Charles Small climbed the ladder to become Chief Clerk of Brooklyn Supreme Court
The Kings County Supreme Court, Civil Term is one of the largest and busiest courts of its kind anywhere in the U.S. with specialized parts in nearly every field. It takes a lot to run a courthouse like that and that phenomenal task is left up to Charles Small.
Small, an immigrant from Barbados, never wanted to move to the U.S. and preferred to stay in his home country to eventually become a politician. Instead, his brother and a go-where-God-takes-me attitude brought him to Bedford-Stuyvesant and eventually the Brooklyn Supreme Court, Civil Term, where he is the top ranking non-judicial employee in the court.
“I wanted to become an economist and go into politics,” Small said as he chuckled to himself at how far off his initial expectations were. “My brother was living here and brought us all here to live. It wasn’t something where I knew that I would be living here. He sold us on greater opportunities. I think I would have done well there too, but he had already convinced pretty much everyone else to come here so I kind of just went with the flow.”