South Fulton, Georgia (CNN)When LaDawn "LBJ" Jones walked into a meeting at work a couple of months ago, she was hit with a serious case of "black girl magic."
Jones, the city solicitor in South Fulton, Georgia, was meeting for the first time with the city's municipal court staff. As she entered the room, she realized she was looking at something she'd never before seen in her legal career.
Everyone in the room looked like her.
"I walked into a very small conference room, and I noticed that it was all black women," Jones told CNN. "I kind of got that feeling of 'this is nice -- this is exciting.'"
South Fulton, an Atlanta suburb and one of Georgia's newest cities, has the distinction of being perhaps the first city in the nation to have its criminal justice system led entirely by black women:
- Chief Judge Tiffany Carter Sellers
- interim Police Chief Sheila Rogers
- solicitor LaDawn "LBJ" Jones
- public defender Viveca Famber Powell
- court administrator Lakesiya Cofield
- chief court clerk Ramona Howard
- court clerk Tiffany Kinslow
- court clerk Kerry Stephens
Many will hail this group as a definitive sign of progress in the tortured relationship between the justice system and black America.
But does having a judicial system led entirely by black women automatically guarantee a greater degree of justice for residents of this city of 95,000 people?
Chief Judge Tiffany Carter Sellers