booth gardner - Washington Secretary of State

mechanic and a cook whose grandparents were slaves. With his brilliant mind, winning
smile and impeccable manners, Smith had been breaking color barriers in the state’s legal
profession for 35 years. Impressed by his work as a
young deputy prosecutor, Attorney General Robert
F. Kennedy plucked Smith from King County in 1961
to head the team of Justice Department lawyers that
successfully prosecuted Teamsters President Jimmy
Hoffa for corruption. In 1965, Smith became Seattle’s
first African-American municipal court judge. Governor
Evans named him to the King County Superior Court
bench a year later. Smith had been a professor and dean
at the UW law school and a lieutenant colonel in the
Marine Corps. He was also one of the nation’s leading
Baptist laymen.
Carl Maxey, a pugnacious, charismatic civil
rights leader from Spokane, was also advertised as
being among the finalists for the Supreme Court seat.
Retiring Justice William Goodloe did Maxey no favors by injudiciously suggesting him as
his successor – a breach of decorum that also offended the State Constitution. However,
Goodloe’s curious behavior had no influence on the governor’s decision. Although Maxey’s
widow believes the governor was “scared to death of him,” Booth says that’s not so. He
says he respected Maxey but wanted a conciliator, and Smith stood for civility as much as
civil rights. The governor believed Smith had “the potential to bring a new level of balance
and direction” to a court that regularly produced 5-4 decisions on its toughest cases.
The behind-the-scenes story, Smith says, is that the job was his for the asking. He
says he was invited to meet with the governor, who cut to the chase. The conversation
went like this:
“I understand that if I offer you an appointment to the Supreme Court you would
turn it down.”
“Why don’t you make me an offer?”
“OK, I’m offering it to you.”
“Fine, I’ll take it.”
Smith says the governor’s press people asked him if he would object to keeping his
appointment on the QT for few weeks while they floated the notion that Maxey and others
were still under consideration. No problem, the judge said, smiling at the penchant for
“playing games.”
When confronted with what he considered racism, the normally mild mannered
Smith demonstrated he was no shrinking violet. In 1990, he told a Tacoma City Club forum
on race relations in Washington State that “Even though I am at the top of the judicial
Justice Charles Z. Smith, the first ethnic minority
on the Washington Supreme Court.
Photo courtesy Josef Scaylea.
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