It’s not many people whose portrait dedication nearly 12 years after his death would draw a crowd that included three sitting justices of the Georgia Supreme Court.
But John H. Ruffin Jr. could. And did.
The Jan. 4 dedication ceremony took place in the courthouse named in Ruffin’s honor, a courthouse he didn’t live to see open. Ruffin’s wife Judith said Tuesday she hopes his portrait will serve as an inspiration for others.
“All my life I aspired to be like Jack Ruffin,” said former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court Robert Benham, the first Black justice in Georgia. It was Ruffin whose counsel he sought, and it was Ruffin whose words of support and confidence helped him reach the professional levels he sought, Benham said.
But Ruffin was a mentor to a lot of others. Not only men, and not only Black lawyers, sought him out, Benham said.
“We are a better people, and this is a better state because Jack Ruffin came this way,” Benham added.
Ruffin returned home after graduating from Morehouse College and Howard University School of Law to challenge segregation. He sued the Richmond County school board, although, as his son Brinkley Ruffin told the crowd, not before first sending a letter of notice to the board as a courtesy.
Ruffin’s fearless determination, intelligence and hard work was matched by his kindness, sense of fairness and grace, his friends said at the portrait dedication. Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice David Nahmias thanked Ruffin’s family for sharing him. His dignity and pure grace should never be forgotten, Nahmias said.
“Thank God for giving us Jack Ruffin,” Nahmias said.
U.S. District Court Judge Dudley H. Bowen Jr. started practicing law a year before Ruffin, he said, and in some ways their careers were similar. There was one difference, though. Ruffin wasn’t invited to join the Augusta Bar Association, a matter his legal colleagues changed with a petition drive in 1971.
“It should never have been an issue,” Bowen said.
That Ruffin’s fellow attorneys stood up for him wasn’t what should be remembered, Bowen added. It is, instead, the graciousness that Ruffin exhibited in accepting the bar membership.
Ruffin’s former law partner and retired Augusta Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Carl C. Brown Jr. told a story about a case the two took in the early 1970s in rural southern Georgia. A group of White students and a group of Black students had a fight. All of the Black students, but none of the White students, were expelled and prosecuted.
Ruffin and Brown faced a tough judge and a packed courtroom, Brown said. Ruffin argued that it was a case of selective prosecution, a case of discrimination. After a time, the judge told Ruffin he was “sick and tired” of Ruffin’s use of the word “discriminatory,” and if he heard it again, he would find Ruffin in contempt and have him locked up, Brown quoted the judge. About two sentences later, Ruffin told the judge the actions of the school board and district attorney were discriminatory. Brown got nervous, got scared, he told the crowd. He was scared that he would be locked up with Ruffin or that he would be left to try the case alone, Brown said. But neither happened. The students didn’t go to jail, and they eventually got back in school, Brown said.
Ruffin’s example should help others show courage, justice, fairness and respect, Brown said, but the most important lesson of all is “Love thy neighbor.”
Ruffin served as the first Black judge on the Superior Court bench in the Augusta Judicial Circuit and as the first Black Chief Judge of the Georgia Court of Appeals.
Georgia Supreme Court Justice John Ellington, who served on the Court of Appeals with Ruffin, told the crowd Tuesday of Ruffin’s last opinion for the Court of Appeals. It was a dissent in a case in which a woman alleged law enforcement used excessive force. The incident led to amputation of a leg. Ruffin wrote that the majority who ruled against the woman had “invaded the circle of the unconcerned” and entered “the center of indifference.” Ellington urged the crowd to shun that circle and that center, as Ruffin did during his lifetime.
Ruffin died Jan. 29, 2010. His portrait will hang on a lobby wall where the public may see it at anytime in the Augusta Judicial Center and John H. Ruffin Jr. Courthouse.
