cars—to local drug dealers.

President Barack Obama signed Carnes' commission on Thursday, 10 days after the U.S. Senate confirmed her 94-0 for the post. Carnes was sworn in by Senior Circuit Judge J.L. Edmondson at the Eleventh Circuit on Thursday afternoon at a private ceremony attended by her husband and daughter, Circuit Executive Jim Gerstenlauer said Monday. A public investiture is planned but not yet scheduled, he said.

Obama nominated Carnes to the appeals court bench in December. Appointed to the district court by President George H.W. Bush, Carnes had been chief judge since 2009.

Hatten said that Thrash—who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1997—inherited the chief's post as the judge on the Northern District bench with the most seniority who has not taken senior status.

Jill Pryor Poised for Senate Vote

R. Robin McDonald

Daily Report, August 1, 2014

 

The U.S. Senate voted late Thursday night to close debate on the nomination of Atlanta attorney Jill Pryor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. But Pryor’s confirmation will likely remain on hold until the Senate—which closes down for its August break at the close of business Friday—reconvenes in September.

The 58-33 vote at 9:06 p.m. Thursday to invoke cloture paves the way for a vote by the full Senate to confirm Pryor, a partner at Atlanta’s Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, as a federal appellate judge. A cloture vote was required because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was unable to obtain unanimous consent to bring Pryor’s nomination to the floor for an up-or-down vote without first allowing time for debate.

According to the Senate Democrats’ website, the vote to close debate on Pryor’s nomination was the last vote the Senate will take until it reconvenes in September. The Senate was slated to adjourn Friday for an August break.

In calling for the cloture vote, Reid requested that if the Senate voted to close debate on Pryor’s nomination, that it proceed to a confirmation vote at 5:30 p.m., Monday Sept. 8, according to the Congressional Record.

In support of the cloture motion, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chastised his Senate colleagues, saying that for the fifth year in a row, more than a dozen qualified, consensus judicial nominees pending before the full Senate will remain on the Executive Calendar during the August recess.

“Each year, I have come before the Senate to remind my fellow senators that their refusal to take action on these nominations prior to the August recess is an unfortunate departure from Senate tradition and to urge them to stop their obstructive practices and delay tactics,” Leahy said. “Again, I am disappointed to see partisanship and senseless obstruction continue to keep the Senate from fulfilling its constitutional duty of advice and consent.”

And he added, “I am glad that we are voting to overcome the Republican filibuster of the nomination of Jill Pryor, and I thank the majority leader for taking action on her nomination. If the Senate were operating as it once did, without this partisan treatment of judicial nominations, she would have been confirmed weeks ago.”

Leahy also said that the Senate could have chosen to vote to confirm 13 federal judicial nominees whose nominations have been approved by his committee by a unanimous voice vote but are still awaiting a vote by the full Senate. Five of them, including Pryor, are from Georgia.

“Instead,” Leahy said, “we are voting to invoke cloture on only one nomination, that of Jill Pryor, to fill a judicial emergency vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. She has received the American Bar Association's highest rating of unanimously “well qualified” and has the support of both of her Republican home state senators. She will no doubt be confirmed unanimously, or near unanimously, when we return in September. As the senior senator from Georgia, Mr. Chambliss, noted at her confirmation hearing, `Jill Pryor has been in private practice in Atlanta for nearly 25 years. During that time she has played a pivotal role in some of the largest and most complex cases in Georgia history.’ We have before us an outstanding candidate to serve on the federal bench. Yet her nomination is being filibustered by Senate Republicans who are delaying her vote for the sake of obstruction.”

“This year, Senate Republicans have proceeded to filibuster each and every judicial nominee,” Leahy continued. “After today, the Senate will have taken 62 cloture votes on judicial nominations so far this year, amounting to well over 400 wasted hours the Senate should have spent considering legislation to help the American people. Never before has the Senate seen the systematic filibuster of every judicial nominee, or such unfair treatment of qualified, consensus nominees.”

Senate Confirms Julie Carnes to Eleventh Circuit by 94-0 Vote

R. Robin McDonald
Daily Report, July 21, 2014  

The U.S. Senate in a 94-0 vote late Monday confirmed U.S. District Court Chief Judge Julie Carnes as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit inSenate Confirms Julie Carnes to Eleventh Circuit by 94-0 Vote

Carnes was selected by Georgia's Republican Senators Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss as part of that package deal and is the first to be confirmed. Five of the other nominees – one for a second seat on the Eleventh Circuit, three for seats the Northern District of Georgia and one for a post on the Middle District of Georgia bench in Albany - have been approved by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee and are awaiting confirmation votes by the U.S. Senate.

The judiciary committee has not yet voted to send to the Senate floor the nomination of one candidate – Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs, whom Chambliss had recommended to fill the post that Carnes will vacate now that she is moving to the Eleventh Circuit.

On Monday, before Carnes' confirmation vote, both Isakson and Chambliss took to the Senate floor to voice their unqualified support for her.

In his remarks, Isakson thanked both the president and the president's former White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, for accepting senators' recommendation of Carnes to the appellate bench.

"Julie Carnes is a very special lady," Isakson said. "Her nomination is a nomination of someone with immense capacity, outstanding integrity and outstanding ability."

Isakson referred to Carnes as a "Double Dawg" graduate of the University of Georgia – a designation meaning that Carnes received both her undergraduate and law degrees from UGA and one that she has publicly embraced.

"She is an outstanding individual and will be an outstanding judge on the bench," he said.

Carnes has been chief judge of the Northern District of Georgia since 2009. She was appointed as a district judge in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush after spending more than a decade as an assistant U.S. attorney in Atlanta where she served as appellate chief under three U.S. attorneys. She also served from 1990 to 1996 as one of seven members of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, a post to which Bush had also appointed her.

Isakson then paid a brief tribute to Carnes' late father, Charles Carnes, a former Georgia legislator who served as a Fulton County State Court judge, including a stint as chief judge, for 18 years before taking senior status. Charles Carnes died last October at age 86.

Isakson said that the elder Carnes was his mentor when Isakson was serving in the Georgia General Aseembly. "Up in heaven right now in the sunset, Charlie Carnes is looking down and getting ready to see his daughter confirmed by the U.S. Senate," Isakson said, adding that the late judge "is so proud."

"She is a chip off the old block," he said of his mentor's daughter. "She proves the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Chambliss echoed Isakson's sentiments, telling the Senate at large that the younger Carnes' 22 years on the district court in Atlanta "has prepared her well for going to the Eleventh Circuit."

He, too, invoked Julie Carnes' legacy from her father. "Being a judge was in her blood," Chambliss said. "It's not difficult to imagine a more qualified circuit court nominee than Julie Carnes."

Chambliss also said that Julie Carnes, whom he referred to as "my dear friend," is a "consummate trial court judge" who has received accolades "from every single sector of the bar that appears before her."

Carnes told the Daily Report Monday night that she, her daughter, members of her staff and others watched the vote at the federal courthouse.

"It was very exciting and a little bit surreal," she said.

"I feel very honored and appreciative for the confidence that the Senate has shown with its vote to confirm me. I remain very grateful to President Obama for nominating me to the Eleventh Circuit, and I cannot express how much the support of Georgia's two senators, Senator Chambliss and Senator Isakson, means to me."

"I was particularly touched that they spoke so glowingly and warmly about my father," Carnes continued. "He would have been so proud and excited to watch the senators cast their votes for his daughter. ... I really miss him today."

Carnes said that when she takes her seat on the Eleventh Circuit bench she will be returning to the courtroom where she heard her first oral argument, while clerking for a judge on the Fifth Circuit. "There will be a certain symmetry to the transition," she said.

Carnes Moves a Step Toward Confirmation to Eleventh Circuit

R. Robin McDonald

Daily Report, July 17, 2014

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to close debate on the nomination of U.S. District Chief Judge Julie Carnes for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.

The 68-23 cloture vote means that Carnes' nomination will proceed to a confirmation vote by the full Senate. Carnes' confirmation vote is scheduled to take place at 5:30 p.m. Monday, according to Senate Democrats.

Carnes' nomination and that of five other nominees to the federal bench in Georgia were placed on the Senate's executive calendar on Monday, signaling that the nominations are ready for consideration by the full body.

The other nominees include Jill Pryor, a partner at Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore, who was first nominated to the Eleventh Circuit in February 2012 and then renominated in 2013 over the opposition of Georgia's two Republican senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson. The senators blocked Pryor's nomination until they reached a deal last fall with the White House that led to Carnes' nomination and allowed them to pick three candidates for what are now five open district court posts.

On June 19, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted to send the nominations of Pryor and Carnes to the Senate floor. That same day, the committee also approved the nominations of Troutman Sanders attorney Mark Cohen, DeKalb County State Court Judge Eleanor Ross, and attorney Leigh Martin May of the firm now known as Butler Wooten Cheeley & Peak for posts on the Northern District of Georgia. The panel also approved the nomination of assistant U.S. attorney Leslie Abrams for a slot on the Middle District of Georgia in Albany.

The judiciary committee did not vote on the nomination of Georgia Court of Appeals Judge Michael Boggs for the fourth open slot on the Northern District bench. Boggs' nomination became a matter of national controversy because of his conservative voting record on abortion and same-sex marriage while a Georgia legislator and his decision to allow his campaign to donate funds to a Georgia non-profit organization that has endorsed conservative Republican candidates and viewpoints.

True Diversity Isn't Tokenism

Letter to the Editor:
True Diversity Isn't Tokenism:
It Builds Institutions and Merits Public Trust

Daily Report
July 10, 2014

To the Editors:

Robert Highsmith, a member of the state Judicial Nominating Commission, wrote a letter to the editor recently to defend the record on diverse appointments to the judiciary under the last two governors. ("Judicial diversity is strong under Georgia Republicans," Daily Report, June 18). His letter comes in response to a Daily Report article about a Continuing Legal Education program, sponsored by several organizations at the State Bar of Georgia annual meeting, of which Mr. Highsmith was a panelist.

The purpose of the CLE, titled "Diversity in the Judiciary," was to have a conversation about the issue as it pertains to Georgia's state and federal courts. The seminar started with a historical perspective provided by several attorneys and a Georgia legislator about what the face of the judiciary looked like prior to the Brooks litigation and what has happened to the courts since that time. The ensuing dialogue was designed to raise awareness amongst members of the bar about the lack of diversity in certain courts and the eroding diversity in others.

After a discussion about the court history, the panel on which Mr. Highsmith participated provided solutions that attorneys could implement to make diversity on the bench a priority and an achievable objective. The CLE was not intended to be an attack, as represented by the Daily Report headline, on the Judicial Nominating Commission, the governor or anyone connected with the process that appoints judges to the Georgia courts.

With that backdrop, Mr. Highsmith's letter purports to refute "harsh words" by several of the CLE panelists by focusing on a few individual appointments over a 12-year period. The appointments of Justice Harold Melton by Gov. Sonny Perdue in 2005 and of Judge Carla McMillan to the Court of Appeals by Gov. Nathan Deal were cited as examples of a strong record of diverse judicial appointments. Reference was also made to the appointments in DeKalb County of Judges Eleanor Ross and Dax Lopez to the State Court and Judge Asha Jackson to the Superior Court.

Mr. Highsmith's letter further highlighted three other female jurists appointed in DeKalb and Fulton counties in addition to Judges Ross and Jackson as well as the appointments of Judges Eric Richardson and Fred Eady to the State Court of Fulton County. He ended by touting the qualifications of the white male judges appointed to the Fulton Superior Court bench.

Not only is his reliance on a few noteworthy appointments predictable, but he also fails to consider the quantitative analysis of those appointments, the context of those appointments and to which courts those appointments were made.

Notably, Mr. Highsmith fails to acknowledge the growing lack of diversity of Georgia's judiciary. The state of Georgia is growing—the current population is estimated to be nearly 10 million. According to 2012 census figures, 51.1 percent of Georgia's population is female, 31.2 percent is African-American, 3.5 percent is Asian and 9.2 percent is Hispanic. Thus, more than 4.5 million of Georgia's residents are female and more than 3 million are African-American. People of Asian and Hispanic descent comprise more than 10 percent (or nearly 1 million) of the state's residents. It is in that context that claims about diversity must be considered.

The record of diverse appointments under the current governor leaves much room for improvement. Here are some sobering facts:

• Less than 5 percent of our current governor's judicial appointees to courts across the state have been African-Americans.

• Currently, African-Americans represent less than 10 percent of all of the Georgia Superior Court judges.

• Less than 2 percent of the members of the Judicial Nominating Commission on which Mr. Highsmith serves are African-American.

A few anecdotes about the context of the appointments and the courts to which the appointments were made, or in some cases not made, demonstrates the dysfunction of the judicial selection process in our state:

• Judge Asha Jackson, cited by Mr. Highsmith, was appointed in DeKalb County, but she was appointed only after two non-diverse gubernatorial appointees in the county lost bids for their re-election. One of those defeated appointees was subsequently appointed to the Fulton County Superior Court bench.

• Fulton County's most recent population estimate is 984,293—of that number 44.6 percent are African-American. In the last 12 years, three African-American judges have left the superior court bench in Fulton County without completing their terms of office, and neither Gov. Perdue nor Gov. Deal appointed a single African-American to fill any of those seats. As a result, the diversity on the Fulton County Superior Court bench is in sharp decline—in 2002, African-Americans held 44 percent of the judgeships, but now they hold only 30 percent.

• Another perfect example of the lack of diversity in the judicial appointment process is found in Muscogee County/Columbus. Of the more than 200,000 residents of Muscogee County, 46 percent are African-American. When the county's only African-American superior court judge recently retired, Gov. Deal appointed a non-diverse individual to fill his seat, leaving a county with such a large African-American population without a single African-American superior court judge.

• Mr. Highsmith spoke at the state bar about the current governor's preference for moving judges up. Yet when one of the African-American Fulton State Court appointees mentioned by Mr. Highsmith applied for a superior court seat, he was not appointed to the vacancy.

While no one disputes the character or quality of the judges appointed, the pattern of appointments to the courts in this state reflects diminishing diversity in communities with significant minority populations.

The judiciary has neither the sword nor the purse at its disposal. Its authority relies upon the trust of the people. When the most powerful courts in a community are not inclusive, it breeds an inherent distrust and alienation. And in communities where inclusion is declining, the problem is exacerbated.

The concept of diversity comes from a recognition that communities are strongest and government has the highest claim to legitimacy when it reflects the people it serves at a level that is meaningful. When a community does not have the opportunity to vote on the initial selection of judges on the courts—which has been the pattern over the last decade—it is even more imperative that the process used to select judges be fair, transparent and inclusive.1

In addition to considering diversity and inclusion when making appointments, governors should also consider the courts to which candidates are appointed. Every court in Georgia provides a service to its citizens. But the courts that are the heart of our communities are the superior courts. not every community has a state court, but there is a superior court in every county in Georgia.

Superior court judges decide fundamental issues that affect communities, such as the terms of divorces and who gets custody of children. When there are disputes in communities about taxes, elections, or the powers of government, they are heard by superior court judges. The true test of the commitment to diversity in the judiciary is what happens with appointments to those courts.

When communities elect their leaders, including judges, they get the government they choose. They have the power to choose to embrace diversity through their vote. While the Georgia Constitution mandates the election of judges, as Mr. Highsmith recognized, most judges take office through appointment. The power of incumbency is hard to overcome and it is for that reason that a commitment to diversity in appointments matters.

When a governor is given the responsibility of filling a judicial vacancy it is unlike any other appointment. When appointing to the executive branch he is building his team. But when filling judicial vacancies he is standing in for the electorate of a community. Consequently, he has an obligation to consider the community's makeup—not merely rewarding loyalty or cementing partisan advantage.

The usual response to calls for diversity is to assert that one is choosing the most qualified. The recent erosion in judicial diversity is certainly not due to a lack of qualified diverse candidates, but it appears that those most involved in the judicial nomination process have had little exposure to many of the great lawyers who are known to the organized African-American bar and who would make outstanding jurists.

A bench that is regressing in its inclusivity simply cannot be justified. There are thousands of lawyers from diverse backgrounds across the state and over the years. These lawyers have included the first African-American woman to be admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as the lawyers who led the battles to desegregate the state's universities, public schools and places of public accommodation.

Previously, African-American lawyers were appointed as trial and appellate judges; three of Atlanta's mayors, two presidents of the Atlanta Bar Association, partners in major Atlanta law firms, and the chief legal officers of major institutions such as United Parcel Service, Pepsico Inc. and The Home Depot are African-American. There are legions of other talented lawyers who play key roles in the efficient administration of justice. Any such claim that seeks to set up a conflict between merit and diversity is not real.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. described what was then a new tactic being employed in the struggle for civil rights. The tactic he named was tokenism. "A judge here and a judge there; an executive behind a polished desk in a carpeted office; a high-placed government administrator with a toehold in a cabinet post."2

The goal of tokenism was to have a few stand for the many. It was yet another method of holding on to power and forestalling systemic change.

Tokenism relies upon the symbolism of isolated individuals. It seeks to retain power and buy peace with gestures. Diversity strives to build institutions that include and therefore merit the trust of the broad spectrum of the communities they serve.

A commitment to diversity requires one to consider whether, in a state with more than 3 million African-Americans, one African-American Judicial Nominating Commission member is sufficient to earn the trust of African-Americans.

Is the appointment of a judge here and a judge there, but few in those positions that command real power within their communities, consistent with a commitment to a diverse judiciary? When Muscogee County's more than 80,000 African-American citizens enter their superior court where there are no minority judges, are they likely to have confidence in the institution? The answers to those questions are the test of diversity.

 

 

Mawuli Mel Davis

Rev. Francys S. Johnson

Attorney panelists,

CLE seminar "Diversity on the Bench"

 

Thelma Wyatt Moore, president/CEO

Bettianne Hart, vice president

Advocacy for Action Inc.

 

Charles Johnson

Suzy Ockleberry

Co-chairs,

Advocacy for Action

Political Action Committee

 

 

1 "Enhancing Diversity in an Appointive System of Selecting Judges," Leo M. Romero, 34 Forham Urb. L.J. 485 (2007)

2 "Why We Can't Wait," Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1963)

Marcy Johnson Joins Jury for the 2014 Lillian Smith Book Awards

The Southern Regional Council (SRC) recently announced that thirty-nine books have been nominated for the Lillian Smith Book Awards for 2014 to be presented in Decatur, Georgia on August 31, 2014.

 

The jury for this year's awards includes Dr. Marcy D. Johnson. A native of Savannah Georgia, has over thirty years of diverse management experience and training with and a strong background in project management, decision support systems, web technologies, web/portal development and online applications; over eleven years of higher education experience; over five years distance learning program/course development; and, proven ability to design and direct complex resource information management programs/technical training programs. She served as the Chief Information Officer and Dean of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Bennett College for Women. Prior to going to Bennett College, she served as the CEO/President of Innovative Digital Solutions, Incorporated.  During her illustrious career, she held professional positions with Wang Laboratories, Department of the Army, Hewlett-Packard, and Ford Aerospace Communications.

 

Dr. Johnson received an undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of Colorado and earned a Master of Science in Education from Indiana University. She received a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with an emphasis in Instructional Technology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.  Her honors include: PHI KAPPA PHI, ALPHA KAPPA MU, WHO'S WHO IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (2001), and several other WHO'S WHO inclusions.  She served on the Tennessee Performing Arts Center Board of Directors, Urban League of Middle Tennessee Board of Directors (Vice Chairman), and Amun Ra Theatre Advisory Board. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Links, Inc., NAACP, and the Charlotte Chapter of the National Smart Set. She was a member of Societas Docta, Inc., and Metropolitan Nashville Chapter of National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc.

 

Dr. Johnson is married to the former president of Tennessee State University, Dr. Melvin N. Johnson.  The Johnsons have twin adult daughters, DeAndra Johnson Cullen (husband, Gary Cullen) and Monet Johnson Bloodworth (husband, Dr. Leotis Bloodworth, Jr.) and one adult son, M. Roschaun Johnson (wife, Phyllis C. Johnson).  Drs. Johnson are the proud grandparents of Briana N., Jailyn N., and Lauryn J. Bloodworth; Alaira M. Cullen; and, Schaun C.  and Joshua P. Johnson.

SRC was founded in 1919 to combat racial injustice in the South. SRC initiated the Lillian Smith Book Awards shortly after Smith's death in 1966 to recognize authors whose writing extends the legacy of the outspoken writer, educator and socialcritic who challenged her fellow Southerners and all Americans on issues of social and racial justice. Since 2004 the awards have been presented by SRC in a partnership with the University of Georgia Libraries, whose Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library houses a historic collection of Lillian Smith's letters and manuscripts. The Georgia Center for the Book became a partner in 2007, when the awards ceremony first became part of the Decatur Book Festival.