Hank Johnson: “Zell Miller was the first Governor to appoint a significant number of minorities and women to the Georgia bench. Zell…”

“Zell Miller was the first Governor to appoint a significant number of minorities and women to the Georgia bench. Zell Miller should be remembered for actually desegregating Georgia's courts. As the Daily Report article outlines, by the time Zell Miller left the Governorship in December of 1998, he had appointed 37 percent of Georgia's 287 trial and appellate court judges. Those numbers include 4 of the 10 judges on the State court of appeals, and 5 of the 7 State supreme court justices. Zell Miller appointed an African American female as the first African American to ever serve on the Georgia Supreme Court. Twenty-five of Governor Miller's appointments were African Americans; 42 of his judicial appointments were women; 11 were African American women, meaning he added 56 Black and female judges to the bench in his 8 years. It is a fact that Zell Miller appointed more African Americans to judgeships in Georgia than all previous Georgia Governors combined. In addition, Governor Zell Miller appointed an African American to serve as Georgia's Attorney General, making that African American the first African American State attorney general in the Nation. It is a remarkable record for any Governor, let alone one from the Deep South. One of the first counties where he began to diversify the bench is my home circuit, the Stone Mountain Judicial Circuit.…”