Jack Ruffin’s mother never wanted him to be a lawyer. As a Black man in South Georgia, he once told an interviewer, it would only put a bigger target on his back.
But Ruffin pursued the career anyway, and built a record fighting school segregation and winning acquittals for wrongfully accused Black southerners. That record landed him in 1979 on a list of prospective nominees for a federal judgeship in Georgia.
The backstory to that court’s all-White track record is also, like most, about timing and opportunity: A Democratic president hasn’t had a chance to fill a vacancy there in almost 30 years, and only 16 judges have ever occupied one of the bench’s three full-time seats. But most Black lawyers in the region haven’t had the elite professional experiences and political connections that help elevate White lawyers to the US bench, local Black lawyers told Bloomberg Law. Others chalk up the absence of a Black federal judge to a lack of political will among the gatekeepers in the nominations process.
Neither of his parents attended college, but Tarver graduated from what was then Augusta College and, after his own stint in the Army, earned a degree from the University of Georgia’s law school. That night, the lead counsel assigned Tarver an additional five witnesses to question, giving him a more substantial role on the defense team, he said.
Roughly 56% of Augusta’s population is Black today, but its history is tortuous: Just blocks from a downtown statue of singer James Brown, who was raised in the city, stands a monument to Confederate soldiers. Fort Gordon near southwest Augusta was established in 1941 and named after Confederate Gen. John Brown Gordon.
Tarver said three factors — circumstances, opportunity, and preparation — need to align for potential nominees. “And for those positions, it’s very difficult,” he said. Judge James Randal Hall, the chief judge of the Southern District, declined an interview request. In an email, he told Bloomberg Law he hasn’t heard from the legal community about the lack of African American representation on the court, adding it’s up to the president and the state’s US senators to diversify the bench. “The issue of diversity on our Article III bench can be achieved only through this political process,” he wrote.
Those negotiations can get intense when the White House and lawmakers aren’t of the same party. The home-state senators can disrupt things for nominees by refusing to return the so-called “blue slip,” a blue form senators use to signal support for a federal nominee. He did get his degree and, over decades, has been a go-to government attorney — whether for the city of Savannah or the state’s Corrections and Transportation departments. He also partners with the same all-White firm that he says once wouldn’t hire him, as primary counsel for the local school board.
Still, he says, barriers remain for African American lawyers in Savannah. Few White-founded firms in the city hire Black talent these days, Johnson said. Research is mixed on how a judge’s racial identity impacts their decision-making in criminal cases. Some studies have found that Black judges are more punitive, said Boyd, the University of Georgia professor.It’s why Black lawyers like Mance aren’t content with “superficial” diversity. “Everybody from your community doesn’t necessarily represent the sort of interests that you want on the bench,” he said.
In Georgia, the Democratic senators’ nominating commission — made up of current and former Black judges and civil rights lawyers — is ready if the Southern District does get a vacancy.
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