Former attorney general and federal judge Griffin Boyette Bell, considered a legal innovator and a friend of desegregation, died at age 90 on Monday, January 5 at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta. He had been suffering from kidney disease, pancreatic cancer and pneumonia.

Along with serving as attorney general under President Jimmy Carter in the post-Watergate era and being both a friend and sometimes lawyer to both Presidents Bush, Bell was instrumental in creating the Sibley Commission, known for defusing racial tensions and helping Georgia to desegregate its public schools. In a statement released through the Carter Center, Carter described him as “a trusted and enduring public figure [whose] integrity, professionalism and charm were greatly valued across party lines and presidential administrations.”

“Griffin Bell worked with the Atlanta School Board and the community to develop an Atlanta solution [to desegregation] that was not only constitutionally correct, but academically sound,” said Andrew Young, the former United Nations Ambassador and Atlanta mayor, in a January 5 article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “He was a very good friend of mine … He was wise counsel.”

Bell served as a justice in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, where his decisions on 141 school desegregation cases in the 1960s won fans and detractors; and as the head of the U.S. Justice Department helping to rebuild credibility after the Watergate scandal. He was praised for increasing the number of blacks and women appointed to the federal bench.

“There were no black judges in the south until President Carter,” said Young in describing Bell’s impact on the federal bench.

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http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/2009/01/05/griffin_bell_obituary.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/california/la-me-griffin-bell6-2009jan06,0,3671250.story