NANCY McCOY: First of all, I want to thank everyone for coming out on this really nasty night. We're so pleased that you were able to make it through all the traffic to get here for this very special program.
I'm Nancy McCoy, the Director of Education and Public Programs for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of Tom Putnam, Kennedy Library Director, Heather Campion, CEO for the Kennedy Library Foundation, all of my Kennedy Library and Kennedy Foundation colleagues, I thank you again for coming, and acknowledge our generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsor Bank of America, Raytheon, the Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, Xfinity, Viacom and WBUR.
In the summer of 1967, after decades as a prominent civil rights lawyer who had won the crucial Brown v. Board of Education case, Thurgood Marshall took a seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He faced, among others, staunch segregationists Strom Thurmond, Sam Ervin, John McClellan and Committee Chair James Eastland, all of whom considered Marshall to be the public enemy of the South. And so began the contentious, dramatic and unprecedented five-day confirmation hearings for the first African American nominee to the US Supreme Court.
Wil Haygood once wrote that, "If there is a weed that grows through and underneath my work, I like to think it is a concern for the unknown, the lost stories." In his new book, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, he not only recounts this compelling, but rarely told chapter in American history, but also creates what he considers a kind of tapestry of the civil rights movement, spotlighting some of the unfamiliar challenges and battles Marshall faced, telling, for example, the story of his role as General Counsel for the NAACP in its fight against all-white primaries in the State of Texas. He delves into these and other important legal cases in Marshall's earlier career, probes his life on a personal level, and threads together stories of civil rights activities, politicians, and others whose lives entwined with his.
One of these people was President Kennedy. Mr. Haygood notes that it was Kennedy who finally took Thurgood Marshall off the road where he had labored for decades battling injustice and brought him into the federal judiciary. And another, of course, was President Lyndon Johnson, whose skillful political maneuvers cleared the way for Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court.
Marshall stepped down from the Court in 1991, citing old age. At the time of his death, two years later, a New York Times editorial stated that, "On the Supreme Court today, there is no Justice who seems so similarly placed there to speak for the powerless by such a sweeping tide of history. There is no one whose life translates so magisterially into art."
Mr. Haygood, reflecting on Marshall's long record of service, remarks that he was the giant who made the Constitution come alive for many millions, and had truly turned it into a living document.
In addition to this most provocative portrait of Thurgood Marshall, Mr. Haygood is the author of four other biographies, including Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents, and whose life was the basis for the recent film, The Butler. He is currently a visiting professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Film at Miami University in Ohio. And previously, he wrote for the Washington Post and served for three decades as a national and international correspondent for the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Mr. Haygood's book is available in our Museum store, and he has kindly agreed to sign books following the program. And we just learned this evening that CBS News Sunday Morning just named his book, Showdown, one of the five best books of the fall season. [applause]
Also on our panel tonight is Elaine Jones. Elaine Jones served as the first female Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where her efforts led to a landmark Supreme Court decision abolishing the death penalty in 37 states, and where she successfully argued employment discrimination cases.
In 2000, President Clinton presented her with the prestigious Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. She's participated in many of our Forums here on race and civil rights, and we always so appreciate having her here back with us, because her voice and perspective on these programs is so much appreciated.
We're also pleased to welcome back to the Kennedy Library Kenneth W. Mack, the Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Harvard University. His research and teaching have focused on American legal and constitutional history, with a particular emphasis on race relations, politics and economic life.
He is the author of Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, and co-editor of The New Black: What Has Changed and What Has Not with Race in America. He's currently working on a book that examines the social and political history of race and political economy in the United States since 1975.
Please join me in welcoming Wil Haygood, Elaine Jones and Kenneth Mack. [applause]
KENNETH MACK: First, thanks to the Kennedy Library for inviting us here. Thanks to Wil Haygood for writing such a tremendously important book for us to read and receive at this particular time. Thanks to Elaine Jones, who I met– we were trying to figure out where we'd met before. I met Elaine Jones when I was in law school and she came to speak at Harvard Law School. At that time, I never imagined we would be on the same stage. And thanks to all of you for coming.
We're going to start by just talking a little bit about the book. I'm going to bring everybody in and we'll just have a little bit of a discussion about it. And at some point, we will stop and ask you all to participate with questions. So if you've got questions, hold them, and at some point we will move to audience participation.
So let's start with the book, and first question to Wil: As you mention in your book, there's been a lot of focus on Thurgood Marshall lately. Gilbert King wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Groveland trial, where Marshall is arguing in the Supreme Court. He's also traveling to places like Florida, putting his life in danger to investigate a case of a black man shot by a white sheriff in the aftermath of an interracial rape accusation.
Marshall's also the subject of the Laurence Fishburne one-man show, which also aired on HBO.
We know a lot about Marshall. We know he was born in 1908 in Baltimore. We know that he went to historically black Lincoln University and on to Howard Law School, where he graduated first in his class.
We know that when he went back to Baltimore, he promptly sued his hometown law school, which he couldn't go to because it was segregated, the University of Maryland, and desegregated it.
We know he followed his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, on to the NAACP's national office in New York, where for decades he was a one-man legal aid team, Supreme Court advocate, organizer, community organizer, just sort of everything that was needed in the movement.
We know that Thurgood Marshall was the principal lawyer who brought the Brown v. Board of Education litigation, assisted by many other lawyers in local communities and plaintiffs.
We know that President Kennedy nominated Marshall to a seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961. We know that President Johnson named him as Solicitor General in 1965, bringing us to Marshall's nomination to the US Supreme Court in 1967.
So we know a lot about Marshall. And we also know that you are the author of some very wellreceived biographies – Sugar Ray Robinson, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., Sammy Davis, Jr. What made you want to write a book about Thurgood Marshall at this particular time? And what made you want to focus on the confirmation hearings in particular?
WIL HAYGOOD: Welcome, everybody. But first, since you tried to remember when you met Mrs. Jones, I'd like to say when I first became aware of your presence in the world. It was on Chesapeake Street in Washington, DC. And I had stopped your lovely wife, Lisa Jones, and wondered whatever happened to those days when I had been smitten with her [laughter] and I had been rebuffed.
KENNETH MACK: Politely, I'm sure.
ELAINE JONES: The better man won.
WIL HAYGOOD: Yeah. Rebuffed and heart-sickened. She had explained to me that she had met this gentleman and gotten married. And I tried to tell her, Do you realize that The Butler has made $150 million at the box office?
ELAINE JONES: She said it didn't matter. [laughter]
WIL HAYGOOD: Perhaps it was at that moment when I realized love is a powerful thing. [laughter]
But, to get to your question about Thurgood Marshall, why did I choose him? In 1954, that was the year of his titanic victory, a frail African American lady in Columbus, Ohio, was rushed to the hospital. She was pregnant, and she was from that civil rights-soaked city of Selma, Alabama. She, like many blacks, was on one of those freedom trains up from the South, with her parents. And she had, that day, in the fall of 1954, she had two children, twins, a girl and a boy. I'm that boy.
So if any black kid is born in 1954, it becomes stamped on their psyche. You just know that something monumental happened that year, and it was freedom through the school system, and that your parent must have been the happiest parent in the world.
And so, as I became a writer, years went on, I knew in some way that I was going to have to write about 1954. Just the massiveness of it. So 1954 meant Thurgood Marshall. So when I made up my mind that I was going to tackle him, I wanted an interesting way to go into his life.
I did not know that his confirmation hearings lasted five days, were stretched across 13 days, and his nomination set in limbo for six weeks before the US Senate. All of the nominees before Thurgood Marshall, their hearings lasted less than four days. But they were all white men. And so, no coincidence that Thurgood Marshall, who had upended many of the laws of segregation in the Deep South, that he ends up in Room 2228, in the US Senate, nominated by the Southern president who was hell-bent on integrating the Supreme Court.
So when I had that framework, it was like the last shootout at the OK Corral for these Southern Senators. Lyndon Johnson has said: "The 1964 Civil Rights Act is the first nail; the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the second nail; and the final nail in the coffin of white supremacy will be me naming Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court."
And as a writer who loves to write about drama, that was a story waiting to be written.
KENNETH MACK: Thank you. You mentioned President Johnson. As you point out in the book, both President Lyndon Johnson and Thurgood Marshall were born in the same year, 1908. Both Southerners. Humble beginnings. And I think more importantly, by 1967, they're both on one side of a great divide that's opening up, the divide between the mainstream liberal civil rights community and those who are moved more by the Vietnam War and black power.
Can you talk just a little bit about the relationship between Johnson and Marshall? Because this is one of the dramas of that moment. The president of the United States and an African American have a kind of relationship, which I think Kennedy did not have, and certainly none of the presidents before him had. But Johnson and Marshall do. Talk a little bit about that.
WIL HAYGOOD: Really good point. I think, now that I can look back on it, that there's no doubt that Lyndon Johnson was the first American president to have a real warm, human relationship with an African American male. There is just no doubt about it. Yes, Theodore Roosevelt did invite Booker T. Washington to the White House. But they were not friends by any stretch of the imagination. They were writing friends; they wrote letters back and forth, but friends just to hang around with? No.
In 1944, Thurgood Marshall was summoned to Texas to fight this case, which later became known as Smith v. Allwright. Blacks were forbidden to vote in the all-white Democratic primary. So Marshall took the case to the Supreme Court and won. He won, in Texas. And there was a young Senate candidate in Texas, who was starting to rise on Marshall's victory, because blacks started voting for this Senator. And he rose, and he got seniority, and he became the Senate leader. His name, Lyndon Johnson.
So you can argue very successfully: no Thurgood Marshall, no Lyndon Johnson. And that's the truth.
When Lyndon Johnson summoned Marshall to the White House on the day he nominated him, he said, "Thurgood, I'm nominating you because you're a lot like me. Bigger than life and we come from the same kind of people." And this was a white man saying that, saying that "we come from the same kind of people." It was just beautiful.
I went out to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, and I came across a transcript of this conversation where, when Lyndon Johnson had left the White House and went back to Texas, and he called Thurgood Marshall one night and said, "Thurgood, I'm going to write a book." Thurgood Marshall said, "Well, what's the book going to be about, Mr. President?" And he said, "It's going to be about the hell you caused me to get you onto that Supreme Court. Because it was hell!" [laughter] And Thurgood Marshall said, "Well, Mr. President, if there's anything I can do to help you, I will."
A short while later, Lyndon Johnson died. So President Johnson never had a chance to write the book that he was going to write about the confirmation hearings. So I told my 23-year-old niece that, and she said, "So Uncle Wil, you've written the book that the president wanted to write." And said, "Well, hey, darling, that's a nice line, and I think I'm going to use it on my book tour." [laughter]
KENNETH MACK: That's great. One of the great things you do in the book is–
WIL HAYGOOD: Say that a little louder.
KENNETH MACK: Excuse me. One of the many great things which you do in this book [laughter] is you connect this sort of five days or one week, or whatever it is for the hearings back to all of this stuff, decades and decades of stuff that's happened before that connects Thurgood Marshall, both to the Senators who oppose him, and to the president who appointed him, and to African American communities around the country.
So I want to actually shift and ask a question to Elaine Jones. You are arguably somebody who Thurgood Marshall's work directly influenced the kind of life that you were going to lead. You were born in Norfolk, Virginia, in the segregated South. Your father was a Pullman porter, your mother was a schoolteacher, two occupations that were very much affected by the work that people like Thurgood Marshall were doing. You attended Howard University. You graduated in the year that Lyndon Johnson gives his "freedom is not enough" famous Howard University address. You're the first black woman in the University of Virginia's law school. You're kind of growing up, or as an adult, sort of up to the time of the confirmation hearings.
What had you heard about Marshall? What did Marshall mean to somebody like you? How did people talk about Marshall, think about Marshall and his role in their lives when you were growing up in the segregated South?
ELAINE JONES: Wil captures a lot of that, Ken, in the book, about Marshall's impact, especially in the African American community; in the Negro community, as Marshall recalled it.
And so, I grew up in the segregated South.
And a series of cases that Marshall brought in the '30s, cases in the '30s, were the teacher equalization cases. Black teachers got paid one salary, white teachers another, even though they were teaching the same classes, the same level. A third-grade teacher at a white school just got 1,000 more a year than a third-grade teacher at the black school. It was just institutionalized, it was part of the system. And those cases were known as the teacher equalization cases. And they were some of the earliest cases that Thurgood Marshall– Charlie Houston may have joined one or two of them, but Thurgood Marshall stayed on that issue.
And so, my high school chemistry teacher was his plaintiff, was Thurgood Marshall's plaintiff in the case in Virginia. The case came out in Fourth Circuit. And so, it was a teacher equalization case. And so, she would talk about it. It was during chemistry, she's telling us about this issue. So it always had an impact.
And in my world, you simply had a social consciousness. You grew up knowing that your obligation was to go somewhere and get an education, especially if you had two parents who were supporting you, who cared about you. And you'd find a way to give something back.
So when I became head of the Legal Defense Fund, Thurgood Marshall was the first Director Counsel, I was the first woman and the fourth one. And I could sit at his desk and go through the files, and read Thurgood's files. And you just felt this closeness and this respect for what his life was about.
The year I became head of the Legal Defense Fund, 1993, January, was the same month and year that he passed. And I was fortunate enough to have been able to have seen him and known he and his wife, and spent some time. So I was just enriched by that.
But also Thurgood taught me some things. I mean, he had to raise the money, running all across the country. And he taught me that one of his greatest skills that he had as a lawyer– if Thurgood was sitting here, he would say, "Everybody, I appreciate the accolades and the applause, but I didn't do this by myself." He would tell you, "I had a lot of help."
There were a lot of lawyers, brilliant lawyers – Bill Hastie, the first black federal judge in the country; Bill Coleman, the first black to clerk on the Supreme Court of the United States; Charlie Houston; Charles Black. Black and white lawyers. Lou Pollak. Lawyers who came together and who brainstormed with Thurgood. And Thurgood had the force of personality, the talent and the skill to make these strong-minded, brilliant lawyers work together. Roll up their sleeves and work all night, and produce the document. And collegiality.
And that was his greatest brief, because not only could he do that among the lawyers, as you will see in Wil's book, he was able to do it in the community. When the community knew that
Thurgood was coming to town, there was no time for dissension and disagreement. That was a time for harmony, identifying the goal, and working collectively toward it.
So that's the impact that he had on us.
And he also taught me about fundraising. You can be brief in fundraising. My first month there, I was sitting, scratching my head, and I said to him, "Thurgood, how did you raise this money?" And I went to the file and I saw the shortest fundraising letter in history. [laughter] Six words.
Thurgood was a Mason in a society of men, and they were donors to the Legal Defense Fund. The six-word fundraising letter was: "Dear brethren, send money. Regards, Thurgood." [laughter]
KENNETH MACK: Thank you. That's a wonderful story. One of the real strengths of the book is how it connects the hearings to all kinds of people, all kinds of people all over the country. I want to ask Wil a question. Just the way that you connect Marshall's story to the stories of the people who are going to sit, I guess the word is in judgment in some way, shape and form, on him. The old bulls, you call them, the segregationist Southern senators, for whom this is the last big fight.
One of the strengths of the book is you just talk about how, if you look at the biography of this one it connects back to some old case, either that Marshall was involved in, or a case that was relevant to Marshall. Tell us just a little bit, give us a flavor of some of those stories that are in the book, how Marshall in fact is connected to the long history of the white men who were trying to oppose his conformation.
ELAINE JONES: Just before he answers that, when he answers that, I also want him to answer this – When I read that book, there were so many different stories. I mean, I know that Wil had a volume of material. And I wanted to know, how did he decide which stories to leave out and which ones to include? Because I know there were hundreds.
WIL HAYGOOD: Great questions, both of you. The connection of these men on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I knew I had to tell their life stories to make the book full. And two of the members on that ten-member committee, two of them had fathers who had murdered men in cold blood. Now, Senator Strom Thurmond's father, his daddy had murdered a man. Senator James Eastland's father had lynched two people – a black man and a woman.
So, no, I'm not saying that the senators had anything to do with that, of course, but they grew up in an environment of violence, of violent-seeking fathers. And so, that was something that I had to point out, and did not know until I started working on the book.
In telling the stories of the men: Sam Ervin, a learned man. Left his native North Carolina and came here to go to Harvard Law School, and was brilliant. Brilliant. And he trained himself to become of the foremost constitutional scholars in this country. And so, James Eastland, the chairman, told Sam Ervin, "Marshall is weak on the Constitution." Never mind that Marshall had taken 32 cases to the Supreme Court and won 29. No, "Take him down on that! He's weak." And never mind that Marshall had changed the American South. Their belief: "He's weak, you can cut him down by the Constitution."
Sam Ervin was a bibliophile. He collected books. Everywhere he went. He'd go to Amsterdam and he'd come back to his wonderful wife and she'd see him at the door: "Oh, you've brought 50 more books into the house! Goddarn it, Sam! Jesus Christ!" He'd go to New York City and he'd come back and he'd have 60 more used books. And she said, "Oh, my god, Sam, the house is falling apart, these books!" He had amassed 30,000 books. A profoundly learned man. A constitutional scholar.
Acknowledged as the smartest constitutional scholar in the US Senate. But nowhere, in none of those great books could Sam Ervin find equality for the black man.
And that is why– and I didn't understand it at first, the art designer– does anybody have the book? The art designer has Thurgood Marshall with his books on the cover. His books on the cover of this book, because that was very important. Marshall had fallen in love when he was 15 years old. And it was a great love. He knew he would never forget this first love. It was deeper than Cupid's arrow, thicker than that arrow. He thought about it at night. He told people about it. He couldn't get it out of his mind, this love.
He fell in love with the US Constitution. He had a miniature copy of it in his vest pocket that he would carry around. And Marshall would say to these senators and their staffs, "You're breaking the law. That's what you're doing, you're breaking the law. You are denying people their life and their liberty and their pursuit of happiness, all the things that we read in the US Constitution."
And I think Marshall, I can't imagine what was going through this mind. He's being quizzed by Strom Thurmond on the committee. And Strom Thurmond ran for the presidency of the United States on the all-white Dixiecrat ticket. And this man now is asking Thurgood Marshall, he said, "Can you name those who signed the 1861 slave codes?" And Thurgood Marshall was just staring at him. And Senator Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, said, "Ah, Senator Thurmond, can you?" [laughter] And Senator Thurmond said, "You're out of order! How dare you ask a question like that, young man? You're out of order." That was the scene inside of those hearing rooms.
But there were heroes, too. Young Senator Ted Kennedy was one of the heroes. Senator Birch Bayh was one of the heroes. Everett Dirksen, the Republican. Phil Hart was one of the heroes.
There's something I'd love to read, if there's a second, about Phil Hart. He was one of the heroes.
And so, there were heroes and these villains. And of course, no bigger hero in the book than Lyndon Johnson. I mean, him and Thurgood were the twin heroes.
People wonder, well, if there was all this stuff going on, how did Marshall win against all these senators? And Lyndon Johnson had convinced 20 – 20 – Southern segregation Senators not to vote against Marshall. And you might ask me, how in the world does that happen? Because senators go to Washington to vote; that's their bread and butter. They can brag about that.
And here's how it happened: Lyndon Johnson would get a senator on the telephone, two days before the vote. And he'd say, "Hey, big highway scheduled to come through your town next year. I love it. I know it's going to be beautiful. And my sources are telling me that they're thinking about naming this highway after you." [laughter] I might even come out for the ribbon-cutting. But now, I'll tell you what. Those highway funds just might disappear if I don't get my man onto the Court; that's all I'm saying." Click. [laughter] Then he'd hang the phone up, just click.
So that's how it got done.
ELAINE JONES: But those senators gave as good as they got.
WIL HAYGOOD: Yes, they did.
ELAINE JONES: Chairman wouldn't even tell him how long the hearings were going to be.
WIL HAYGOOD: Right. Before Marshall, every hearing less than four hours; and then with Marshall, they were extended every day for five days across 13 days. One of the bigger, shameful insults was Strom Thurmond had asked Thurgood Marshall, "Do you know, can you tell us, what's your opinion about Loving v. Virginia?" And that was a case where a black lady had been married to her husband, who was white. And they were in bed together as a husband and wife are wont to be; they were in bed together. And then a police officer in Virginia burst through their door, shined the flashlight under their sheets and arrested them for breaking the laws of interracial marriage.
Well, Marshall's second wife was Filipino. He first wife, African American, had died. He fell in love and remarried. And Strom Thurmond asked him, he brought that case into the hearing room as if he was going to embarrass Thurgood Marshall. The same Strom Thurmond, we would later learn, who had been engaged in statutory rape of his underage black maid in the family home. Fathered a child. And that child, Essie Mae Williams, later admitted that Strom Thurmond was her father.
And so, yes, if Strom Thurmond had had a smart staff member, they might have leaned over and whispered to him, "Hey, Senator, I don't think you want to go there." [laughter] But he did.
That was supposed to bring shame upon Thurgood Marshall. But he was such a prideful guy. His wife, Cissy Marshall, was such a prideful lady.
All these characters, right out of – as one of the reviewers said, not me – right out of Central Casting.
ELAINE JONES: Wil has not answered my question, Ken, about how did you decide– which story did you decide to leave out, and how? How did you make the decision to make the cut where you made it? Because when I read the book and saw the many different stories, I happen to know there are so many more out there. And I wanted to know how you chose these. You had lot of material.
WIL HAYGOOD: The book always, to me, seemed to be a thriller. Some days I would be writing and I would be saying to myself, Wow, I wonder if he's going to make it onto the Court. This is some tough stuff that he's up against. And so, it just seemed to me that I had to be sharp and choose the certain characters to tell the story and stick with them. There were a whole lot of senators who helped, who I could have wrote about them. And then the book would have just been too long.
I wish I could have gotten more to Marshal's stories. He would tell stories on the road, as you know. And he told one that I love. Marshall knew this story well, and he would tell it. There was this man in Mississippi. He was a sharecropper. And his plantation owner wanted to make fun of him, and wanted to take him to the state capital of Jackson and have him go on a radio show, because he wanted him to make a fool of himself in front of some of his business friends.
And this sharecropper's named Joe. And Joe was taken to the radio station, and he said to the plantation owner, "Now, boss, you're telling me that I can walk up to the microphone and I'm going to be on the radio show? And people are going to hear it all over the South?" And he said, "That's right, Joe. Go on up there and say anything you want to say. I'm going to give you two minutes."
And then Joe said, "So I can tell my wife and my kids, because some of them are going up North, I can tell them how much I love them?" And the plantation owner said, "I told you, you can tell them anything you want."
And then the plantation owner walks behind some glass and he's staring into the booth, and he says to his friends, "Now, watch this old, black fool make an idiot of himself on the radio."
And so, the sharecropper walks up to the microphone and taps it, and he motions to his boss. And the boss says, "Go ahead, talk! Say anything." And Joe leaned down to the microphone and he started speaking real fast, he said, "Hello, my name is Joe Henderson and I'm being held against my will on the Stevens plantation. Somebody, anybody, come and help me!" [laughter]
Thurgood loved telling that story. He loved that story, oh, bless his heart.
KENNETH MACK: One of the great things about the book is you humanize a lot of different people, including Marshall, including the people who were opposing him. I want to bring one more person into the story. I'm going to actually wind up asking both of you a question about this person. This is Bill Coleman. One of the really interesting things in the book, you recount Bill Coleman as the alternative person that Lyndon Johnson is thinking about nominating if Marshall doesn't work out, if Marshall stumbles.
Coleman, of course, he's actually still alive; he's about 95 years old. He's a Harvard Law School graduate, first in his class. First African American to clerk for the United States Supreme Court. Assisted Marshall in numerous ways, including in Brown. He's a black Republican. A little bit more respectable than Marshall. Later on becomes Secretary of Transportation under Gerald Ford, where Elaine Jones works for Bill Coleman in the 1970s.
So I wanted to ask you both about Coleman. For Wil, I guess the question is– I think two questions. One is, how worried is Lyndon Johnson that Marshall's nomination is not going to go through. As you said, he's a kind of consummate wheeler-dealer. He reaches out to Bill Coleman. He's got something in his back pocket. So two questions. One is, how worried is he that Marshall's nomination is not going to go through? And tell us just a little bit about Coleman – background, your impressions of him, what did you learn in the book?
And I think for Elaine Jones, you worked for Coleman when he was Secretary of Transportation. I guess if Marshall had tripped up, Bill Coleman might have been the first black United States Supreme Court Justice. I kind of wanted Elaine Jones to reflect a little bit on, would that have been different? Would he been a different kind of judicial persona? The first African American Supreme Court Justice is a big deal. It is a part of history. How might we imagine that history differently, turn out differently, if in any way, with Bill Coleman?
But first Wil.
WIL HAYGOOD: That's a great question. My goodness, that is a great question. All right, Lisa, I see why you married him. All right, all right, bless your heart.
LISA JONES: You also met my kids.
WIL HAYGOOD: Yes, she's got great kids. A great father, here, great father.
ELAINE JONES: On point, get back on point. [laughter]
WIL HAYGOOD: Johnson, '64, he won a landslide victory, right? And I think his attitude was: "How dare these Southern senators make my nominee come back for a second day?" He was used to every Supreme Court nominees' hearings lasting less than four hours, too. He thought Marshall would go over there, answer some questions, and then they'd just send it to the whole Senate. But they didn't.
And so, on the second day it got rougher. Lyndon Johnson was hell-bent on integrating the US Supreme Court. So he told his staff, "Find William Coleman. These sons of guns think that they're going to embarrass me because it's going to get tough." Johnson knew it; he knew that the screws were now starting to dig deeper into Thurgood Marshall's life.
And so, Johnson summoned William Coleman, and William Coleman was in his home in Philadelphia. He caught the train down. The White House didn't want anybody to know about it. It was on a Sunday. I interviewed Mr. Coleman and he told me this wonderful story. He had no idea why he was being summoned to the White House. He was told on the telephone, "Don't tell anybody about it, and we want you to come in this door."
So he got there and faced the White House staff and the president. And he was told, "Look, Marshall might not make it. The knives are getting sharper by the hour." And Lyndon Johnson, who's a Democrat, said to William Coleman, who was a Republican, he said, "I think I can get you past these senators." And there were fewer civil rights cases in William Coleman's history than there were in Thurgood Marshall's, and William Coleman was told that they wanted him to be number two.
And he said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Brown v. Board of Education case. I love the man. He's heroic. He's brave. I don't want to do anything that will lessen your fierceness to get him onto the Court." So he turned him down. But he did say, "What I will do, I'll make the rounds to all of the senators who seem to be wavering, at least those who know me personally, and I'll start heavily lobbying for Thurgood Marshall."
History very well could have been different. But as Miss Jones said, Marshall had this amazing ability to find talent and to bring talent into the room – black lawyers, white lawyers, female lawyers when it wasn't vogue to have female lawyers in the room. I mean, he would do that. He was a master at that, at getting in a room-- speaking of Louis Pollak, who I interviewed. He has since passed away. Federal judge out of Philadelphia.
And I remember sitting talking to him and I said, "Wow, it just seems like Thurgood Marshall was such a humble man." And he said, "No, he wasn't. He wasn't no humble man. He knew how great he was. He knew it. He knew how great he was." And then I just started laughing.
ELAINE JONES: Lou Pollak was former dean of the Yale Law School. And Lou Pollak, Bill Coleman and Thurgood Marshall all met each other in 1949. Bill was 29 years old. Thurgood was 41. And Thurgood and LDF had just won the case in the Supreme Court dealing with housing, the segregated housing.
KENNETH MACK: Shelley v. Kraemer.
ELAINE JONES: That's right.
WIL HAYGOOD: A case out of St. Louis.
ELAINE JONES: Shelley v. Kraemer, right, 1948. So this is '49, and Bill Coleman had graduated, and really couldn't find a job, so he and Lou Pollak ended up at the same firm in New York, because no Philadelphia firm would hire Bill. First in his class at Harvard; that didn't matter. And he clerked for Frankfurter and he'd gone into the Army, he'd gone into World War II and then had come back and finished law school.
To make a long story short, Thurgood and LDF were trying to get their legal theory, develop a legal theory on Brown. The cases hadn't yet been filed, because Thurgood's mentor, Charlie Houston, died in 1950. And Charlie Houston's death– Charlie Houston graduated Harvard Law School in 1922. He was Harvard Law Review as well. But Charlie Houston, his death spurred the group of lawyers who were trying to develop a Brown legal theory to finally attack Plessy. That had to evolve, because McLaurin, Sweatt, all those cases that they had worked on, they were around the edges; they were only the equal part of separate-but-equal. It was not really trying to root and branch get rid of discrimination.
So that's when they really got busy. When Charlie Houston died in April, all five of the Brown complaints were filed in 1951 and '52. So they were very busy during that period. Bill Coleman worked at the law firm during the day as a young lawyer, and would come to LDF at night in New York, and work another three or four hours, and then get back to Philadelphia, because he was still living in Philly. So he and Thurgood really developed a very close relationship.
Now, let's fast forward from '49 to ‘67; that's 18 years hence, right? Bill Coleman is your quintessential Philadelphia lawyer: pinstriped suit, gold watch, French cuffs-- the whole thing. All of the trappings. And so, it's interesting, he was surprised, I'm sure. I mean, we never discussed this, but he was, I'm sure. Bill is wily, smart and wily. I'm sure he was stunned when Lyndon Johnson told Bill that he was Lyndon's backup plan for the Supreme Court.
Now, Bill was not going to tell the president, "Yes, I'll be your backup plan," because he loved Thurgood too much, he would never do that. Secondly, he's not going to say no, because he's talking to the president of the United States; you don't look in his face and say no. So when I read your book and when I read what Bill said to the president it made sense to me.
Bill said to the president, according to Wil [laughter], according to Wil, "Oh, Mr. President, it's such an honor, but the pay is so lousy. [laughter] I've got kids I've got to educate. I've got tuitions I've got to pay, and I can't do it on that salary." Thinking that that's something that Lyndon would get right away, which he did get, because he didn't push it after that. And Bill said that he would go there and talk to other senators.
But the Bill that I know would have been very pleased to be on the Supreme Court of the United States. But he was not going to do it, take it under those terms. And I respect and admire him for that.
Now, Bill also became Chair of Thurgood's Board, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the late '50s and '60s. Before Thurgood went up on the Court of Appeals, Bill Coleman was Chair of the Board. When I came to the Legal Defense Fund in 1970, Bill was Chair of the Board.
And so, what happened was, after a while, they had put me, after litigating the death penalty cases, they had put me down in Washington with Eastland and Thurmond and company on civil rights issues. Which is another story, for other books. But at least I got them on the back end of their tenure.
But Bill was asked by President Ford to be his Secretary of Transportation. And so, Bill then asked me to come to Washington – I was in New York at the time – to be one of his two special assistants. And I did. And we had fun. I said, "Bill, Department of transportation? What do I know about transportation?" He said, "I don't know anything either and I'm Secretary." [laughter]
So we go to Washington. And we have fun. Bill gave landing rights to the Concorde. The issue was the women, the Coast Guard was not admitting women. The Coast Guard, they couldn't get to sea, so he told me, "Elaine, work that out." And we had to fire the civil rights people, because they didn't know what they were doing. And then we had to start all over again. Finally, Bill made the decision to send women to the Coast Guard. And I met the commandant when he was bejeweled and beribboned and sat down and explained to him that women were going in the Coast Guard, and so he might as well get on board; we could certainly appreciate his support since it's his Coast Guard.
And then he taught me something else. He said to me, "Look, I noticed you around this department. And I know you're Southern and all of that." It shows you how he was a mentor. He was a mentor to me. He said, "You are calling these people, white men in their 50s, you're calling them Mr. This and Mr. That. And they're calling you Elaine. You are my eyes and ears. I want you to go home tonight and learn everybody's first name and come in here tomorrow and use it. I never want to hear another Mr. Anybody around this department from you." [applause]
See, those are the things I learned. And so when I told the commandant, I said, "Paul. [laughter] All you've got to do is show us how to do it."
KENNETH MACK: Thank you. [applause] I think it's time for us to invite all of you to be part of the conversation. So questions? Step up to the microphone. You are doing what Thurgood Marshall would want you to do. He always emphasized that these things were collective endeavors. So, questions?
Q: It is a privilege to be asking a question about the amazing Thurgood Marshall. My name is Beau Stubblefield-Tave, and I was born in Houston, Texas, in 1956. Some of us in this room will understand, I was born at Houston Negro Hospital in 1956. Some will say, Well, that was the South. Brigham and Women's, I worked with a colleague who helped desegregate that in the '60s. So hearing the success, hearing what people sacrificed for us to be where we are is such a privilege.
And I have to say, it took me an hour to get down here, so I didn't get to hear much of what you all said. But I want to ask specifically about the transition from being an advocate with the Legal Defense Fund to being a Justice on the Supreme Court. Because I look at some colleagues who have a challenge making that shift from advocacy for a particular group to being a justice for everyone, and yet not forgetting where you came from and what you need to do.
I would just like to hear you speak about how Marshall conceived of the transition when he agreed to be Justice, and therefore be responsible for interpreting the law for everyone, and yet clearly still being an advocate for those who have been oppressed by the system.
KENNETH MACK: Do you want to start, Wil?
WIL HAYGOOD: Who's the question for? Me or Miss Jones?
Q: Either would be a privilege. I intended it for you.
WIL HAYGOOD: Okay, I'll go first and then she can weigh in. Marshall, once he got on the Court, of course, it's a very short time there that the Court shifted to the right, and I don't think he was happy many of those years. He wrote a lot of dissents. A lot of dissents. And he would ask his law clerks when he was interviewing people to become his law clerks, "You better get used to writing dissents."
But he enjoyed his life on the Court. He had fun with it. He wrote some beautiful dissents.
Realize now, he was the first, as you said, the first, and it had to be lonely and all that. There was one white secretary who refused to work for him; she just said no. So she left. Sometimes he would be in the elevator and a group of people would get on and they would think he was the elevator operator. He would be out of his robe and they would say "third floor, please." And he's say, "Okay," he'd push three, and then they would get off and he would say, "Have a good time visiting the United States Supreme Court."
And just think of the psyche of that. It had to bring a funny tickle to his funny bone, but it also had hurt, too.
ELAINE JONES: Just quick, on the advocates question, most judges have been advocates. They have represented somebody, whether they had a private practice, whether they're in nonprofit. Whatever they're doing, they have taken a side of a case and they've argued it. And they have been advocates.
The judicia, I don't think, is too much of a challenge. Because as an advocate, you have to know both sides of the case. You need to know your side and you need to know your opponent's side. What is she or he arguing? What is the argument? And for you to be able to settle these cases and come to agreement, you have to know what's important to one another.
And so, as a judge, all you're doing is sitting up there and are relieved of the responsibility of representing either side. But you just sit there and you listen to both sides. And then you apply the law.
So LDF has a proud history of our cooperating attorneys and our lawyers going on the bench; the state bench and the federal bench. And people who've worked with us over the years and who've been superb judges – A. Leon Higginbotham. Nathaniel Jones, Court of Appeals. Nina Pillard, just went on the DC Circuit. We just had one of our former lawyers become a federal court judge in Connecticut.
And so, it's not a big leap. That's my view.
WIL HAYGOOD: I must share this. I was invited to New York City to the offices of the LDF – that's the Legal Defense Fund – where Miss Jones was the number four CEO of that group. And I was invited there yesterday to sign books at Thurgood Marshall's desk.
ELAINE JONES: We have excellent timing, don't we? [laughter]
WIL HAYGOOD: Yeah. And it just gave me goose bumps to do it. I sat there and I just thought of my mother from the South, and I thought of all those death threats that Thurgood Marshall had gotten. And I thought of just his life and what he gave. It really was extraordinarily moving, that they wanted me to come up there because of their feelings about the book, and they wanted me to do it. It was just a very powerful moment for me.
Yes, question?
Q: Thank you for the stories and the history and the insight that you've shared this evening. I'm Kelley Chunn, I'm from Boston. I have a background in TV news, public affairs, PR and cause related marketing, so interested. I haven't read the book yet. I'm wondering to what extent you covered how this story was covered, particularly being a reporter, a former reporter, writer and currently a writer. How was it covered in the press? Were there any differences between the African American press and the mainstream press? And I can't remember back this far. Was it covered on television, were the hearings covered on television the way they are today? I don't have any memory of that myself.
And the other question is, upcoming books. I'm wondering what you might be working on next.
And you definitely have a book in you, Miss Jones. Maybe a few. What might be next? Thank you.
WIL HAYGOOD: Not to quote this review, but there was a snarky review, a very snarky review. I don't have time to go look for that person. [laughter] But writers are very sensitive people, of course. Who said, "Haygood doesn't pay attention to how the press covered the hearings." The press was not allowed in the hearing room! James Eastland gave him two hours on the first day and then said, "get out." That's how powerful the Senate was. This was a very closed event as far as the media. And members of the media were loath to say bad things about powerful senators. Nobody made the connection about the Loving v. Virginia racial slant. It was offensive, but that wasn't written about.
And so, it got a little bit of coverage when it first happened, the announcement. But did they cover it on TV every day like they do the hearings now? Absolutely not.
But there is something– I'm so glad you asked that question, because this is somebody who heard about it on the radio. And this is a letter that was written to Senator John McClellan, a letter that was written to him. And I went to visit his archives in the state of Arkansas. Upon his death, his papers would not be open for 50 years. I started this book at 50 years and three weeks after he died. So I hopped on a plane and went right to Arkansas.
And I came across this letter that was written to the Senator by somebody who lived in his state.
And it says:
Dear Senator, I am a resident of Arkansas and a law-abiding citizen who believes strongly in God, the United States Constitution and justice for all. Recently, I read an article concerning remarks made by you and another senator about Thurgood Marshall and his efforts to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Sir, I am a Negro, an American. I want you to know how I feel about Mr. Marshall's nomination. I'm sure that I can speak for all the Negroes in Arkansas. Mr. Marshall is just as qualified as any likely candidate that you know. It has been made quite clear which side you are on. We all know why you and the other Southern senators don't want him to be on the Supreme Court, and it's not because of the Constitution. You don't want him because he's black and that is the only reason.
Chances are that the nomination will be turned down, but we hope and pray that you will open up your heart and let all the hatred out and let Mr. Marshall's record speak for itself. Color doesn't make the person, Senator. It is character that makes the man.
If he doesn't get the nomination, there will be others who will seek after the same opportunity when it presents itself. There will be hundreds, Senator, and you can't fight them all.
One of these days, the president of the United States will be a Negro.
Sincerely yours, Barbara Ross."
July 19, 1967, the second day of the Thurgood Marshall hearings. She lived at 2103 Delaware Street. It says here, "no answer." She did not even get an answer. She was considered invisible.
Well, guess what?
ELAINE JONES: Considering what he may have said, maybe it was the right thing to do, to not respond.
WIL HAYGOOD: But history can be magical, the arc of it. I've tracked down Miss Barbara Ross. She lives in Texarkana, Arkansas, to this day. She was a 19-year-old college student when she wrote this letter. And I told her that I'm going to be in her neck of the woods on my book tour next month, and I'm going to bring her a copy of this letter.
She told me, she said: "My daddy had bought me a manual typewriter that previous Christmas. And I had my transistor radio on the back porch, and I was home from college and I listened to a little snippet of the hearings, and I just knew he wasn't going to get on the Supreme Court. And I told my dad that I wanted to write a letter. And he told me that it might get me in trouble. And my college professors, two of them who I called and asked for advice, they also told me not to write it. But I did."
When I reached her on the telephone, I said, "Mrs. Ross, you are my hero." [applause] So she might not have gotten a reply from the Senator, but her letter is in my book. [applause]
KENNETH MACK: We're almost at time. I think we have two people in line. I think I'd like both of you to ask short questions, and then we'll have one final round of answers. So each of you ask a question, and then we'll answer.
Q: Thank you. This has been an absolute privilege. Speaking of arcs, there are generally long arcs on crucial social justice issues. Miss Jones, as you spoke about, between the teacher equalization cases and Brown v. Board of Ed, there were two decades. In order to make change over a time period like that, not only do you have to persevere and persist, but you've also got to stay relevant in the hearts and, more importantly, the minds of the general public. Can you speak to the way in which, and the characteristics and the capabilities that allowed Thurgood Marshall, but also many others at the LDF, to continue and work on issues over a long period of time to actually create change.
KENNETH MACK: Okay, and then question number two.
Q: I wanted one of the stories that broke your heart because you couldn't include it in the book.
KENNETH MACK: Both great questions. Who wants to go first?
ELAINE JONES: Well, let's hear that first.
WIL HAYGOOD: One that, if I would have had room, then I guess I would have told even more of this particular story. Harry and Harriette Moore were voting rights activists in the State of Florida. She was a schoolteacher, and he was first full-time employee for the NAACP. On Christmas Eve, 1951, they went out to have dinner. And while they were gone, several Ku Klux Klansmen climbed under their house and set sticks of dynamite. And that was Christmas Eve.
Their daughter, Evangeline Moore, was on a train going to Florida, to spend Christmas with her family. She was sitting in the segregated car. The Moores came home, finished wrapping their gifts, crawled into bed and the dynamite exploded at three o'clock in the morning. Harry Moore died instantly.
The next morning, when Evangeline Moore got off the train, she looked around and said, "Where's Mom and Dad," and her uncle was there and told her, "Your dad has been murdered and your mom is at the hospital and we have to rush you there right away to see her."
And they did, and the doctors told Evangeline Moore, "If your mother can hold on for seven days, then we believe she'll make it." She died on the sixth day, Harriette Moore.
So I just felt that I wanted to write more and more about that story, because it gripped me so much. And if we may, if I can indulge you, I'd like a moment of silence for Evangeline Moore. She died just yesterday.
[moment of silence]
Thank you.
ELAINE JONES: There are other stories like that, but the Moores' is a very rich story. And many, many people don't know it, I mean, what they were doing in the Florida Panhandle in the late '40s and early '50s. And then, in the book though, Wil talks about how they knew the men who did it; they identified them. They knew the four of them who did it. Nobody, I don't think, was ever convicted.
WIL HAYGOOD: No.
ELAINE JONES: Nobody was ever convicted. But there are a lot of unsung heroes and heroines like that during the struggle for social justice. But I'm glad the book lets the Moores live once again.
WIL HAYGOOD: There was one more for the lady who asked that question. When Thurgood Marshall came down to Charleston, South Carolina, to start the Briggs case, which morphed into the Brown v. Board of Education case, there was this young black senior in college. And he stood in line with his ham sandwich and his cold water, sometimes, for two hours, because the courtroom would be so crowded; everybody wanted to see the great Thurgood Marshall. And this gentleman later went on to become a very great lawyer, Judge Perry.
ELAINE JONES: Matthew Perry.
WIL HAYGOOD: Matthew Perry of South Carolina, who died maybe two years ago. But he also has a building named after him. And I had a whole section on Matthew Perry leaving his home in the morning, going, standing in the hot sun to watch Thurgood Marshall. I probably had, I don't know, maybe 15 pages. And it just wouldn't fit. So that's a story that–
ELAINE JONES: And Strom Thurmond ended up making Matthew Perry the first black federal judge in South Carolina.
WIL HAYGOOD: It's a great story on so many levels. But there was just no room.
ELAINE JONES: I just want to say, on the question about the staying power, these issues have been with us too long. And they are still with us. They're still with us. And fits and starts, we make progress and we retrogress. We make progress and we– but we, all of us, no matter our race and color, we're Americans and we believe in this democratic experiment we've got here. We have got to solve this issue of race in the United States. I mean, we really do.
And sure, we're not where we were, but we're so far from where we need be. And this growing economic inequality is just making us the haves and the have-nots. But tactics have to change. Strategies have to change. But what has to remain the same is the commitment, our vision and our collective energy. We have to understand that is our time now. And we have to do what it is we can do between that dash – between birth and death – to solve; to solve this problem. [applause]
Q: I know you're done, but please forgive me, because there is a Ballad of Harry T. Moore by Sweet Honey in the Rock. I just want to make sure people know that. It's only a brief snippet, but it gives you a little flavor of who that amazing family was.
ELAINE JONES: And our issue today is voting rights. There's voting disenfranchisement. We've got to turn that around. We've got to get the right to vote back for all of our people who are citizens and are entitled to vote. And we shouldn't be subject to the whims of those who want to discriminate and separate based on whatever notions they have of entitlement.
KENNETH MACK: So two things before we go. Reminding you all that Wil Haygood will be signing copies of the book afterwards, I think in the bookstore, which is right out there. Actually in the lobby, he'll be signing books. So feel free to purchase and get one signed, and we will continue the conversation.
But first, let's thank Wil for writing the book. [applause] And thank you to Elaine Jones for coming and for a lifetime of service. [applause]
WIL HAYGOOD: Thank you.
KENNETH MACK: Thank you, all
[applause]