By admin 
In York County’s courtrooms for decades, the shortest guy in the building seemed to tower over everybody.
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Tom McKinney, not much north of 5 feet tall, who learned to read and write in a one-room schoolhouse in rural South Carolina, was a defense lawyer who tried cases from murders down to petty theft. He was a civil rights lawyer for people before there was TV and the Internet to show some attorney as a fighter for all that is right and equal.
Thomas A. “Tom” McKinney died Monday at age 86 in Mount Pleasant near Charleston, said one of his law partners, Gary Lemel. But McKinney’s legendary six decades of courtroom work and impact on his community remain forever. He was a man who believed in right and wrong and said so.
When York County had to decide whether to put Confederate flags back up in the restored York County Courthouse a decade ago, McKinney firmly told The Herald in 2017 that Lady Justice wanted no part of a flag that portrayed some people as less than others. McKinney had roared for decades about that flag in the courtroom and in a building created for fairness and equality.
“There is no place in a court of law, a place of justice for all, for the Confederate flag,” McKinney told The Herald in 2017.
The quote, picked up by The Associated Press, ran all over the world when the flag did not go back up.
Prosecutors knew that facing McKinney in a criminal case meant bring the “A” game or stay home.
“When I was solicitor, Tom was always prepared,” said Tommy Pope, York County’s former top prosecutor and now the Speaker Pro Tem in the S.C. General Assembly. “When you try a case against Tom McKinney, you had to be ready.”
Current 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett, a prosecutor in York County for 35 years, described McKinney as “The well-respected Dean of the York County criminal defense bar.”
“He was always a well-prepared and meticulous adversary in trial who fought hard for his clients,” Brackett said.
Retired York County Circuit Judge Dan Hall, who practiced law in York County for decades before becoming a judge, said McKinney’s work mattered both to those he represented and to the public.
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“Tom McKinney was a hard-working trial lawyer,” Hall said. “Tom has tried more jury trials than any other lawyer I know. Jim Boyd (another Rock Hill longtime attorney) is probably second. Tom deeply enjoyed his work and was very good at reading people. He was extremely confident and served his clients and the citizens of York County well.”
Leland Greeley, a York County defense lawyer for four decades, said McKinney had the respect of not just the legal community, but the people of Rock Hill.
“Tom McKinney was a person who people at all stages of life, from all walks of life, listened to,” Greeley said.
The son of a rural preacher who was married with two sons, McKinney grew into a lawyer who fought for his clients and cared deeply for Rock Hill and York County. He volunteered with Rock Hill’s Come-See-Me Festival and other civic and legal groups.
McKinney cared about justice, community and right and wrong. He stood up against segregation and other wrongs his whole life in court and in Rock Hill as the city changed. When he recalled the 1968 killing of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis that set off fires and tensions in Rock Hill when he was a young lawyer, McKinney spoke in 2008 of the heartbreak and feeling “devastated.”
“The nonviolent leader of people who had been oppressed — I saw it myself my whole life, man, I was the son of a Baptist preacher, and I saw it in church, heard that word that people called Blacks in church and in courthouses and how they treated Blacks — was murdered,” McKinney said in 2008. “I saw the pain of people, Black people, after King died. And it was like a Christ-like figure was dead. There is no other way to describe it.”
When Barack Obama clinched the nomination for president in 2008, McKinney — a political independent — told The Herald it was as significant an event as any he had lived through.
“All the little fights I had, what I tried to do with my life, it meant something,” McKinney said then.
McKinney started the law firm that is now McKinney, Tucker and Lemel and ran it for decades from a refurbished house on Saluda Street in downtown Rock Hill. Thousands of clients walked in the front door of that old house to find the tough defense lawyer ready to help them. Every person, regardless of what they looked like or if they were broke and had to walk there to see the lawyer, was welcomed at Tom McKinney’s office.
Lemel said McKinney spent more than a half century “advocating for people who needed him the most.”
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Services have not yet been announced.