From the President
| Publication year | 2023 |
| Citation | Vol. 28 No. 6 Pg. 0006 |
| Pages | 0006 |
SARAH B. "SALLY" AKINS
President
State Bar of Georgia
president@gabar.org
Who We Are Is Who We Were
One of my favorite movies is "Amistad," the 1997 historical drama based on events aboard a Spanish slave ship in 1839, during which the African captives overtook control of the vessel but were subsequently recaptured by the American government off the coast of Connecticut. The slaves' freedom was ultimately granted by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the climactic courtroom scene, Anthony Hopkins portrays former President John Quincy Adams, a champion of abolition, who had been brought in to represent the Africans. Pacing the courtroom past bust sculptures of a number of Founding Fathers, Hopkins as Adams tells the justices:
James Madison; Alexander Hamilton; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jefferson; George Washington; John Adams: We've long resisted asking you for guidance," he says. "Perhaps we have feared in doing so we might acknowledge that our individuality which we so revere is not entirely our own. Perhaps we've feared an appeal to you might be taken for weakness. But we've come to understand, finally, that this is not so.
We understand now. We've been made to understand, and to embrace the understanding, that who we are is who we were.
As the 2022-23 Bar year, with our emphasis on a renewed commitment to professionalism, has reached its end, it has reminded me of that quote. As Bar members seeking to fulfill our duties to serve the public and the justice system with integrity, civility and professionalism, we benefit from the history of the legal profession in Georgia and from the wisdom and examples of those who came before us. There are many such predecessors in the 60-year history of the State Bar of Georgia (and before), too many to include them all here. But I would like to share three in particular, each of whom served as chief justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia:
Harold G. Clarke
As a member of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1963, Harold G. Clarke of Forsyth ardently advocated the passage of legislation that would establish a unified State Bar. The bill had also passed the Senate overwhelmingly and on March 11, 1963, was signed into law by Gov. Carl Sanders.
Clarke entered the legal profession in 1950, following his service in the Army during World War II, when he was assigned as managing editor of the Stars & Stripes in Japan. When he returned to Forsyth, Clarke for many years simultaneously practiced law and published the local newspaper. He served a decade in the General Assembly.
Always an active leader in the legal profession, Clarke was elected as the 1976-77 president of the State Bar of Georgia, thus taking the reins of the organization he had helped nurture. In 1979, one of his fellow state representatives from the early 1960s-George Busbee of Albany, who had been elected...
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