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As Confederate statues came down this year, a commission deliberated on the fate of a huge portrait of Thomas Ruffin in the NC Supreme Ct. Ruffin was a slave batterer & a slave trader & author of one of the most noxious opinions in the law of slavery. https://www.facingsouth.org/2020/12/nc-commission-grapples-giant-courthouse-portrait-slave-owning-judge
. @GoSallyGreene and I have been working to bring Ruffin's hidden, brutal past to light for 15 years now. A statue of Ruffin in the entryway to the NC Ct of Appeals was removed earlier this year. But the portrait remains. https://www.newsobserver.com/article220326985.html
The portrait commission is now recommending that the big portrait come down and that *a new portrait be commissioned* that will match in size the rest of the portraits of NC Chief Justices adorning the courtroom's walls.
One might find it remarkable that any money--public or private--would go toward the creation of a new portrait of this man as we enter the 3rd decade of the 21st century. But that's what some powerful folks on the commission want.
A couple of the commissioners, including @BreeNewsome, make a different, strong case. The courtroom of our highest court should model impartiality and equality, and should therefore be free of all imagery of the state's biased racial past.
Like the courtrooms of so many other states' supreme courts, *all* of the many portraits lining the walls should come down to be displayed elsewhere. Let the courtroom communicate the equality our justice system values today rather than the inequality it enforced for so long.
That makes a whole lot of sense to me. In fact, once you realize how uncommon it is for courthouses to have their portraiture *inside the courtrooms*, it becomes hard to think of a good reason to keep all of these portraits up, other than that they've been there a long while./end
