Thomas Goes Home for Swearing In

When Leah Ward Sears was sworn in Tuesday as chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, at her side was an old friend and fellow Georgian: Clarence Thomas.

They share a hometown, the coastal city of Savannah, and the experience of rising to the top of the judicial system as an African American. Another experience she and the U.S. Supreme Court justice share, Sears said, is political attack.

Sears was pilloried during the last election by conservatives who labeled her a liberal, activist judge; Thomas has been accused of betraying his African American heritage with his conservative views.

Thomas’ attendance at Tuesday’s ceremony, Sears said, carried tremendous meaning. “Many Americans have the mistaken belief that if people don’t agree with each other on every point, they can’t be friends,” she said. “I hope it sends a message about civil discourse.”

The invitation upset some in Atlanta’s civil rights community. Sears has gained wide support during her 13 years on the state Supreme Court bench for opinions that, among other things, overturned Georgia’s antisodomy law, use of the electric chair and mandatory life sentences. She is the first black woman to serve as chief justice of any state Supreme Court. But when the Rev. Joseph Lowery, one of the elder statesmen of the civil rights movement, learned Monday that Thomas would be at the ceremony, he decided not to attend.

“We didn’t want to be misunderstood as affirming what Clarence Thomas represented,” said Lowery, a leader of the Georgia Coalition for the Peoples’ Agenda, an association of civil rights groups. “Clarence Thomas has been one of the most destructive forces for civil rights and poor people on the court since his appointment.”

Rep. Tyrone Brooks, president of the Georgia Assn. of Black Elected Officials, made the same decision.

“He is not one of us,” Brooks said. “It’s not the color of your skin; it’s your philosophy.”

Thomas, however, did share the stage Tuesday with Andrew Young, 73, the former civil rights leader who went on to become a U.N. ambassador and mayor of Atlanta.

“Andrew Young, on behalf of our generation, I thank you and those of your generation who had the foresight and principles and courage to make it possible for us to be here today ... to witness this historic event,” Thomas, 58, said. The two men embraced to applause.

Sears’ swearing in, he said, was “a day when my pride runs deep as a human being, as a member of the judiciary and as a Georgian.”

“I know you will call them as you see them,” Thomas said, addressing Sears. “Those of us who judge know that it is easy to judge when you already have your mind made up. It is hard to judge when you have to make your mind up.”

For 20 minutes after the ceremony, Thomas signed programs, posed for pictures, asked after relatives and made students promise to study harder. Sears said she long had hoped to see Thomas greeted warmly by Young in his home state.

“That in itself is a historic moment,” she said.

Thomas was born in the poor community of Pin Point to a mother who worked in a crab factory. When his family moved the 12 miles to Savannah, Thomas was enrolled in a strict Catholic school; he went on to attend College of the Holy Cross and Yale Law School.

Sears, 50, was born in Heidelberg, Germany, to an Army aviator and a teacher. When she arrived in the United States as a schoolgirl, Sears said, she was astonished by the disparity between blacks and whites. From that moment, she devoted herself to “the cause of making sure justice was available for everybody, that the democratic ideal took life,” Sears said.

She got to know Thomas 12 years ago, after discovering that he had grown up in Pin Point.

Natives of the Savannah area, a friend said, have a sense of kinship, staying close even after they’ve scattered and made their way in their professions.

“Savannah folks do stick together,” said Orion L. Douglas, a state court judge who is close to Thomas and Sears. “Wealthy, poor, middle class -- if you were African American in those days, you were from the same spatial area. We had no gated communities, put it that way.”

Young, who was a friend and ally of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., said that he recently met with Thomas for the first time, and felt certain that whether or not they disagreed, he and the high court justice would have an ongoing relationship.

“The alienation between him and our community has been unfortunate for all of us,” Young said.

Standing beside Thomas on stage, Young said, reminded him of the relationship between the civil rights community and Thurgood Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice who opposed the use of civil disobedience. Over time, he said, “we were able ... to disagree without being disagreeable and still be friends.”

“I think we carry on the same tradition,” Young said. “And the fact that Justice Sears has invited our homeboy has said you can’t throw a label on her, either.”

Jimmy Brown, an Atlanta psychologist, said he viewed Thomas differently after Sears’ swearing in. “Let’s face it, we’re not very satisfied with some of the decisions of the Supreme Court,” said Brown, 62. “But the mere fact that our respected judge invited him and he came, well, surely the judge knows something I don’t know.”