Columbia attorney remembers Hillary Clinton’s work for SC children

As a young lawyer just four years out of University of South Carolina Law School, Herbert Buhl III wanted to help people. So he started working part time, often for free, for the American Civil Liberties Union.

In the early 1970s, he accepted a job as local counsel in a case in which the ACLU, the Children’s Defense Fund and others challenged a widespread practice in South Carolina of housing juvenile offenders with adults in rural county jails. The practice often led to abuse.

One of his co-workers on the case was an up-and-coming attorney fresh from Yale University. Her name was Hillary Rodham.

“It was her first job out of law school,” said Buhl, 71, who still practices law from his Five Points office. “She was very dedicated, very committed to children and families.”

During his speech Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton noted his wife’s service to children early in her career. The South Carolina jail case was one of the examples he mentioned. It also was mentioned in a campaign ad narrated by actor Morgan Freeman.

“She went to South Carolina to see why so many African-American boys, I mean young teenagers, were being jailed for years with adults in men’s prisons,” Bill Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton would go on to other pursuits – first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, U. S. senator from New York and U.S. secretary of state.

But Buhl remembers a young woman who, despite her Ivy League education, wasn’t too proud to borrow a car to get to a deposition at what was then the S.C. Department of Youth Services.

The Children’s Defense Fund “was trying to keep costs down, I guess; they weren’t renting cars,” Buhl said, so he offered to loan her his relatively new 1973 blue and white Series 2 Range Rover.

“She had never driven a stick shift before,” he said. “But I gave her the keys and said ‘go for it.’ She had a tough day driving that stick.”

When Clinton made a campaign stop in Columbia before the state’s Democratic presidential primary, her campaign arranged for the two to meet.

“She remembered the Land Rover,” Buhl said. “We got a good laugh out of it.”

‘It was mind-blowing’

Clinton could not be reached for comment.

But in her 2003 autobiography “Living History,” Clinton briefly mentions her time working with the Children’s Defense Fund in South Carolina as being among the most rewarding of her life.

“Some of the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds I interviewed were in jail for minor transgressions,” she wrote. “Others were already serious offenders. Either way, none of them should have been sharing cells with hard-core adult criminals, who would prey on them or further educate them in criminality. CDF led an effort to separate out juveniles and provide them with more protection and faster adjudication.”

The case was one of the first she participated in for the Children’s Defense Fund, and that period in her life cemented CDF founder and president Marian Wright Edelman of Bennettville as a mentor.

Although that relationship was tested when then-President Bill Clinton in 1993 backed welfare reform, those cracks have since been healed, according to a story in The Washington Post.

Efforts to reach Edelman for this story were unsuccessful.

Edelman spokeswoman Patti Hassler, a Columbia native, told The State newspaper that Edelman chooses not to comment on Clinton because the organization is not affiliated with any political party and she doesn’t want her comments to seem politically motivated.

Documents given to The State by Clinton’s campaign show the South Carolina case, called Larry W. v Stone, stretched for much of the 1970s. The list of motions alone stretches to 13 pages.

“They were very serious about fighting it,” Buhl said of officials in Pickens and Bamburg, who were plaintiffs in the suit. “They were looking at the economic impact of where they would put the juveniles.”

But Buhl said that considering the amount of money they spent on attorney fees, they could have built a facility. “It was mind-blowing.”

‘Hasn’t changed her spots’

Clinton left the case fairly early on when she married Bill Clinton and moved to Arkansas in 1975. The case was settled out of court in 1978 with the state agreeing to stop housing juveniles in the same jail cells as adults.

Thelma Sojourner, superintendent of Bamberg District 2 schools, says she remembers the case. And she also had an opportunity to meet Clinton in February.

“People were gravely concerned” about the issue, she said.

Clinton continued to reach out to Bamberg County during her February visit. Sojourner introduced her at a rally at a school in Denmark.

“She talked about her interest in the case,” Sojourner said. “She mentioned it. She was familiar with the county and wanted to see firsthand what our small, rural schools look like today.

“It was absolutely astounding,” she said. “It was a powerful moment.”

That Clinton’s interest in the plight of poor, rural children continues doesn’t surprise Buhl.

“She’s hardworking and she fights the fights,” he said. “It started a long time ago and she hasn’t changed her spots.”

This story was originally published July 30, 2016 at 6:25 PM with the headline "Columbia attorney remembers Hillary Clinton’s work for SC children."