Making A Difference: A Look Back at the Life of One of Tifton’s Finest

Published 3:13 pm Friday, January 21, 2022

TIFTON—Whether at college or in the courtroom, retired State Court Judge Larry Mims has always focused on implementing change and improvement in his community.

From governmental reform to youth education, the retired State Judge has been a positive force in Tifton for over thirty years, and continues to serve the community to this day.

A Tifton resident from birth, Mims made the choice to step outside of his small town after graduating from high school in 1972, in the pursuit of knowledge and finding himself. He desired to become involved in student activism and learn more about the social climate of the world–a desire that would lead him across the country to Cornell University.

“I decided on Cornell because there was really a history of student activism there, and I came out of a situation where my high school years were marked with integration for the first time, getting to meet new folks, trying to navigate the whole social climate that was going on in the country,” Mims said. “But I always felt like I wanted to be involved in whatever movement there was for justice and equality and those types of things. Cornell appealed to me because they had had some real struggles on their campus with diversity issues, and I was looking to see how they had responded to it.”

At the time Mims was considering enrolling in the Ivy League school, its students were campaigning for more diversity, inclusion, and African American representation. These demands would lead to the former State Judge joining a new class of African American students at Cornell and becoming one of the first African American Tifton natives to attend the prestigious university.

Mims became actively involved in his new college community, joining the freshman basketball team as a way to further broaden his horizons and give himself an outlet and a way to develop more connections. His studies mainly focused on his Government major, interested in pursuing a career in either law or politics.

In addition, he explored classes detailing Cornell’s Africana Studies course, focusing on the history and culture of African Americans on a worldwide scale and helping Mims to learn more about his culture and heritage.

He continued to pursue an interest in a law career after graduating from Cornell, returning to Atlanta to do so, but was unsure if it was truly what he wanted to do. After attempting to work during the day and take law classes at night, however, the former State Judge realized that he needed to give his studies his full attention if he was truly intent on following that path. After a trip to a University of Georgia recruitment fair and a conversation with the dean and head of the financial aid department, Mims had found his solution and resumed his studies full-time at UGA.

In the summers between his semesters, he began to search for ways to help others in his community, taking jobs with local organizations determined to aid people in overcoming the barriers in their lives. His first of these jobs was with  the life skill and employment training organization OIC, where he primarily worked with young African American men and helped them to find their potential in the workforce.

His second summer would lead him back to Tifton, where he worked for the Migrant Farm Worker Division of Georgia Legal Services in ensuring the migrant worker population received fair housing and wages. However, this return visit would help Mims to realize that much of the town he had left nearly ten years ago had not changed, despite the obvious problems that persisted as a result.

He wanted to see his hometown be changed and improved for the better, but to do that, he realized, he would need to be there to do it.

“Some of the things I saw growing up here and coming back here after having left, not a whole lot had changed,” Mims said. “People were still not able to participate in decisions that were being made about their lives, the political process was pretty much closed to African Americans, there was just a lot of work to do. Economic conditions, social conditions, work, still lagging and still needing some attention. So I committed myself to coming back, and trying to do what I could to address some of those issues.”

The former State Judge did just that; after finishing up his third year of law at UGA, he returned to Tifton, signing on with a local law firm and working with a coalition of like-minded members of the community to incite real change in their city. The first thing on their list: fixing the election process for council members.

Before switching to the single-district system it has now, which has government officials representing only the people of the district they live in, anyone who lived within the city limits of Tifton was allowed to run for the position to represent any district, regardless of their own proximity to them. Such a system made it nearly impossible for African Americans to be elected to governmental positions.

After finding obvious flaws in the system through running for a position on the Board of Education himself, Mims and his group were able to file a lawsuit against the system and have it changed to the much fairer single-district system used today.

The former judge worked to revise several other policies that unfairly treated the residents of Tifton, saving the jobs of two city employees who would have otherwise been fired by an unfair personnel policy and working with an attorney from Washington, DC to bring needed change to a fleeing felon rights law.

All the while, Mims was building up and persevering in his law career. While he initially had to join another law firm upon returning to Tifton, he soon managed to open his own. From there, he went on to become a solicitor of the state court for twenty years, and then, after the current judge of the court was unable to fulfill his duties, the retired State Judge was given the opportunity to take on the role of State Judge himself in 2000.

He was more than happy to fulfill the role, and worked tirelessly to ensure the courtroom he presided over was one where all within it could feel respected and heard. After his initial tenure, he was reelected four more times, in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2010, before he finally decided to retire in 2014.

In addition to this, Mims has remained heavily motivated to help the youth of Tifton and Southern Georgia throughout his career in law, educating them and supporting them as they venture into new parts of their lives.

Since the retired State Judge returned to Tifton after his time at UGA, he has been motivated to help educate young people and expose them to the greater world beyond their hometown. He believed it was vital to impress upon them the importance of education, and its ability to bring about tremendous change to one’s circumstances for the better.

“A lot of what I did coming back to Tifton–and I didn’t do it by myself, it was in connection with some other folks who were like-minded–we really wanted to work with young people and let them know there was a life outside of Tifton Georgia,” Mims said. “There were opportunities outside of here, that you can go anywhere, do anything. We wanted to give them some outlet, let them know, ‘You have what it takes to make it in this world.'”

These beliefs would eventually inspire the former State Judge to start his nonprofit organization Mims Kids with his wife Joyce Mims in the 1990s, focused around the idea of, in Mims’s own words, “If we can show kids that there’s a different world out there, then they can imagine it, and if they can imagine it, they can get there.”

Though the former State Judge is now retired, he still remains active in helping the youth of Tifton–this aspiration being what he calls his life’s work–as well as the people in his community as a whole.

Always wanting to find a way to improve his community, Larry Mims is always eager to touch and change the lives of those around him for the better, a trait that can be well seen over his long and fulfilling career.

“It’s not so much what I did; I think it’s more about what you gave and how you were able to impact folks.” retired State Judge Mims said. “That’s what I strive to do every day, is make someone’s life better, to give them knowledge, give them some resources, give them something that can help them along the way.”