Savannah’s Benefactor
Is Texas Businessman
A Texas millionaire identified himself September 18 as the donor of $150,000 to help finance a Clarence Thomas Wing for Savannah, Georgia’s, historically black Carnegie Library branch. Harlan Crow, a member of the Dallas family that controls the Trammell Crow real-estate firm and a personal friend of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, authorized the Chatham-Effingham-Liberty Regional Library to reveal his name. The library board asked him to do so after local activists filed a request last month under Georgia’s Open Records Act to disclose the names of all anonymous donors to the library system, the Savannah Morning News reported September 19.
“We have agreed and your board has authorized that the expansion wing will be known as the Clarence Thomas Wing,” Crow wrote in a letter that accompanied his check. The library board had voted 8–2 August 21 to accept the donation, which was initially made anonymously. Critics contend that the wing should not be named after Thomas because of his opposition to affirmative action and the Voting Rights Act.
Library Director Bill Johnson said in the Morning News that all donations are made to the Library Foundation, which has pledged to defend contributors’ anonymity. “Donors have a personal and legal right to privacy that overrides the right of the requests to examine records that will disclose their identities,” he said.
Library officials are looking into naming the branch’s other wing after one of its 1906 founders.
Posted October 1, 2001.
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