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  • William A. Elwood Civil Rights Lawyers Project36

Start Over Main contributor Kulish, Mykola Date 2006 Collection William A. Elwood Civil Rights Lawyers Project

1. Interview with A. E. Dick Howard and Oliver W. Hill (22:21)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola, Hill, Oliver W., 1907-2007
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights attorney Oliver Hill and law professor A.E. Dick Howard discuss the Constitutional Revision Commission of Virginia in 1968 in front of the Capitol in Richmond. They go over Virginia Constitution history, including how the 1902 Constitution was written with the intent to discriminate against African Americans. Mr. Hill speaks about Massive Resistance, and Mr. Howard comments on awkward interpretations of the Virginia Constitution that let public schools close to avoid integration in the 1950s. The 1968 Virginia Constitution finally included an antidiscrimination clause. Mr. Hill and Mr. Howard relate the reasons why they went into constitutional law. Part two. Continuation of discussion about the 1968 Constitutional Revision Commission of Virginia.

2. Interview with A. Leon Higginbotham (1:25:44)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Judge Higginbotham asserts that the United States Constitution was not revelant to African Americans when it was written except to further enslave them. Judge Higginbotham offers a legal history of the colonies and slavery. Slavery was not codified until 1660, Virginia was the mother of slavery, and Virginia law in the early 1800s made it illegal to teach African Americans to read and write. Judge Higginbotham talks about Charles Coatsworth Pinckney, Judge Ruffin, and how America's success was only possible via slave labor. Part two. Judge Higginbotham's history lesson continues. The 14th amendment was intended to take racism out of American society via due process, but it became the primary instrument to help corporations and everyone else but African Americans. Plessy v. Ferguson codified the separate but equal doctrine, which extended discrimination from trains to just about everywhere else, as the Supreme Court had said it was “reasonable” to do so. The warped interpretation of the 14th amendment impacted women as well. The US Constitution was also originally meaningless to women. Higginbotham discusses Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy. Part three. Judge Higginbotham explains that Brown v. Board of Education was brought about by earlier cases. Brown was the ninth inning victory compared to all the work that had gone before in civil rights, including Gaines v. Missouri, Sweatt v. Painter, and McLaurin v. Oklahoma. Higginbotham discusses Collins Seitz, first state judge to order desegregation of a school. He also talks about Charles Hamilton Houston, William Hastie, Thurgood Marshall, and Howard University Law School. Part four. Judge Higginbotham recalls the Marian Anderson incident in Philadelphia in 1939. He also discusses the extension of legal strategy in civil rights cases beyond education into employment and voting rights, as in Smith v. Allwright. Higginbotham details the extensive pattern of violence in the South and the manipulation of the voter registration process. For example, registrars would ask African Americans for absurd qualification information, such as the number of gallons of water in the ocean. Judge Higginbotham recalls cases about labor unions, railways, housing rights, restrictive covenants in the 1940s, and fair housing in 1968. Part five. Judge Higginbotham's advice to young people: don't try to save the entire world, try to save the people next to you. Higginbotham discusses Powell v. Alabama, the Scottsboro case, Brown v. Mississippi, and John W. Davis.

3. Interview with Alice Jackson Stuart (57:17)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Alice Jackson Stuart recounts her experiences as the first African American student to apply to the University of Virginia. When Donald Gaines Murray applied to University of Maryland School of Law, Ms. Stuart (who already had a bachelor's degree from Virginia Union University in 1933) spoke with family friend and Murray's lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston about helping to advance integration of higher education by provoking a legal case via her application to the University of Virginia graduate school of education. Part two. Ms. Stuart recalls different events that occurred during litigation of her case during 1935 and 1936. She explains that when the Virginia General Assembly passed a bill awarding scholarships and living expenses to minority students to attend out-of-state schools, she applied to and then attended Columbia University for her master's degree. She talks about other important Virginians who benefited from the bill, including Spotswood Robinson. She also discusses her teaching career. Part three. Ms. Stuart talks about witnessing a lynch mob, which ended in the killing of African American taxi driver Lee Snell, at Bethune-Cookman University where she taught. She also discusses teaching at Howard University, the Richmond public school system, Rutgers University, and Middlesex County College in New Jersey, among other career accomplishments.

4. Interview with Alvin J. Bronstein (57:56)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. J. Clay Smith talks about Charles Hamilton Houston as the architect of the modern civil rights movement. From 3:50 to 10:40, footage of Houston and William Hastie portraits. From 10:40 to end, Alvin J. Bronstein interviewed in his office. As a young lawyer Mr. Bronstein traveled south in 1964 for Freedom Summer. He was sent to St. Augustine, Florida to work on a law suit that would force hotels to serve African Americans. He then went to Mississippi and stayed for five years as a trial lawyer in Macomb where there had been 37 church bombings. He set up offices around the South as part of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee funded by the ACLU. In 1968, civil rights cases in Mississippi had changed from defense of African Americans to cases advocating for rights. Part two. After Mississippi Mr. Bronstein went to Harvard for three years, then down to New Orleans, where he set up a training program for young African American lawyers. In 1972, he started the ACLU National Prison Project after the Attica prison riot. Mr. Bronstein describes what happened at Attica State Prison in New York. He explains the connection between civil rights and prisoner rights movements. He discusses what prisoner rights are or should be, the state of prisoner rights law in the mid-1980s, the death penalty, and incarceration rates. He says that poor people and people of color make up the prison population, and incarceration is not cost-effective. Part three. Mr. Bronstein recalls Judge Harold Cox in Mississippi referring to African Americans as chimpanzees while in court; the same judge presided over the trial of law enforcement officers for killing Chaney, Schwerner, Goodman in Mississippi in 1967, and he expressed outrage at the defendants and said the guilty verdict rendered was the proudest moment of his career. Lolis Elie, Nils Douglas, and Robert Collins were lawyers who practiced together but couldn't take the same taxi or eat in the same restaurant; now, these lawyers are highly placed judges in Mississippi. Mr. Bronstein says that Scandinavian countries have the best example of an incarceration system and that allowing prisoners to maintain contact with families is an important part of rehabilitation. Mr. Bronstein discusses a famous case called Battle v. Anderson.

5. Interview with Anne Hobson Freeman (39:17)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Attorney Oliver Hill reviews Virginia's policy of Massive Resistance, the General Assembly's Boatwright committee and Thompson committee, Virginia courts and judges, and the people placement board. At 11:20, Anne Hobson Freeman talks about her new book on the law firm of Hunton and Williams in Richmond. The firm represented the school board of Prince Edward County in 1951 when students there sued the district for integration. Part two. Freeman relates the history of the Hunton and Williams Law firm in Richmond, Virginia, especially pertaining to the 1951 Prince Edward County integration case and Richmond integration cases. She states that the firm employed lawyers whose opinions fell on both sides of the integration issue. She also discusses several of the firm's lawyers individually.

6. Interview with Beulah Crosby Johnson (1:01:43)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Professor Beulah Johnson reviews being a teacher in Tuskegee, Alabama, living in a segregated society, what the "black" part of town was like, voter registration, her involvement with the NAACP, what the New South is, the Reagan Administration, and teaching history properly. Part two. Mrs. Johnson details the Tuskegee Civic Association, gerrymandering, the importance of economic power, William P. Mitchell, and community involvement meetings. She also recalls the African American boycott of businesses in Tuskegee when whites refused to vouch for potential African American voters. Part three. Shots of Beulah Johnson's Tuskegee house and neighborhood. At 3:40 change to William Elwood interviewing Mayor Johnny Ford outside Tuskegee municipal building about the impact of the Voting Rights Act, Gomillion v. Lightfoot case, Fred Gray, and being mayor for 15 years. At 12:05 change to Elwood interviewing civil rights attorney Solomon S. Seay, Jr., in Montgomery about Seay's background and education, his military service experience, and watching the top Brown v. Board of Education lawyers practice the case at Howard Law School.

7. Interview with Charles Morgan (1:17:06)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights attorney Charles Morgan remembers Freedom Summer of 1964 and recalls hearing when Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman were missing. Mr. Morgan says that the system of justice in the South did not work against African American individuals, it worked against all African Americans as a group. He explains how all parts of justice system work together and how public interest lawyers succeeded in changing the law on jury cases in the South. Part two. Mr. Morgan believes that you must integrate colors, creeds, cultures etc., or change and understanding will never happen. Mr. Morgan points out that there were no African American prisons in the South before the Civil War because all African Americans were imprisoned [by slavery]. The civil rights movement was a revolution in the sense that it changed the entire structure of law and altered much of American life. Voter registration wasn't the law until around 1900, and America still hasn't recovered from the fact that fewer people vote because of it. Part three. Mr. Morgan reviews the history of the impact of slavery, segregation, and population centers. Southern legislatures around 1900 were not based on population, and cities were underrepresented. Mr. Morgan talks about Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims, Gray v. Sanders. Sims was about reapportioning the Alabama state legislature, and Sanders was about reapportioning the congressional districts, where the phrase "one person, one vote" was first used. Television helped to confront all Americans with the problems of the South. Part four. Morgan quotes Congressman John Lewis, "Whatever happened to the civil rights movement? It got elected." Lewis suffered 40 arrests and multiple skull fractures. At 2:48, footage of Washington, DC.

8. Interview with Constance Baker Motley (1:21:52)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Judge Constance Baker Motley recalls her childhood and education, including her first experience with Jim Crow. The Gaines case in 1938 influenced her to become a lawyer. Clarence Blakeslee, a white philanthropist in Connecticut, paid for her law school tuition. She joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1945 as a clerk. She discusses the legal strategy to target southern graduate schools with enforcement of the Gaines decision. Part two. Judge Motley recalls the NAACP Legal Defense Fund campaign to address the lack of adequate graduate and professional schools for African American students in the South. She discusses the background of several higher education cases, including the 1946 Sweatt case in Texas and the Sipuel case in Oklahoma. The next step in the strategy was to bring suits in elementary and secondary education. Five of these cases culminated in the Brown v. Board of Education decision. She also reviews the immediate history of civil rights following the Brown decision. Part three. Motley describes the grassroots revolution for civil rights after the Brown decision as a surprise to the legal strategists at the NAACP. New laws on the state level reasserting discrimination were also an obstacle for Motley and her NAACP colleagues. In 1961 she represented James Meredith in his fight to enter the University of Mississippi; she also represented Charlayne Hunter Gault and Hamilton Holmes in their fights to enter the University of Georgia. She recalls the first case she ever tried in 1949 in Mississippi. Part four. The judge shares her memories of the early days of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, especially hearing stories by Thurgood Marshall about Charles Hamilton Houston and William Hastie. She heard Houston and Marshall argue the restrictive covenant cases at the US Supreme Court. During this visit to Washington DC, she and her African American comrades were not allowed to stay in DC hotels. She recalls the important cases devised or tried by Houston. Part five. Judge Motley lists the many changes since the Brown decision.

9. Interview with Delores R. Boyd (1:13:32)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Footage of Montgomery, Alabama. At 8:00, Judge Dolores R. Boyd interview begins at her home in Montgomery. Part two. Judge Boyd offers opinions on the so-called New South, desegregation versus integration, the still-unrealized aspects of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, and accessing the civil rights movement via churches. Part three. Judge Boyd discusses her childhood role models, her school experiences, and the need for appreciation of African American culture. Part four. Ms. Boyd believes African Americans are struggling to keep what they have earned over past few decades. She says there is racism, especially because of economic disparity, and the law is critical to determining society's values. At 9:28, footage of Boyd at her office.

10. Interview with Donald Watkins (39:08)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights attorney Donald Watkins talks about Montgomery’s challenges, like the Confederate Flag flying on the Alabama Capitol. He also covers George Wallace, the continuing fight for civil rights, the teacher accreditation exam case, and achieving parity in society via the law. He remembers an African American custodian at the University of Alabama law school, Remus Rhodes, who taught the first African American students there how to use the library and how to form study groups. Part two. Watkins continues discussing Remus Rhodes, the custodian who became mentor to the first African American students at University of Alabama law school, as well as civil rights law history. At 11:30 minutes, footage of rural road and neighborhood.