https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLQVxz1DZI0  See attached, about the  role of lawyers in Mississippi up to and including that summer.

However, to try to place this Post in a  proper context, I need to respond to criticism of   yesterday’s Post (Post 126, not 116 as stated.). `I was chided for suggesting that there was a 30-year-hiatus when the United States judiciary appeared to be true to the cliché that we are a nation of laws, not of white men.    

The critic asserted that we have always been a nation of white men, and it was likely that my audience of more than 300 knew it.  The idea of a hiatus on my part does not ring true a day later.

Further, the critic claimed that discussing the issue was a mistake because it left the impression that progressives as an alternative should follow the direction taken by Donald J. Trump in opposition to law and order, and in favor of chaos and fear.  First, let me reject that notion, I certainly am not advocating or even suggesting anything like generating hysteria as an antidote to the dysfunctional judicial branch of government.

Trump in fact is benefitting from our nation’s legal system being one of white men, primarily Christians.  He changes lawyers like parents change diapers, with one specific motive.  Trump successfully uses his lawyers to delay and put off any legal action being taken against him and his cronies, including fellow NYU Law alum Rudy Giuliani, while his judicial appointees render opinions to give his supporters what they want—rejection of empowerment of women, blacks, Native Americans, and anyone else who threaten the white male supremacy which has controlled our nation since its inception.

I am however conceding to that critic I erred in suggesting that there was one 30-year period of legal history when judges and justices seemed to recognize for the first and only time that black people, other minorities, the poor, women, children, people said to be mentally or physically disabled, migrant workers, and other plain folk had rights under the U.S. Constitution.

More accurately, throughout our history, there have been and likely always will be jurists like the Hon. William M. Taylor in Dallas, TX, in 1969.  Nothing in Judge Taylor’s life or legal background suggested that he would be responsive to a lawsuit brought by my friend Ed J. Polk, to demand that every county in the state of Texas provide either the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture program for food stamps or for distribution of surplus food commodities.

Texas was cutting back on both programs, and consequently people, including Ed’s clients, were going hungry.  Case law and precedent were sparse.  Presenting what evidence he could, Polk summed up by telling Judge Taylor to do the right thing.  And Judge Taylor did.

 Judge Taylor's on Dec. 30, 1969, directed  the Agriculture Department “immediately to put into effect in the shortest time feasible and at Federal expense” the commodity distribution program in every Texas county that had no food stamp program.   A point had been made, although Texas continued to procrastinate for months.

In short, lawyers are always needed to tell courts to do the right thing and sometimes jurists do, on this continent, even before the United States was formed.   However, it should be noted that it is and was more likely to happen when the legal system albeit reluctantly allows a jury to be convened.  Jeb Bush's "tort reform" as well as the dominance of Alternative Dispute Resolutions instead of trials at law schools nationwide have undermined that U.S. constitutional right.

One of the bright spots even before the nation was born occurred in  the 18th Century.  John Peter Zenger, a German immigrant, published articles critical of a colonial governor who brought an “information” against the journalist for seditious libel.   Zenger was in jail for eight months, before he was given a trial.

” At the time, English common law, which had been transported to the colonies, provided that truth was no defense to an accusation of seditious libel; indeed, truthful information could be even more dangerous than lies, because it was more believable. Calling essentially for the exercise of what today would be considered jury nullification, in the case of New York v. John Peter Zenger Alexander Hamilton urged jurors to strike down this law as unjust. Jurors ignored the judges’ instructions and acquitted Zenger to the great delight of onlookers.,” John  R. Vile, for the First Amendment Encyclopedia, https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1235/john-peter-zenger#:~:text=Zenger%20was%20acquitted&text=Calling%20essentially%20for%20the%20exercise,the%20great%20delight%20of%20onlookers.

My previous article also was misleading in another respect.  I had forgotten my own adult belief in favor of suing the bastards. Winning isn’t everything.  It isn’t even the only thing.  Virtue can be found, for instance, in the  filing of civil lawsuits themselves or forcing the state in criminal law to prove, for example, your clients were trespassing, when they were arrested for refusing to shut up after their three-minutes of public comment was over at local city commission meetings.

That critic pointed to one clear example yesterday. which I rejected, because it is such an obvious loser, in light of the three federal judges assigned to hear the case. 

"Federal courts allowed a case against Florida’s congressional map to move forward, but without Gov. Ron DeSantis as a defendant. A three-judge panel ruled that plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of a map the Governor signed have standing to sue. Plaintiffs claim in their federal complaint  that the map, drafted by DeSantis’ staff after he vetoed one produced by the Legislature, significantly diminishes Black voting power in Florida.”  Jack Ogles, “Florida lawsuit challenging congressional map advances in federal court,”  Florida Politics,, https://floridapolitics.com/archives/570869-lawsuit-challenging-floridas-congressional-map-advances-in-federal-court/

Publication of the article and a victory, albeit temporary, were justification enough for bringing the lawsuit, however unlikely it could prevail on the merits.  Even if the three judges would set aside the redistricting, the defendants would be entitled to an immediate hearing by the current reactionary U.S. Supreme Court majority.\

I believe (I hope) I am now back on the right track, to explain to lawyers and the rest of the audience why volunteer lawyers are essential to a successful Florida Freedom Summer of 2024, just as they were in Mississippi in 1964.   As noted, the attached article published this February, provides an overall impression of who the lawyers and law groups were, but less so of what they did.

 

That summer, my 29^th year, I and a colleague, Nan Randall Paolillo, were represented by her husband, Charlie, a Wall Street lawyer, in a labor dispute we had with our employer, Television Age trade magazine in Nw York City.   

She, I and two other TV Age employees formed a Group 4 labor organization and demanded recognition.  The publisher refused.

Charlie persuaded the National Labor Relations Board to issue an unfair labor practice charge against the publisher for blaming us and apologizing for us, when advertisers criticized articles we wrote.   The NLRB had jurisdiction because he had violated our “working conditions.”  Our Group 4 was considered large enough to be given recognition.

During the controversy, I had been inspired to go to law school, in part because during the course of the dispute, Charlie refused to let me handle the matter, because I wasn’t a lawyer.  I wouldn’t understand how to persuade the NLRB we were right, because I didn’t know the law.  I boasted that I had done well in an undergraduate course in communications law at the University of Wisconsin School of Journalism but Charlie just ignored me.

 

Meanwhile, Nan, I, and two other TV Age employees, had reached a settlement with the employer.  He was required to sign a statement that in the future, he would respect the right of the journalists to control use of their by-lines.  Nan and I received severance pay. With time on our hands, Nan, Charlie, I and my spouse Benita decided we would go South as volunteers for the voting rights campaign in Mississippi. 

 

Benita also would be returning to school in the fall, to get an M.A. in English from Sarah Lawrence University.  Benita grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in the ship-building town of Pascagoula.  The activity would give her a chance to visit places including New Orleans where she hadn’t been for a long time.

 

Charlie and I considered taking guns with us, but our wives rightly vetoed that idea.

 

Charlie volunteered through the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) which had been formed to provide attorneys to support the participants in the voting rights campaign that summer. 

 

I and our wives volunteered through the Congress of Racial Equality.  I decided I would use the two weeks to interview lawyers and learn why they had chosen to volunteer.  Television Age was the last of four full-time jobs I had as a journalist, after I completed two years of active duty with the U.S. Army, primarily as a journalist in the Territory of Hawaii.  Ahead was a career in law.

 

Since I was going to New York University Law School on our return, I decided I would find work to do with lawyers who were involved and include what I learned for later publication.   In the next two weeks, I found myself with some of the greatest civil rights and civil liberties lawyers this nation has ever seen.

 

I was assigned to study and report on Mississippi’s antiquated bail system.  Getting civil rights workers bailed out immediately was a top priority.  I worked directly for Alan Levine, a volunteer from New York City, who would later be my mentor at the New York Civil Liberties Union, and then a counsel I would assist in my first legal job at the Center on Social Welfare Policy & Law at Columbia.

 

We worked out of the office of the most prominent if not the only black law firm in New Orleans.  Bob Collins later became a U.S judge who issued a sweeping judicial decree to transform the juvenile justice system in Louisiana.  His partner Lolis Elie is credited with the desegregation of the Catholic schools in New Orleans.  The third member of the firm was Nils Douglas.  Hw was the first black elected to the Louisiana state legislature.

 

Less well known than the Mississippi effort were actions being taken in adjacent Louisiana, especially in the New Orleans area.  Ben Smith’s law firm secured a landmark decision in Dombrowski v. Pfister to allow criminal defendants in some instances to challenge in federal court the laws under which they were arrested, if it were likely that no such challenge would be considered in a timely fashion during the state court proceedings.  A civil rights worker or even a lawyer could be detained for weeks, if not months without that opportunity.  Smith's office and the office of the ACLU which had initiated the action were firebombed.

 

One evening while several LCDC attorneys were meeting at Collins, Douglas & Elie, a request was received for representation of the father of a civil rights worker.  The black man had been accosted on an isolated road by two knife-wielding teenagers out for a little sport.  The black man successfully fought off the youths, but found himself arrested for assault.

 

Defense would have been immediate for the civil rights worker.  But his father was not involved in the movement, and perhaps would not even want their representation.  Their resources were scarce.  One of the attorneys called the prosecutor in Pascagoula, MS to find out if a settlement could be reached.  We were advised that if he were to plead guilty, his sentence would be suspended and he would spend no time in jail.  If he chose to go to trial, the penalty could be as much as five years on a chain gang.

 

The LCDC lawyers were in agreement.  If it had been the civil rights worker, who was as innocent as the father, the plea deal would be refused.  The recommendation for the father was to accept the deal, which he did.

 

A significant LCDC meeting was to take place in Jackson, MS.  I decided to attend and interview attorney Bill Kuntsler for that proposed article I would try to sell when I returned to New York.  I had some success with freelance submissions to other publications when I was with TV Age.

 

I met briefly with Bill and we agreed to get together when we returned to New York.  He and I remained in contact periodically until I went to his office in 1995, to discuss a client of his with whom I had worked in Orlando, FL.  The client, a founder of Essence magazine, was in jail without bond for allegedly harassing the city’s white Republican mayor, Glenda Hood.  Bill failed to keep the appointment.  The next day I learned he had died of a heart attack.

 

This anecdote and the others in this account are offered to suggest the extensive lifetime network of contacts between and among lawyers whose interaction never would have happened without connections established that summer.  My next significant contact was in Jackson, but not at that LCDC meeting because it was reserved for lawyers.

 

As I waited outside the meeting room, two adolescent black boys approached me.  Chuck asked if I were a lawyer, and I said truthfully I was not.  Why would he need one?  Chuck turned and nodded toward the wooded area where two white adolescents could be seen.  Those two who were religious Christians had decided they wanted to enroll in a black public school when schools opened in the fall.

 

Only Chuck and his friend came with me to the Jackson Office of the NAACP.  It was run by Marian Wright, the first black woman admitted to the Bar in that State.  She later married Peter Edelman, who worked with Robert F. Kennedy and later in the Clinton Administration, before he resigned from the latter, to protest the president’s legislative effort to “end welfare as we knew it,” by driving many in need from the rolls.  Marian would go on to become director of the Children’s Defense Fund, in Cambridge, MA.

 

Faced with the problem of supporting the first known instance of white children attending a black school to frustrate the State’s continuing racial segregation in education, Marian called the New York NAACP office.  A quick decision was made.  The plan was rejected, because it would have been a distraction from the solid movement toward desegregation of the public school system in the South.   I am unaware of any similar opportunity ever occurring again..

 

On my return from Jackson, LCDC had assigned me to interview and prepare an affidavit for Aylene Quin, black bar owner and housewife, whose business had been firebombed more than once in McComb.  Frank Jones, a handsome black graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law with a striking black eye patch, also was there for a similar purpose, for another civil rights group.  Our meeting coincidentally paved the way for a major event five years later in 1969.

 

I was one of 82 attorneys receiving three weeks of education in Vail, CO to learn how to bring test cases and class actions, on behalf of the poor, in the fields of welfare, housing, education, employment, health, and consumer interactions.  Terry Lenzner, a young Republican attorney, had been named director of O.E.O Legal Services in the Nixon Administration, came out from D.C. to learn whether the federal funding for the experience had been worthwhile.

 

His presence was neither welcomed nor trusted.  But his associate director was Frank Jones.  I had become one of the leaders of an organization formed by the Vail attorneys—Poverty Lawyers for Effective Advocacy (PLEA).  By the time Terry and Frank left, they and PLEA were tight.  They gave PLEA credibility in the press and we in turn were considered a major player in preventing vetoes of legal service programs by among others future President Ronald Reagan, then governor of California.

 

Terry and Frank soon were fired by OEO Director Dick Cheney, and replaced by Donald Rumsfeld, the latter two being poster boys in the George W. Bush Administration, as U.S. vice president and secretary of defense respectively.    Terry went on to be one of the prosecuting attorneys in the Watergate Scandal.  Frank became a successful D.C. attorney.

 

Volunteers in 2024 are unlikely to face threats of violence, but they certainly will be needed initially to mount legal challenges to all of the voter suppression laws and tactics developed  by and for Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL),    There likely will be protests and arrests.  Conceivably they could participate in creation of a Florida Freedom Party delegation to the Democratic presidential convention that year, just as lawyers participated in the Mississippi Freedom Party delegation strategies.

 

But at no time am I suggesting that volunteer lawyers would be acting on their own.  Direction will come from the volunteers and grassroot representatives. “ The lawyers’ role in the civil rights movement was necessary, but as the lawyers themselves acknowledge, it was not sufficient. The people most essential to the movement were the ones who courageously stepped forward and made the demand for equal citizenship rights.”  Sarah Campbell, The Role of Lawyers in the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, February 2022, https://mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/role-lawyers-civil-rights-movement-mississippi#:~:text=Lawyers%20and%20law%20students%20fanned,in%20litigation%20for%20its%20enforcement.

Gabriel Hillel for Florida Freedom Summer of 2024