Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham gave the Holmes Hunter Signature Lecture at the University og Georgia on Monday. Photo: John Disney/ ALM

Georgia Supreme Court Justice Robert Benham captivated a crowd Monday at the University of Georgia with stories of himself as a litigator who likes a "nasty, protracted fight," and a boy breaking windows who could have gone in another direction without the benefit of forgiveness.

Benham—who plans to retire in March—used his own brand of humor mixed with poetry in the annual Holmes-Hunter lecture. The event is named for the university's first two African American graduates, the late Dr. Hamilton Holmes and journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault. Hunter-Gault made a surprise appearance to introduce Benham at the chapel on the old North Campus. The room was packed to the balconies. The speech was bookmarked by standing ovations.

The window-breaking story was delivered two Sundays ago as a confession at the church where it happened, Benham said. He described himself with a pile of rocks, cheered on by other boys, breaking one by one every window in that church.

"When I saw the preacher coming, I ran," he said. "I ran all the way home. The preacher followed me."

He said the pastor asked his parents to speak to him alone, then confronted him about the windows.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Behnam said he replied.

The pastor answered, "I want to hug you. I've begged for new windows. The Lord saw fit to send a fool like you to get them."

After the laughter subsided, Benham made his point. He said his life could have taken a different trajectory had that pastor not been forgiving and chosen to "salvage a young man rather than punishing a young man." He said judges need to bear that notion in mind.

Benham is the longest-serving and first African American member of the Supreme Court of Georgia. After earning his bachelor's degree from Tuskegee University in 1967, Benham became the second African American to graduate from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1970. Following law school, Benham served in the U.S. Army Reserve, attaining the rank of captain. Later he returned home to Cartersville and started his law practice.

In 1983, Benham's friend from Cartersville, Joe Frank Harris, was sworn in as governor. In 1984, Harris appointed Benham to the Georgia Court of Appeals. Benham served for five years on the intermediate appellate court until Harris appointed him to the Georgia Supreme Court in 1989. Benham served as chief justice from 1995-2001, again breaking historic ground.

In 2018, UGA Law established the Benham Scholars Program to foster diversity in the legal profession.

Benham began his story in the "red clay"of the North Georgia hills growing up in Cartersville. He was the youngest of three boys and the first person in his family to be born in a hospital.

"I cost my family $28," he said. "My father said it was the biggest waste of money he ever saw."

Benham traced his bent toward justice to the brokenness he saw in his father's face when the family was turned away from a place called "Storyland" they had heard about on television—in advertisements that didn't mention the white-only policy. He said their father was silent all the way home, then went into his room and wept. "I had never seen my father cry before."

Benham said he started his own personal civil rights activism with small steps: walking into a white school's library and borrowing a book, sitting up front on a bus to Marietta, ordering food at a restaurant but insisting on picking it up at the white-only window. Eventually, he said, "I put on the armor of the law to slay the dragons."

One of his first targets as a civil litigator was a carpet mill in North Georgia he sued for employment discrimination. He said he knew if he could beat one, others would take note. He said he took on two clients suffering from AIDS when the local hospital refused to treat them. The administrator backed down after Benham threatened to sue in federal court.

"I don't know what I would have said in front of that federal judge," he said.

Benham said he sued a local skating rink for discrimination after an African American girl and her friends were turned away.

"I don't care what kind of lawyer you are, they won't skate here," he said the owner told him.

Benham said he answered, "Not only are they going to skate here, but you are going to pay me to make them skate here."

In court, Benham said the owner argued that the skating rink was really a hotel with fewer than four rooms, and thus was exempt from anti-discrimination laws.

"That was the first time I saw a federal judge laugh out loud," Benham said. He said he won his case—and his legal fees.

"I tell you this to tell you what lawyers do and why they do it," Benham said. "But there are certain things that the law can't handle. We can't let the evils of yesterday use up our tomorrows. As a people, we have more in common than things that separate us."

Benham closed with a flawless recitation of "The Bridge Builder," by Will Allen Dromgoole:

"An old man going a lone highway, came, at the evening cold and gray, to a chasm vast and deep and wide through which was flowing a sullen tide. The old man crossed in the twilight dim. The sullen stream had no fear for him; But he turned when safe on the other side and built a bridge to span the tide.

"'Old man,' said a fellow pilgrim near, 'You are wasting your strength with building here; Your journey will end with the ending day. You never again will pass this way; You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide. Why build this bridge at evening tide?'

"The builder lifted his old gray head; 'Good friend, in the path I have come,' he said, 'There followed after me to-day a youth whose feet must pass this way. This chasm that has been as naught to me to that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be. He, too, must cross in the twilight dim; Good friend, I am building this bridge for him.'"