AUGUSTA, GA – Very rarely do you hear the media praise the Augusta Commission.

Well, I’d like to make an exception this week.

I want to commend the six commissioners who voted in favor of naming the city’s new courthouse the Augusta Judicial Center and John H. Ruffin Jr. Courthouse.

Critics will complain that the name is too long. Others will say that there were other judges who deserved the recognition more than Ruffin.

But in 2004, I drove to Atlanta to interview Ruffin, a Georgia Court of Appeals judge, for a story I was working on regarding the 50th anniversary of the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Ruffin, a former civil rights attorney and the first black Superior Court judge in Augusta, described to me how, even though the U.S. Supreme Court clearly ruled state-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment, many cities across this country, including Augusta, resisted implementing integration.

“There is that opening line, ‘It was the best of times. It was the worst of times,’” Ruffin said, quoting from Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities.” “I think that best describes how it was back then. Segregation was a way of life at that time and we knew it was going to be a difficult road ahead. But the mandate of Brown was clear. Things had to change.”

By the early 1960s, Augusta’s chapter of the NAACP, headed by the late Rev. C.S. Hamilton of Tabernacle Baptist Church, went before the Richmond County Board of Education and requested it abide by the Supreme Court’s order.

“We didn’t expect the board to comply,” Ruffin said. “We knew we would have to take legal action. So, we had to find some plaintiffs for a lawsuit against the board. We didn’t need persons who were timid. We needed persons who would be able to withstand the pressure.”

In 1964, Ruffin approached Willie and Gladys Acree about allowing him to add their son, Robert Acree, to a lawsuit he was filing against the Richmond County Board of Education to force the school system to comply with Brown.

The 1964 lawsuit, Acree v. Board of Education of Richmond County, resulted in a 1972 desegregation order by the U.S. District Court for Augusta to integrate schools.

During the course of the lawsuit, Ruffin received several death threats.

“My secretary took most of the calls and she shielded me from them,” he said. “But I don’t think you can work for civil rights and be afraid. To me, the mandate of Brown was clear and my responsibility was to make sure that it was followed in Augusta. My only fear was, I thought if I didn’t do it, it might not get done.”

So, thank you commissioners Corey Johnson, Betty Beard, Joe Bowles, J.R. Hatney, Alvin Mason and Calvin Holland for properly honoring Ruffin. He deserves it.