Civil rights pioneer leaving appellate bench

His mother wanted him to be a schoolteacher, not a lawyer. Being a black attorney at that time in the Deep South could put him in harm’s way, she said.

But Waynesboro native John H. “Jack” Ruffin Jr. got swept up in the civil rights movement and chose the law.

He earned his law degree at Howard University in Washington in 1960 and returned to Georgia, opening a practice in Augusta. During the next five decades, Ruffin would become a trailblazing lawyer and judge, breaking racial barriers and earning a reputation for fighting for equal justice.

Sitting in his chambers recently, Ruffin, 73, reflected on his legal journey. At year’s end, he will retire as a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals.

“I hope I’ve been a good judge,” Ruffin said. “I always knew what kind of judge I didn’t want to be. As a lawyer, I appeared before so many I felt were not deserving to wear the robe.”

Ruffin said he has relished his legal career —- even though his mother, now deceased, had correctly predicted a law career could be hazardous.

Ruffin once found himself in a Waycross jail after a contentious cross examination of Sheriff Robert E. Lee, who told Ruffin to stop pointing his finger at him. After being removed from a day cell loaded with prisoners to his own private cell, Ruffin felt certain “they were going to kill me.”

Instead, a deputy looked out for him. And after Augusta judges called the court on Ruffin’s behalf, his 10-day sentence for contempt was reduced to 24 hours.

There was also the time he and another lawyer won the acquittal of a black client accused of raping and killing a white woman in Hartwell. After the verdict, the trial judge ordered a deputy to escort the attorneys out of Hart County —- for their own safety.

“It’s things like that that gave you hope about a system, as bad as it was back then,” Ruffin said.

But his acceptance as an attorney was a long time coming. Even though he was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1961, the Augusta bar association did not extend him an invitation to join until a decade later.

Shortly after opening his practice, Ruffin said, Augusta power broker John Murray Sr., owner of Murray Biscuit Co., called him over for a visit. Murray told Ruffin to move out of his building and to hone up on real estate law because he wouldn’t be appearing in local courtrooms, Ruffin recalled.

“That would have defeated the purpose of going to law school,” Ruffin said. “The next time he called for me, I refused to go.”

Murray, years later, supported his candidacy as a judge, Ruffin noted.

Only three years after hanging up his shingle, Ruffin shook Augusta’s white establishment by filing suit to desegregate Richmond County’s school system. For two decades, he litigated against a defiant school system, often before hostile judges.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Alaimo eventually would get the case and issue rulings in Ruffin’s favor.

Now a senior judge in Brunswick, Alaimo said recently he greatly admired Ruffin for fighting a difficult battle for civil rights.

“Throughout it all, he was always the perfect gentleman,” Alaimo said. “You could always rely on his word and I think his low-key approach served him well. He began to prevail slowly and gradually and ultimately he succeeded.”

Danny Craig, former district attorney in Augusta, said Ruffin distinguished himself as a lawyer.

“He shepherded through the courts some of the most difficult litigation we’ve seen in the past century here in Augusta,” said Craig, now a Superior Court judge. “As a people, we’re blessed to have benefited from his service.”

While acknowledging the lawsuit changed the public school system for the better, Ruffin does not feel it achieved complete success.

“The system, I think, never became fully integrated,” he said with a heavy sigh.

Ruffin also filed suit to force integration of the school system in his native Burke County —- a case that eventually led him to threaten his own mother with possible jail time.

After a judge issued a desegregation order, Ruffin’s mother, who had remarried, said she did not want to send her children to the white schools. Ruffin threatened her with a contempt action if she did not comply.

During the recent interview, Ruffin said he did not have to follow through on his threat and did not know if he would have. But he did not discount the notion, either.

“I just didn’t think I could ask other parents to make that kind of sacrifice and exempt my own,” he said.

In 1986, Ruffin reluctantly gave up the law practice he loved and accepted an appointment as the first black judge to serve on the Superior Court bench in the Augusta Judicial Circuit.

In 1994, Gov. Zell Miller appointed Ruffin to the Georgia Court of Appeals and, in 2005, he became the court’s first black chief judge.

Ruffin said he is stepping down because of a state law that requires appellate court judges to retire at 75 or else lose their retirement benefits. Ruffin said he has enjoyed his time on the Court of Appeals and plans to stay active, perhaps doing pro bono work and some legal writing.

Ruffin said he would consider serving as a senior judge, although that is not possible now because of state budget cuts.

One moment he will never forget, Ruffin said, is when his portrait was hung up in April at the Burke County Courthouse in his hometown of Waynesboro.

“That was really something,” said Ruffin, his eyes welling.

“I never could have imagined that day would ever happen.”