Cleo Elaine Powell broke new ground Friday when she was formally sworn in as the first African-American woman on the 232-year-old Virginia Supreme Court.
Chief Justice Cynthia D. Kinser administered the oath as Powell placed her hand on a Bible that belonged to her late father, Millas Powell Jr., and was held by her mother, Mary C. Powell, and husband, Alvin Larnell Dilworth.
"I will be the best justice that I can be," she promised at the end of her remarks, prompting a standing ovation in a chamber packed with other members of her family, her friends and dignitaries from the three branches of government.
In his remarks earlier, Gov. Bob McDonnell noted the historic aspects of the occasion.
"What a tremendous day," McDonnell said as he walked by the state Capitol on his way to the ceremony. Inside the building designed by Thomas Jefferson, a movie was being filmed about Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator.
A native of Brunswick County, Powell, 54, graduated from the University of Virginia in 1979 and the University of Virginia School of Law in 1982.
In 2008 she became the first African-American woman to join the Virginia Court of Appeals. She was a circuit court judge for Chesterfield and Colonial Heights from 2000 to 2008 and a general district court judge there from 1993 to 2000.
Before serving as a judge or justice, she was in private practice with Hunton & Williams, a senior assistant Virginia attorney general and corporate counsel for Dominion Virginia Power.
A cousin, the Rev. Grady Wilson Powell Sr., a retired pastor, told a story Friday about one of the newest justice's ancestors, a 12-year-old slave who was told he was free on April 9, 1865, the day Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant.
"Life can be understood by looking backwards," said Grady Powell, quoting a philosopher and explaining why he told the family story. But, he said, "(life) can only be lived by looking forward."
After she was sworn in, robed by her three children, Vaughan, Harrison and Taylor Dilworth, and took her seat with the six other justices, Powell began her sometimes humorous remarks by promising, "I'll try and not keep you long, but if I do, deal with it."
Powell thanked those in attendance and those who were not who made possible the opportunities now available for her and others.
She thanked the late Leroy R. Hassell Sr., Virginia's first African-American chief justice, who died in February, creating the vacancy she filled. "He was my mentor, he was my friend. … It is my privilege to fill the seat that he so untimely vacated," she said.
Powell is the second justice to recently join the court. Last month Elizabeth A. McClanahan, 52, a native of Buchanan County, took the oath, the fourth female to do so in the court's long history.
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