171. 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.

172. Interview with Calvin C. Green (1:09:38)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A
Summary:
Part one. Mr. Green was a public school teacher in Richmond at Jefferson Huguenot Wythe High School and also pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Saluda, Virginia. One of the most important cases in civil rights law decided by the US Supreme Court carries his name, Green v. County School Board of New Kent County. Green discusses why the case became notable, the background leading up to the case. Part two. The Green case was about the freedom of choice policy put forth by New Kent School Board. Mr. Green tells how it was not really freedom of choice because there were all kinds conditions and outcomes; for example, when the school board was forced to integrate schools, they closed all the African American schools and laid off all the African American administrators. Part three. Mr. Green tells about his childhood and then more about the Supreme Court case. In reality, Mr. Green says, schools were not integrated after Brown in 1954, but all schools had to be integrated after Green in 1968. Green was also a very significant case because the Supreme Court made the county school district pay legal fees.

173. Interview with Charles G. Gomillion (1:48:53)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights activist and professor Charles Gomillion attended and then taught at the Tuskegee Institute from 1928 to 1971. He talks about his year at Fisk University doing field research with Dr. Charles S. Johnson concerning Southern farmers and New Deal programs. He mentions Dr. Albion W. Small, Franklin Frazier, and Bertrand Doyle. Mr. Gomillion recounts his childhood and education in South Carolina. Part two. Mr. Gomillion discusses why he dropped out of Paine College and then why he went back. Through the Tuskegee Men's Club/Tuskegee Civic Association for community service, he became interested in voting rights. In order to register to vote, African Americans had to get white people to vouch for them in person at the courthouse, and then they had to pay back poll taxes for any years in which they didn't vote. Part three. Mr. Gomillion discusses voter registration in Macon County, Alabama and Alabama Gov. James Fulsom. He talks about the legal action regarding election practices and voter registration there, as well as the lawsuit that went to the US Supreme Court in 1960. Part four. Mr. Gomillion praises Tuskegee Veterans Hospital employees for funding the gerrymandering lawsuits of Macon County. Mr. Gomillion mentions attorney Fred Gray. Mr. Gomillion talks more about his year of field research in Mississippi for Fisk University and how dangerous it was. Part five. Mr. Gomillion talks about his interactions with white people. He believes his major contribution in life was in the enlightenment of his students.

174. 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.

175. Interview with Charles Todd Duncan (42:13)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A
Summary:
Part one. Civil rights attorney Charles Todd Duncan discusses his involvement with the Brown v. Board of Education cases when he worked in the law office of Frank D. Reeves. He did much research on the history of African American codes. He was straight out of law school and was mainly a helper and errand-runner on the case, but he likes to remember that he was the one who personally physically filed the Brown case at the US Supreme Court. He mentions Charles Black. Mr. Duncan talks about Brown's impact, as well as what it didn't affect. Part two. Mr. Duncan helped out on the Brown case at the New York City NAACP Legal Defense Fund offices. He participated in strategy and decision-making sessions there and describes what these sessions were like. He recounts how the five Brown cases were chosen to take to the Supreme Court for very specific reasons.

176. Interview with Collins J. Seitz (2:14:22)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Higginbotham, A. Leon (Aloyisus Leon), 1928-1998
Summary:
Part one. Judge Collins Seitz recalls his childhood and schooling, the University of Delaware, the University of Virginia law school, and the DuPont scholarship. Part two. Mr. Seitz reports that discrimination was never discussed in law school, and separate but equal was never discussed while he was a young lawyer in Wilmington. Part three. Seitz talks about being appointed Vice Chancellor in Delaware's Court of Chancery. Important decisions he wrote in the corporate arena include the Bata Shoe case, Ringling Brothers case, and Campbell v. Loew’s. The first civil rights case he tried as judge was Parker v. University of Delaware in 1950. The case was based on the idea that separateness was inherently unequal. Part four. The per se theory, that segregation was inherently unequal, was a part of the Parker case, but Judge Seitz did not address it directly, so he decided the case on the question of whether or not school facilities were equal. Fundamental in his decision was the disparity in capital assets between the "white" University of Delaware and the "black" university known as Delaware State College, as well as terrible differences in curriculum and libraries. Seitz also comments on the Prince Edward County case in Virginia and his famous speech at a boys school in Wilmington. Part five. Seitz discusses his part in one of the five Brown v. Board of Education cases, Gebhart v. Belton, and his desire to declare separate but equal as unconstitutional in his written opinion, but he decided it was the place of the US Supreme Court to do so. He talks about the disparity between African American and white schools in Delaware, Louis Redding, and the granting of immediate relief. Part six. Seitz reviews Baker v. Carr and the Girard College case. Part seven. Different camera angles show Judge Higginbotham asking questions.

177. 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.

178. 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.

179. 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.

180. Interview with Drewary Brown (20:13)

Date:
2006
Main contributors:
Elwood, William A, Kulish, Mykola
Summary:
Drewary Brown talks about social and economic life in Charlottesville during the civil rights era and in 1987. Mr. Brown walks down the Mall in Charlottesville. At 12:37, interview with Florence Bryant in front of Jefferson School in Charlottesville. Ms. Bryant discusses the work of the NAACP on behalf of teachers. She mentions J. Rupert Picott, Aline Black, and Melvin Austin as instrumental in helping African American teachers get equal pay in Virginia in 1940. See also reports her involvement in desegregating schools in Charlottesville. She regards Charlottesville as a leader in desegregation.