Ann Woolner

As published in the Fulton County Daily Report

In Mobile, Ala., on a spring night in 1981, Michael Donald was walking to a store when two men he'd never met kidnapped him, beat him with a tree limb, slashed him with a knife and hung his lifeless body from a tree.
Nineteen years old and black, Donald was killed because two members of the United Klans of America wanted "to show Klan strength in Alabama," an ex-cohort would later testify.

That's the sort of activity that made the Klan notorious, it's best public relations efforts not withstanding. Accuse someone of being a Klansman and you conjure images of black men hanging from trees or of flame-engulfed crosses, the Klan's symbol of terror.

When I think of a Klansman, I do not think of Larry D. Thompson. Thoughtful, good natured, showing no inkling of racial hatred, Thompson appears genuinely concerned about fairness and deeply interested in the future of Atlanta.

But Thompson, too, was painted with the "K" brush that Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell has so wantonly applied to anyone involved in the Southeastern Legal Foundation.

"Just as in the 1950's and '60's it would have been wrong to belong to the Klan, it is inappropriate today to belong to the Southeastern Legal Foundation," the mayor said at the press conference Wednesday.

Exposing the "true motives" of the foundation and its board members, and threatening to picket their homes and "debutante balls," Campbell pledged, "There will be no rest for the racist."

Campbell calls this public tar-and-feathering of anyone connected with the group "our movement of conscience."

Why this righteous call to arms?

We are not talking about a group intent on denying a race of people the right to vote. Nor do we mean a band of men who go about terrorizing innocent people. We are talking about a group that wants a federal judge to decide whether the city's minority contracting program is legal.

The Southeastern Legal Foundation doubts the U.S. Constitution allows a government to count millionaire contractor Herman J. Russell and former Mayor Maynard H. Jackson as small businessmen eligible for special consideration for city contracts because of their race, according to foundation President Matthew J. Glavin.

I do not know what's in Glavin's heart but it seems possible that someone could wonder whether the city's set-aside program violates the Equal Protection Clause without hiding a white cone-shaped hat in his closet.

As it happens, Thompson says he supports affirmative action and believes in fostering ethnic diversity. Where he and Campbell part ways is that Thompson believes that affirmative action programs should be designed so they past constitutional muster and not "call into question whether people are getting something undeserved or unnecessary favors."

"You can operate effective affirmative action plans that fully meet all constitutional requirements. you can do that," says Thompson.

So, he wonders, "Why would you want to have programs that aren't legal?"

How does it help the would-be beneficiaries if the program gets struck down in court? Wouldn't it be better to fine-tune the program instead?

Of course, these distinctions easily are missed when someone's yelling "Klansman!" Perhaps that is why Campbell is making so much noise.

The foundation's rhetoric has been less heated but it clearly picked this fight. It did so by so publicly announcing it would give the city of Atlanta 30 days to dismantle the program or face a suit that would force a dismantling.

Until he resigned Thursday, Thompson sat on the Southeastern Legal Foundation's legal advisory board, which votes on legal positions the foundation takes. Thompson won't disclose how he voted on this matter. But he points out that he has not supported everything the group has done.

He publicly criticizes neither Campbell nor the foundation. The criticism you read here is mine, not his.

For his part, Thompson says he quit the SLF advisory board mostly because the debate had gotten so political that it caused "confusion" among those who know him as to his position on affirmative action.

"I'm a lawyer, not a politician," says Thompson, a King & Spalding partner and a former U.S. attorney. He believes these matters should be resolved in court.

Thanks mostly to Campbell and his friends, much of the public believes the debate has come down to whether affirmative action is good or bad, and Thompson found himself standing on the wrong side of a very wide gulf.

This is what demagoguery does. Its heat bleaches reasonable differences of opinion, leaving only the barest and most emotional of elements. It's removed what might have been Thompson's moderating influence from the foundation and no doubt has driven more extreme elements into the SLF fold. what's worse for the social fabric of a city is that it polarizes people into angry camps.

This is not the work of a leader who has the well-being of the city at heart. He can disagree if he likes; he can defend the city's program to the public and to the judge. He can do what City Council President Robb Pitts wants to do: meet with the foundation's folks and at least see what they say.

But when a mayor says, as Campbell did, that no judge can tell him what to do, he sounds more like George Wallace than Martin Luther King Jr. When he whips up sentiment in rallies and press conferences and pledges, "we will win--by any means necessary," he shows himself unworthy of the public trust.

And when he accuses people like Thompson of being modern-day Klansman, he not only insults Thompson he trivializes the horror of the Klan and diminishes those the Klan martyred.

If it weren't for the destructive Campbell rhetoric, I'd probably be looking for a way to defend the city's program instead of attacking him. In most matters, I'm far closer philosophically to Campbell than to the SLF and believe it shameful that before this program was created, only 1 percent of city contracts went to minority-owned firms. what cannot be defended is a mayor who lobs racially charged hand grenades into the public debate in hopes the smoke will hide the truth.

The truth is that Campbell's problem is not the Southeastern Legal Foundation, not the Ku Klux Klan but another group that does, in fact, wear robes. The U.S. Supreme Court said a decade ago that a government has to be very careful before it uses race as a criteria for granting special favors. City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 448 U.S. 469 (1989)

Because the 14th Amendment requires states to give equal treatment to its citizens, a court must use strict scrutiny and conduct a "searching judicial inquiry into the justification" for racial preferences to make sure that they remedy past discrimination and aren't driven by "notions of racial inferiority or simple racial politics," the high court said.

Using that decision and its subsequent one from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Thrash Jr. last month struck down Fulton County's minority and female business enterprise program for failure to meet constitutional standards.

Even so, when I think of a Klansman, I do not think of Thomas W. Thrash Jr.

Thrash (who, by the way, was appointed to the bench by President Clinton) issued a 55-page order, notably lacking in urgent calls for white men to arm themselves against the Negro threat. Webster v. Fulton County, No. 1:96-cv-2399-TWT (N.D.Ga., June 11, 1999)

He acknowledges, "Historically, minorities have been the victims of pervasive discrimination in all facets of economic enterprise. As a matter of good public policy, this alone might justify minority set aside programs by public agencies."

But Fulton's program, Thrash wrote, does not pass the strict scrutiny he must apply. There was no evidence that Fulton County discriminated against minorities in the '80s and '90s and insufficient evidence it had been a passive participant in discrimination.

Nor does the program remedy private sector discrimination. Its numerical goals, Thrash wrote "are not based upon any realistic assessment of the availability of minority business enterprises in the Atlanta metropolitan marketplace." The county did not prove discrimination against women in business, either.

Under those circumstances, he said, the Supreme Court and the 11th Circuit leave him no choice.

"Therefore," Thrash wrote, "race, ethnic and gender balancing in Fulton County contracting must end."

Fire up the cross.

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