February 15, 2004

Following the Road to Equal Justice

   By Kristina Wells
   Times Herald-Record
   kwells@th-record.com
   
   B. Harold Ramsey is a long way from home.
 

   It's been years since he walked to the all-black school in Walhalla, S.C., a textile town where folks worked at the sawmill or tried their hand at farming. Ramsey's father dabbled in the latter, keeping chickens, hogs and goats.
 

   The school in the rural town 45 miles southwest of Greenville was just a stone's throw from Ramsey's home. That was until the schoolhouse burned down, and Ramsey ended up taking a bus to school 10 miles away in Seneca. The white kids in Ramsey's neighborhood got their education less than a mile from home. But in the segregated South, as a black kid, you went where the bus took you.
 

   Ramsey says he didn't notice the segregation much. It just became a part of life. Blacks and whites shopped at the same places, but they used different drinking fountains and bathrooms.
 

   When Ramsey was a kid, Saturdays meant candy and a movie. It also meant sitting up in the balcony, while the whites sat downstairs.
 

   "You could tell segregation was taking place, but it wasn't as vicious as the term would suggest," says Ramsey, sitting behind a modest desk surrounded by legal books spaced on a nearby bookshelf. A copy of the "The Thinker's Way" is worn from use.
 

   Most of Ramsey's neighbors were white. The nearest black family, the Holcombs, lived three-quarters of a mile away. And he says, "We all played together. We developed very strong relationships as children. Very seldom did I ever hear a racial slur."
 

   Spirituality ruled the roost in every home, black or white, in Walhalla. Church on Sunday. Bible reading every night.
 

   Ramsey still does the latter to this day, rising every morning before the sun and meditating on the Psalms or the Gospels. His favorite passage: "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?"
 

   And he remembers what his mother told him: "Whatever your goals are, if you write it down in your Bible, you will achieve it."
 

   That's exactly what Newburgh's first black judge did.
 

   "Better late than never," he says.
 

   Ramsey, 59, is a guarded man when it comes to his personal life. He's proud of his children, but doesn't much care to put them in the spotlight. He, too, shies away from those who seek to probe and pry.
 

   But in a city that has never, until now, had a black jurist to fill the bench, Ramsey is in the public eye.
 

   His task is to take an overcrowded, inefficient City Court system and turn it into a place where justice is served. Justice begins at 8:30 a.m. on the dot and ends, this day, at 1:30 p.m.
 

   He doesn't rule the court with an iron gavel, a holier-than-thou attitude or a booming voice. He is stern, but soft spoken. He is thorough, but efficient.
 

   A few weeks back, Ramsey didn't have an official nameplate. A Xeroxed printout, folded, fit snug in the holder. The "B" stands for Boliver, named after Simon Boliver who liberated South America.
 

   Ramsey took the bench in mid-December, replacing Anthony Austria, who retired.
 

   Word is spreading fast about the new judge in town who is no pushover and who dispenses justice without prejudice.
 

   Ramsey came to Newburgh back in the 1960s on a bus. He was 16. His mother, a widow now, arrived first, finding work in this city and shelter at her sister's home. It's one of Ramsey's most vivid memories.
 

   "Going around Storm King Mountain, looking down at the Hudson River, I kept holding tight to the seat. Coming down Broadway, I never in my life saw a street so wide. It was very clean. It was very much alive."
 

   New York and South Carolina couldn't have been more different. Walhalla, after all, had a population of maybe 4,000. Newburgh was a booming metropolis with more than six times that many people.
 

   Ramsey savored his first taste of pizza in this city, and ate it whenever he could. It was a long way from the days he and his father, who died in his early 40s, hunted possum, squirrel and rabbit. But Ramsey's father only allowed his son to shoot a BB gun and hunt small game.
 

   People in Newburgh talked different, "fast," he says, grinning. "In the South, we're a little more laid back."
 

   Ramsey excelled at Newburgh Free Academy both in academics and in track. He worked, too, helping his widowed mother with the rent by mowing lawns and raking leaves in Balmville for Homer Ramsdale. He worked for a local artist in Balmville, too, who later offered to pay for Ramsey's college education.
 

   But Ramsey wanted to see the world. So he enlisted in the Navy and did just that.
 

   "Milwaukee is the coldest place on earth in November," he recalls of his military service.
 

   He warmed up along the four-year journey in Florida, Puerto Rico, Italy, Spain. He missed out on Greece, Egypt, Israel and Africa, all places Ramsey plans to see some day.
 

   After his tour of duty, Ramsey returned to the Hudson Valley and worked at the United States Military Academy at West Point in the mess hall. Later, he worked in the U.S. Mint's bullion depository on base. With the help of the GI Bill, he attended Orange County Community College, then went to SUNY New Paltz. He was the first in his family to graduate college.
 

   His first year in law school at Rutgers University, where a dear friend and current county legislator, Harvey Berger, attended, was "very tough, very rigorous. After that, it was a walk in the park."
 

   Ramsey worked for a prisoners' rights organization and poverty law clinic. It all reinforced his dream to practice law. On his second try, he passed the New York bar exam.
 

   He did a few years in the Dutchess County Public Defenders Office, the first black lawyer to work there. Then he went into private practice, where he stayed for two decades until taking the bench in Newburgh.
 

   He's come full circle now, taking a break from the daily grind, classical music playing in the cramped office. Ramsey brings to the bench a knowledge not only of the law, but of this city. A city he calls home. A city he knows can rise up again.
 

   "I don't believe Newburgh is dead," Ramsey said. "I believe in Newburgh. If I didn't believe in it, I wouldn't have taken this job."

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