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3 <br /> 1 removal and placing the portrait in storage. <br /> 2 <br /> 3 This discussion arose in the context of a discussion currently happening at the N.C. Supreme <br /> 4 Court level about the appropriateness of the placement of a large portrait of Judge Ruffin in the <br /> 5 most prominent position, behind the Chief Justice's seat, in the Supreme Court courtroom. <br /> 6 Chair Rich has sent you a recent news story explaining the research and reasoning behind this <br /> 7 concern. <br /> 8 <br /> 9 I'm hoping that tonight we can vote to endorse this statement and decide to send it especially to <br /> 10 Judge Fox and to Chief Justice Beasley. <br /> 11 <br /> 12 Commissioner Greene read the following: <br /> 13 <br /> 14 Last week, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Carl R. Fox requested the <br /> 15 removal of the portrait of former North Carolina Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Ruffin <br /> 16 from the courtroom in the historic Orange County Courthouse "because of his racist past and <br /> 17 his participation in slave trading and slave ownership." The county manager's office has <br /> 18 complied with his request. <br /> 19 <br /> 20 A Hillsborough attorney, Orange County farmer, and trustee of the University of North <br /> 21 Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ruffin joined the Supreme Court in 1829, serving as chief justice from <br /> 22 1833 to 1852. The portrait is a copy of one commissioned by an honor society at UNC. It had <br /> 23 hung in the courtroom since a renovation in 1993. <br /> 24 <br /> 25 Ruffin was nationally recognized during his lifetime for his keen judicial mind. Little <br /> 26 mentioned after his death, however, was an opinion in recent years deemed to be among the <br /> 27 most shocking in the entire body of slavery law. State v. Mann (1829), as Judge Fox wrote in a <br /> 28 statement, "rivals the Dred Scott decision in its horror and inhumanity." <br /> 29 <br /> 30 State v. Mann gave enslavers virtually unlimited powers of discipline. In overturning a <br /> 31 Chowan County's verdict of assault against a man who had shot a young enslaved African <br /> 32 American woman in the back as she fled from his chastisement, Ruffin wrote: "The power of the <br /> 33 master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect." There was no legal or <br /> 34 statutory precedent to justify the opinion. Its language was broadly circulated, licensing extreme <br /> 35 physical abuse. <br /> 36 <br /> 37 As a businessman, Ruffin trafficked in human lives: he secretly partnered with a South <br /> 38 Carolina man in a speculative slave trading business. His personal life too indicates little <br /> 39 respect for enslaved people: he once took a cane to an enslaved woman who had come on to <br /> 40 his property without permission. <br /> 41 <br /> 42 These facts are among those discovered in original research conducted by UNC law <br /> 43 professor Eric Muller and Commissioner Sally Greene.* As a result of their findings, the large <br /> 44 portrait of Judge Ruffin prominently placed in the courtroom of the North Carolina Supreme <br /> 45 Court has come under scrutiny. A committee named by Chief Justice Cheri Beasley is in the <br /> 46 process of considering the appropriate disposition for this and the other portraits in the Court's <br /> 47 collection. Their deliberations are expected to continue through the end of 2020. <br /> 48 <br /> 49 As the truth about Ruffin's life and work becomes more widely known, it is increasingly <br /> 50 difficult to justify his portrait in a position of special honor in any courthouse. The Orange <br />