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My name is Sean McGallagate. I'm here with the Oral Legal History Project at Penn Law School. Uh, we're here at the offices of Schneider Harrison Segel Lewis, high above Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We're here with William H. Brown, distinguished Penn Law alumni. Uh, hello, Mr. Brown. Fine, Sean.

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How are you this morning? Good, good. I want to thank you for your time and, um, agreeing to participate. Um, I'd like to start off with some questions about your childhood. I know that you were born in 1928 here in Philadelphia. Um, where were your parents

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born? Well, my mom, uh, was born in Philadelphia also. My dad, uh, was born here but actually came, his most of his family came from the eastern shore of, uh, Maryland. And the interesting thing, I was actually born at home, uh, at, uh, the 5832 Haverford

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Avenue out in West Philadelphia. Uh, did you have any siblings? Yes, uh, there are 6 of us. Uh, actually there had been 7, but I lost, uh, one of my, uh, sisters when she was an infant. Uh, we have, uh, 4 boys and 2 girls. Uh,

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Morris, who's the one next to me, uh, David, uh, Edward, uh, and then we have, uh, two sisters. Uh, June and uh Carol. Did they stay in the Philadelphia area? They're kind of spread all over the country. Carol's in California. Morris is in Washington, uh, David's

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in Colorado, uh, my sister June's in, uh, Virginia, uh, my sister, uh, Carol, I said is in California, and of course, um, uh, who is it, uh, David is here in Philadelphia. Now you said you grew up in West Philadelphia. What was that neighborhood like at

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that time? It's a very interesting neighborhood at the time. Uh, it, it's unlike what it looks like now. I've gone back through that neighborhood many times. Uh, I remember there was a beautiful park at about 5-Eighth and Gerard Avenue that we used to go through and

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ride our bikes in and everything. It's changed tremendously, uh, since the days that I grew up in that, uh, area. Uh, but it was pretty much a family in those days. Uh, even my parents, if they were away or something, uh, and the neighbors were around,

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they kind of watched out for the kids, and in those days, of course, we, uh, obeyed the neighbors as, as just as if they were our own parents. If they said don't do something, Billy, that was the end of it. I didn't do it. Uh, what

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were your parents' occupations? My mom was a uh a housewife. Uh, she never worked until very, very late in life. My dad was an elevator operator, uh, and then when the war came along, he had to go to work for a defense factory. He worked at

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Exide uh battery Company and then came back to Wamakers and worked the rest of his life at Wamakers and also was a custodian at night, uh, at, uh, in those days was Dry Trust Bank. Uh, it's interesting because his entire life as much as, uh, I

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remember of him, uh, he's always had two jobs, and I guess the, the thing which brings it home to me is that, uh, he worked two jobs and never made as much, uh, at the end of the week as I did in an hour of my

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time, so it, uh, it just shows uh the tremendous sacrifices that were made both by my mom and my dad. In trying to raise 6 kids on the salary of a custodian and an elevator operator. Did you ever go to work with your father? No, I

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never went to work with, uh, dad because we were in school all the time and the thing that, uh, both my mother and father always instilled in us was the absolute necessity of getting a good education. Uh, my dad never finished high school. My mom, uh,

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went to, I think, about 11th grade, uh, and I was the first, uh, of the entire family to be able to even think about both finishing high school and to go on to college. Did your father ever describe to you the obstacles that he had to

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overcome because of his race? We talked about that, but not in great terms because in those days that was something you just accepted. I, I think many people thought that living in the North, you didn't have the same kind of racial problems you had in the

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South, but we had as many problems with race, uh, in the early days of my, uh, in, uh, growing up in Philadelphia. Most of the major movie theaters you couldn't go to, the few you could go to, uh, you, uh, actually had to sit in the

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balcony pretty much as you did in, in the South. There were restaurants you couldn't, uh, go into and be served. I remember the, uh, all the, uh, there was a chain of restaurants here, uh, Linton's, I believe it was, where you couldn't even go and be

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served. You could take food out but you couldn't, couldn't go and sit there and, and eat. Uh, and, uh, we had a lot of racial problems in the early days, uh, and indeed many of those problems, although not as severe, even persist to this time. Now,

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you were only 1 year old when the stock market crashed um on Black Tuesday in October of 1929. Did your parents ever tell you stories of what it was like both to live and raise a family during the Great Depression? We didn't talk about it. We

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knew we were poor. Uh, we knew that, uh, uh, I, I knew that my dad had to really scrape to get by, uh, and they made tremendous sacrifices, uh, at Christmas time we got, uh, very few toys, uh, maybe one toy for each of the, uh,

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children, but they always made certain we had something, uh, under the tree for for Christmas. Uh, they went without clothing, uh, they went without, uh, most of the. Necessities of life in order to give as much as they could to us uh but we always were

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clean and they made certain that uh we had clean shirts to wear when we went off to school and they did everything possible to make life as easy as they could, but, uh. I know there were days when we didn't have very much food. Uh, there

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were days when in those days we had coal furnaces that uh we didn't have enough money to buy coal for the the furnace, uh, and so that as I look back on my life, I just realized just how fortunate I am, uh, to be able to

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enjoy some of the things that my parents never even could could dream of, uh. Did you have any particular interests or hobbies while you were growing up? I, I always had an interest in, in being an aviator. I always wanted to fly when I was very

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young. As a matter of fact, when I finished, um, high school, I finished uh Central High, uh, there was a program, the Navy V-12 program, which, uh, in, in those days, uh, would allow you to get, uh, 4 years of college for free, and your only

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obligation was to serve, uh, 4 years in the service. It was designed for for to produce navy flyers. And I remember speaking with my uh counselor at school and telling uh my counselor that I planned to take that exam and the counselor said to me, you

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know, Bill, you know there are no black uh flyers in the navy. You're not gonna be the first one. And you know you're young and you're full of vim and vigor and uh probably I guess some amount of stupidity and you think you can just really

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knock over the world and so I remember going down to take the exam it was given on a on a Saturday as I remember. And it was one of those exams where uh the first part may have been uh oh I guess physics and if you

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passed you could go on and take the next part. The next part might been mathematics. If you pass that you could go in and take the next part and. We started off with, oh I guess about 200225 of us, and we got down to the end

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of the day and I had survived all of those exams up to that point and we may have had, I guess 70 or 75 of us left over and the last exam, uh, was a psychological. This supposedly was designed to see whether psychologically, uh, you could

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become a pilot for the Navy. Uh, and, uh, oddly enough, uh, it was a one exam. If you failed, you couldn't come back and take any of the others. If you failed, you could come back and pick up where you had failed and take the rest

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of those exams and, and then go on if you were able to pass and be considered for, uh, the navy. Needless to say, that's the exam that they say I failed, that I could never become a flyer, and that just washed me out completely. And I

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was devastated by it, frankly, I went home crying and couldn't understand how, you know, this exam which asked you a question, you know, do you love your mother more than your father? Are you afraid of speeding cards and this kind of stuff? Uh, and I decided

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even though they had offered me a chance to go into the, I think it was the submarine service, but I knew I'd be a cook in the navy in those days. Uh, they had offered me a chance to go in, but I elected to volunteer. Uh,

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and I went into the Army Air Corps in those days it was the Army Air Corps. We didn't have the Air Force and of course the service itself was completely segregated. All of the uh squadrons that I was attached to were all black squadrons, and we

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had the white officers, of course there were no black officers over us. Uh, did you have a hero as a child? I, I think the, uh, hero that I had was, uh, uh, other than, of course, my, my dad who I. I always felt, uh, you

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know, went above and beyond, uh, what you would expect of, uh, any, uh, father trying to make certain that all of us kids, uh, had everything that we needed. Uh, but the person that I think the most of is, uh, Bob Nix, uh, Bob Nix Senior.

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Uh, I served with the young Bob who went on to become Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of, uh, Pennsylvania. Uh, I served with him as an acolyte at the church, and on the weekends his mom would invite me up to their home, uh, to spend

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the weekend with, with Bob. Uh, Bob's dad was probably one of the outstanding, uh, criminal lawyers in those days in Philadelphia. Uh, and I remember speaking with Bob's, uh, mom, and she was asking me what I was gonna do in, in the junior high. I was

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pretty good in the shops, you know, wood shop and metal shop, electric shop, and things of that nature and enjoyed pretty much working with my hands and I remember, uh, Mrs. Nick saying, Well, Billy, uh, why would you do something that, uh, you could use your

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mind for rather than just your hands? And I thought about that, uh, and I. The only person I knew who was professional was Bob's dad, and he happened to be a lawyer. So I thought, well, maybe I ought to be a lawyer as well, and probably

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because of that conversation with Bob's, uh, mother, uh, I became a lawyer. Were you involved in any particular activities in high school? I participated to some limited extent in, in the, in track never very good at it, uh, but most of the time when I was

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in uh high school, I, I worked the entire time I was in high school, so it limited my ability for any of the extracurricular activities at the, uh, school. I remember working in, uh, oh, bowling alleys, uh, setting pins in those days you didn't have the

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automatic pin setters. I remember uh working uh at a drugstore. Uh, so that as soon as I finished my classes, I would just head right back off, uh, to, to work and so that my, uh, time spent in any of the extracurricular activities that you normally

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would like to participate, uh, just wasn't an avenue open to me. Were you exposed to black history or literature while you were in high school? Not to any really great extent because uh I went to uh Central High. Uh there were only a handful of black

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students at Central High in back in the 40s when, when I was there and so the, the amount of history you got was the traditional history. Uh, I don't think we had any amount of uh uh black history uh while I was at uh at Central

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High. It just wasn't in the. In the curriculum, it wasn't in the programs, nor was it uh very much a part of hardly any of the Philadelphia school district's uh programs back in those days. How did the racial climate in Philadelphia and America in the 1930s

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and 1940s affect your childhood? Well, you were very much aware of discrimination. It was clear that almost everything you did and said, uh, was, uh, a reflection of the times. When I grew up, you couldn't go to borough, uh, movie theaters in Philadelphia. Uh, even those

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that you did go to, uh, you generally were relegated to seating and being seated in the, in the balcony. Uh, the restaurants, most of the restaurants, downtown restaurants, and even some of the local restaurants, uh, you couldn't go into and, and eat, uh, there, there was

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probably a general perception and maybe still the day that, uh, people who grew up in the days when I grew up in Philadelphia did not experience uh segregation or discrimination. And really nothing could be further from the truth. We had very few role models, uh, in

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those days. None of the major department stores had any, uh, black employees except if they worked in in the custodial, uh, capacity or except that they were in the back, uh, loading clothes or, uh, you know, doing stock work or things of that nature. None of

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the banks had any uh tellers who were black and none of your major uh hotels or restaurants had black employees except uh maybe washing dishes or things of that nature, uh, and so it was a time when you grew up you knew that there was great

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discrimination and it was a way of life. Uh, it was pretty much, uh, accepted uh there was very little we could do about it, uh, and indeed in. Almost all of the major institutions in those days, uh, you could see, uh, discrimination was, was as rampant

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in Philadelphia as it was in the many parts of the South. And at that time the the perception was was otherwise. People felt that um racism was a Southern phenomenon. Uh, many people thought that it was a Southern phenomenon, but those of us who lived in

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the North realized it was not just a southern phenomenon. We didn't have. The extensive amount of uh of violence that was associated with discrimination and segregation in the South, but it was just as discriminatory in in uh Philadelphia. I remember back in. I guess it was

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probably 1942 when the first black motormen placed on the streetcars in Philadelphia and it was a big riot about it and as a matter of fact I can recall that they had to put uh uh armed soldiers on each street car leaving the car bombs. Uh,

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they, they were, they had full field packs, they had rifles and fixed bayonets, uh, and I think there were two soldiers assigned to every street car that went out of the barn. Uh, just because they had hired a, a black, uh, to help operate the, uh,

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street cars, I guess that was necessary only because of the fact that so many, uh, had, had gone off to war and, uh, they had to have people running the various street car taxi cabs and things of that nature, but up until that time there hadn't

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been any. Uh, blacks operating speed cars. I don't think you had blacks even driving taxicabs, things that we pretty much take for granted today. Richard Wright, author of Native Son, once remarked about his own that the white world beat you down, and in an effort to

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keep you from being beaten down by the white world, your own family beat you down for your own good. The best protection in a white world was invisibility. Was Wright's experience common? Very common and, and your, your own family did beat you down but they beat

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you down in the good sense. Uh, my mom and my dad, even though they both had limited amount of, uh, education, always insisted that the thing that uh that we kids had to have was a good education and so they made certain that we got out

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every single day to go to school. I mean they pushed us, uh, they demanded the most of us they would work with us, particularly my mom who. In those days did not work. Uh, they worked with us, uh, every day, helped us with our homework at

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night. Uh, there were 6 of us, 6 surviving, uh, kids, and everything that, uh, we did or everything was told to us was you've got to get a good education. Uh, your way of getting a, a, a better life than what we're experiencing is gonna be,

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uh, through the educational process. You mean you were denied access to the navy because of your race, um, but you went on to join the others. How did your parents feel about your joining the military at that time? Well, they were supportive, uh, and they recognized

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that they couldn't provide me with an education. I knew that they couldn't afford to get me an education. We certainly didn't have, uh, the amount of money, uh, that would allow me to go to college. Uh, I was the first. Uh, in the family to even

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be able to go to college, so a way of getting a chance to get an education because, uh, we had the GI bill which, uh, we got out of service, uh, in going to college and helping to pay for the cost of uh college and so

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when I went off the war, of course they were, uh, saddened to see me do it, but they, uh, recognized the reason why I was doing it and they knew that. The likelihood was that I was going to be drafted anyhow and so when I enlisted,

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it was just something they accepted. Now you joined the Corps on February 12, 1946. At that point, Hitler had surrendered and just six months prior to your joining, the US had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Um, did you think this was an odd time

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for you to be joining the military? It, it was an odd time. It was a good time, uh, because when I went into the military. Uh, many of the, uh, soldiers who had been in for a number of years were starting to come back out of

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service. We call them the short timers, those who had been in the, uh, service, and particularly during the active war years, and so they were coming back out of the service at the time, and I thought this was a great opportunity for me to be going

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in one, I was young and I would have the benefit of uh having the the wisdom of. Uh, the older, uh, men in service who, well, not all that old, were probably 4 or 5 years older than I and who some of whom have been in

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service for a number of years, uh, giving me the benefit of their experiences, uh, while they're in the service, and you know, the service was a reflection of the times as well. The service was completely segregated. uh, I went in, uh, ironically, uh, I was inducted

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at Fort Meade, uh, Maryland. And we had a complete segregated unit. Uh, the, we had the German prisoners of war, uh, at Fort Meade who were treated better than what we were treated as as enlisted people, uh, in the, uh, in the Air Force, uh, in

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the Army Air Force in in those days, and we experienced, uh, the same kind of segregation and discrimination while I was in the service that I did, uh, out in civilian life. It really hadn't changed very much. I remember, uh, we went to, uh, uh, for

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basic training to Wichita Falls, Texas. Uh, a completely segregated town in those days. Uh, we went into town, uh, one day and, uh, we're told to sit at the back of the bus and that was the last time I went into Wichita Falls. Uh, we had

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a race ride on the base, uh, which started ironically enough just because, uh, one of the, uh, black, uh, uh, members of our, our group had danced with a white, uh, USO uh hostess. Uh, they processed us, uh, shipped us out. I went from there to,

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uh, Scottfield, Illinois, uh, which was just as segregated. Uh, we had a ride there. Uh, we were shipped out there. I think I spent, oh, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 months in Scofield to, uh, Denver, Colorado, uh, Laurie Air Force Base, and was trained

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there. Uh, we had a race ride in, uh, in Laurie, and we were shipped out there and I finally went overseas to, uh, to Guam where I served for about, oh I guess about, uh, 19 or 20 months, uh, on Guam. The irony, uh, was that

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when I went into service, my, uh, I think they called AGST or something like that was a test that they gave you to determine what kind of schools you should go to while in the service. I had scored very high. And uh in talking with the

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person who was to assign what school you went to, uh, he told me I could uh ask for any school because of the score that I had made on the on the exam. Uh, and so I started naming different schools that I thought I would want

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to go to, and he said, well, that's not open. this is not, uh, this is not open. And after I guess about 5 or 10 minutes of none of the schools being open, he just said, look, uh Bill, there are 3 schools that are open to

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you. I don't care what your score is. One is cook, one is a clerk typist, and one is an auto mechanic. Now when you get down to one of those 3, those schools will be open. And I decided I didn't want to cook and I didn't

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want to sit in an office and type, so I decided I wanted to be an auto mechanic. And I got to be an auto mechanic. I was trained as a mechanic in the, in the service, uh, and was damn good at it. Uh, I went overseas,

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uh, and it was ironic, uh, most of the people and I was in the 12th Air ammunition depot, uh, and most of the fellows there, uh, were starting to be released from service. They had, uh, been in, had served their time and were being released. And

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over a period of time I became in charge of the motor pool. It was a consolidated motor pool and we had all the heavy equipment pieces as well as the traditional, uh, vehicles that go along with the motor pool, uh, and I was put in for

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a promotion, uh, by my, uh, uh, uh lieutenant. And the uh commandant of of our unit uh decided that I was not going to be promoted. And I had, uh, I was placed in charge of the consolidated motor pool. I had sergeants working for me at

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the time. I was only a corporal. Uh, and I kept being put in for promotion. It kept being turned down. I remember going to the, to the, uh, the captain saying, look, you know, put me out on the bomb though, which is the worst place in

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the world you wanted to be. It was hard work. It was hard work, and then you had all the, the yellow jackets and everything around these old bombs and things that had been out there and nobody wanted to go out there. And I said, you know,

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put me out there, uh, because I'm just doing work that was much higher level than what my MOS uh called for. And I was doing major repairs and I really was not supposed to be doing major repairs and I remember him telling me, you know, Brown,

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you're going to stay here. And you're not going to the bomb dump, and if you don't do the work, I'm gonna get you court martialed. It was just that simple. Uh, and, uh, that never, you know, needless to say, I was upset about it. It wasn't

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too much you could do. I was told that I was being considered for uh uh for West Point that I could come in and take the exam for it. Which I did, uh, but my eyesight knocked me out of that. Uh, and I served, uh, on

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Guam, uh, as the head of the, uh, of the motor pool the entire time I was there, still having sergeants, uh, working under me, uh, because I knew what I was doing and most of these people were, were fairly new at it. I stayed there and

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uh uh came back to this country, I guess, uh probably the end of uh of 48. And when I came back, uh, I decided I was going to come out of the service. Uh, they asked me to re-enlist, which I decided I didn't want any part

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of. And came back to to this country and and came back home. One sentiment at the time um that you were in the segregated military was how can blacks be expected to serve to fight for democracy in Burma when they don't have it in Birmingham. Were

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your fellow black soldiers struck by the irony of their role in the military at that time? All of us were, you know, all of us, you know, uh, thought that we were doing something that was helpful to the country. Uh, fortunately for us we were not

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in the middle of the war, but we knew and had met and had worked with a number of soldiers who actually were in the war. Uh, both in the European theater as well as in the, uh, Far Eastern theater, uh, and they, they all were upset

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and we had occasions when a lot of them, uh, thought seriously about going into town with their rifles and, and shooting up the, the towns because of the tremendously poor kind of treatment we were being given, uh, we had, uh, white offices over us in all

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of the places that we served. Uh, and the results of the race riots didn't change, uh, very much. Uh, the one thing that did change, at least in Denver when we had a ride, they did start putting on some, uh, black MPs, and the, the food

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got to be a little bit better, uh, than what we had been used to, but other than that, uh, things were pretty much the same. Uh, I remember, uh, when I first came in I was being considered for officers candidate school. Uh, again, because of the

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scores that I had made, and this was shortly after I'd gotten into service, and I was before this board who were to evaluate you to see whether or not you should be considered for OCS. And one of the, uh, uh, I guess he was probably a

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major at that time. I remember him asking me, he said, you know, son, do you think that uh you should come into the service in 6 or 8 months and be uh considered to go to officer candidate school where and it took me, I think he

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said something about 15 or 18 years to get to be able to even sit where he was sitting at the time. And you know you're young and fairly uh dumb I think in those days and I remember saying to him, you know, sir, it takes some

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people, you know, a few years, uh, and it takes other people, uh, a few months to do the same thing, uh, and I knew as soon as I made that answer that was the end of my, uh, chances at going to OCS and needless to say,

00:28:21.849 - 00:28:42.989

I was not selected to go to OCS. President Truman desegregated the armed services by executive order 5 months after you left the military, due in part to marches on Washington by A. Philip Randolph and the League for Nonviolent Civil Disobedience against military segregation. Did the desegregation

00:28:43.180 - 00:28:55.020

effort going on at home have the support of the black soldiers, or did it actually make your life more difficult while you were in the military? I had the support. There's no question about that. We were resentful that we had to be in a segregated unit.

00:28:55.439 - 00:29:13.219

We thought we were as good as anyone else at what we did. Uh, we had some outstanding individuals, many of whom had a college education and even advanced degrees. Uh, I was still fresh out of high school, so I had not gotten to that point, uh,

00:29:13.290 - 00:29:31.530

but we all felt that there was no reason in the world, uh, why these educated soldiers weren't being given the kind of assignments and opportunities that their white counterparts have been, uh, given. One historian has made a statement. For many men in the military, World War

00:29:31.530 - 00:29:50.959

II introduced blacks to whites and vice versa. Post-war desegregation provided many people with their first impression of what a racially integrated society would be like, thereby making the unthinkable a reality and accelerating social change throughout the post-war years. Do you agree? I agree substantially with what

00:29:50.959 - 00:30:11.050

is said there. I think that the military became the best, uh, indication and the best example of what a totally integrated society can, can do, you know, because, uh, if you looked at the military, you had significant changes, uh, once uh Truman issued his orders that

00:30:11.050 - 00:30:29.099

the military was going to become uh totally integrated and you began to see uh the changes that were taking place. And and as the units were integrated, it made people realize that we can live and work, uh, and, and play with each other even though our

00:30:29.099 - 00:30:43.699

backgrounds are completely different, even though the races are completely different, there are many similarities in terms of the people who were coming into the service. Many of the whites didn't have the benefit of having gone to college, and so you had a number of people whose

00:30:43.699 - 00:30:56.599

backgrounds were similar. And the only difference may have been that they may have grown up in a white uh area and we grew up in in a black area, but it did make a tremendous uh differences and if you look at the military now the military

00:30:56.599 - 00:31:14.410

now is probably one of the best examples of, of integration and the benefits that you can see from an integrated uh uh society. When you got back from Guam in 1948, you started to apply to colleges? Yes, I applied, uh, when I came back. I applied

00:31:14.410 - 00:31:34.800

to Temple. I got out of the service, I think, in November of 1948, and I went into Temple's, uh, school, uh, uh, it's university, and I think they let me come in the January term of 1949. Uh, as a part of the training and a part

00:31:34.800 - 00:31:50.420

of the benefit of the GI Bill, uh, I was given a series of tests which would help us decide what career we wanted to go into when we went into the, uh, uh, to the, uh, university. Oddly enough, uh, I scored in the, I guess a

00:31:50.420 - 00:32:07.540

high 90th percentile for engineering. And uh only about in the high 70s for, for law and the professor was trying to convince me I should be an engineer but I didn't want to have to deal with all the math uh and I decided I'd rather go

00:32:07.540 - 00:32:23.619

into the law. At one time I really was very much interested in becoming an aeronautical engineer. Uh it was clear that that was not an avenue that was open to me uh back in the, in the late 40s or even into the, into the 50s. Uh,

00:32:23.660 - 00:32:43.949

and so that, uh, I thinking back to what, uh, Mrs. Nixon said about using your mind, uh, I decided long ago that the thing I did want to become was a, was a lawyer. How are students selected? Um, Or, um, admitted to Temple University at that

00:32:43.949 - 00:33:02.329

time, frankly, I don't know. uh, I applied, uh, and applied in in mid-year and was was accepted into, into the university and I don't know what the process was for making the selection, but it certainly had a reputation even in those days as long ago, uh

00:33:02.329 - 00:33:20.959

as the as the late 40s, early 50s of being. Much more receptive to students of color than what many of the other universities in this area were as a result of that, you didn't consider attending any other colleges? No, I, I didn't consider. I I I

00:33:20.959 - 00:33:35.979

had considered going to the University of Colorado. I liked Denver very much when I was stationed out there, uh, but my mom took sick when I was, uh, when I came out of service. I spent, I guess a month or so in Colorado. I think I

00:33:35.979 - 00:33:49.140

was going to go to school out there, but she took sick and I had to come back home. So once I got back home, uh, there was no question in my mind. I didn't have many options and so I felt that the Temple was the best

00:33:49.140 - 00:34:04.060

school for me. I could commute to Temple, uh, and then at the same time I could still work as I, as I indeed did throughout the entire time I was in, in the school. What did you do? I did a number of things, uh, during the

00:34:04.060 - 00:34:18.750

summers I drove a cab, uh, for about 2 or 3 summers, and then of course I worked full time at the uh at the post office. Uh, we used to kid and say the post office was the uh black graduate school because we had more blacks

00:34:18.750 - 00:34:33.770

in the post office in those days who had not only undergraduate degrees but also had uh advanced degrees and so I worked full time at the post office so I guess for probably about 2, 2.5 years. And was still working at the post office when I

00:34:33.770 - 00:34:56.388

was admitted to the University of Pennsylvania Law School. What was Temple like in 1949? Temple was a, was a good school. Uh, it, it, um. It was not the integrated system or uh school that it is today. I think most of us who were black tended

00:34:56.388 - 00:35:17.629

to keep to ourselves. Uh, we had some interaction with our white uh uh students, uh, but not an awful lot of it, and the socialization was primarily based on, on race both in this university as well as, uh, outside the university. Uh, my, uh, activities there

00:35:17.629 - 00:35:31.310

was fairly limited because I, as I say, I was working so that as soon as my classes were over I hauled off to to go to either to the post office or go to someplace else where I might be working at the time. I remember I

00:35:31.310 - 00:35:47.439

had an early morning 8 o'clock class uh way up in the northern part of the city at one of their uh campuses. And I worked at the post office and I used to get off around 1:30 in the morning, take a trolley home, uh, get about

00:35:47.439 - 00:36:00.270

2 or 3 hours sleep, and then take a trolley back out to the next morning to, to school, uh, to temple, and that was a pretty good haul. We had to take the Broad Sea subway, I think practically to the end, uh, in order to get

00:36:00.270 - 00:36:18.780

uh to, to school in those days. No one had an automobile and so you didn't have any choice but to take public transportation. Um, in 1949, China became a communist nation and Russia tested its first atomic bomb. By 1950, we were at war with communist forces

00:36:18.780 - 00:36:34.229

in Korea, and Senator McCarthy was accusing members of the State Department and Hollywood producers of being communists. What were the attitudes of students and professors at Temple to communism and the emerging Cold War? Did people feel inhibited about discussing certain subjects for fear of being labeled

00:36:34.229 - 00:36:48.820

communists, or were there other things on their minds? Frankly, I, you know, I had so little contact with the professors at Temple. I'm not sure what their true thoughts may have been. I'm sure that there were some of them that were reluctant to, to say what

00:36:48.820 - 00:37:07.350

was really on their minds. I, I think it was no different among the uh professors at Temple than among the people generally, uh, in this country. Uh, McCarthy, uh, uh, was one of those individuals who would go after everybody. Yeah, or anybody didn't make any difference,

00:37:07.439 - 00:37:27.159

uh, make outrageous accusations against people, and there was a, I think, a feeling of fear that was generated by uh McCarthy, uh, McCarthy and, and, and his ilk in those days, uh, but my contacts with the professors were so limited. I never did get a chance

00:37:27.159 - 00:37:45.370

to talk about their feelings about how. Uh, how they felt about the communism or the threat of communism or uh how they felt about the uh the hearings that went on at some point in time. Uh, but I, I have the impression that many in the

00:37:45.370 - 00:38:08.219

academic community, uh, did not have the, the amount of, uh, of fear, uh, that, uh, the public generally had of, uh, of communism. Many people trace, um, their idealism to their college years. Um, was that also true for you? No, my idealism did not come from,

00:38:08.300 - 00:38:25.699

from, from college. I think my idealism came more from my parents who, who believed in us and believed that we could do almost anything. Uh, my mom was just an outstanding individual. My dad, uh, with all of his hard work, was just a very unique person.

00:38:26.110 - 00:38:40.669

And the two of them just pushed us and pushed us and pushed us to do better, uh, to get an education, uh, to go on and do anything we wanted to do and so I didn't have the benefit of, of knowing, uh, a lot of professional,

00:38:40.770 - 00:38:58.979

uh, people, black or white, uh, because of the, the times that that I grew up in and, and because of my own, uh, background. Uh, but I didn't have the kind of idealism that many people, uh, did. I was much more practical. Uh, I remember in,

00:38:59.590 - 00:39:17.489

in Temple, uh, a very close friend who in fact got me through accounting, which was always a nemesis of mine. Uh, he went on to become a, uh, an accountant and later became a CPA working for, uh, American Telephone and Telegraph, uh, company. And and Johnny,

00:39:17.649 - 00:39:35.679

uh, he was Johnny Shepherd, also a graduate of Temple Business School, uh, and I had decided if we could make $100 a week when we graduated, uh, we would be pretty much in Fat City that we would have no financial problems whatsoever, and I look back

00:39:35.679 - 00:39:51.219

on those days and kind of kid myself and chuckle at myself and I guess that's part of, uh, when we were growing up and. Uh, I worked, as I said, throughout the, uh, the time I was in the temple. I worked during the time when I

00:39:51.219 - 00:40:10.209

was at uh at Penn. Uh, and so it was a very practical thing for us, uh, is that go to school, get an education, get a job, uh, that was, that was my objective, just to get a decent job paying me a halfway decent salary. Were

00:40:10.209 - 00:40:25.189

you exposed to black history or literature while at Temple? No. We had no black history or or literature in those days at Temple. I don't think Temple in those days was any different than any of the major colleges in this country. The place where black history

00:40:25.189 - 00:40:40.229

and literature and things of that nature were discussed and made a part of the curriculum or at all of the predominantly black colleges, and I think that's one of the things that I missed uh in my own background as far as the educational process was concerned.

00:40:41.979 - 00:41:00.010

Was a difficult balancing. Um, a sort of emerging interest in civil rights with this very sort of practical upbringing that you had, provide for your family, make money, um, and yet sort of looking all around and you saw things that you wanted to change. How did

00:41:00.010 - 00:41:18.100

you balance those those two instincts with difficulty, no doubt about it. I, I was not as active, particularly in my college years and many of the traditional organizations, either the NAACP or the Urban League. Uh, mainly because I didn't have the time, uh, time was a

00:41:18.100 - 00:41:33.500

real luxury for me and the time that I was not in school was time spent either at work or time spent studying so that, uh, we were very limited. I was very limited in the ability to participate in some of those organizations you knew, or at

00:41:33.500 - 00:41:51.489

least I felt I had uh uh an obligation to to do what I could to change things, uh, but from a very practical standpoint and uh. As I look back on it, I got married, uh, in I think in 1952. Uh, when I was, uh, starting

00:41:51.489 - 00:42:09.719

at, uh, uh, at, uh, at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Uh, I had a daughter who was born in 1955. And so that uh those demands and the demands of uh law school, the demands of work, the demands of studying for the bar, and then

00:42:09.719 - 00:42:25.770

the demands of a new young family uh did not permit me to be uh active while I was in school and many of those organizations after I graduated and then went on to start the practice and I did become a much more active than many of

00:42:25.770 - 00:42:49.040

the organizations, both the NAACP, the Urban League, and many of the other. A community organizations, uh, that were active in, in those years. You mentioned that you had interest in you, you gained an interest in law when you're very young from Bob Nicks and uh that

00:42:49.040 - 00:43:05.179

developed while you're at Temple. Did you apply to any other law schools aside from Penn? Yes, I applied to a number of them, uh, and uh Temple and Penn and, and mostly law schools that were close by. Uh, and I was surprised. I, I never thought

00:43:05.179 - 00:43:20.979

I was gonna be accepted to Penn, uh, and I got the letter from the university saying that I had been accepted and I had to, uh, send in, I don't know, I think it was $50 to reserve my place in the in the class. And I

00:43:20.979 - 00:43:37.929

was panic stricken literally because I didn't have 50 bucks and I had to go around to practice everybody I knew to borrow enough money uh to even secure my place in the in the in the law school class. I, I think it really caught me, uh,

00:43:37.939 - 00:43:56.040

really totally unaware. Because I knew that Penn had a very limited number of blacks uh in the law school and I didn't think I was gonna really be accepted uh at the at the school. Uh, I had a conversation I remember after I had been accepted

00:43:56.040 - 00:44:14.600

with Dean Fordham who was really one of the truly outstanding uh individuals uh that I've ever met. And I remember sitting down with him and he was saying, Mr. Brown, you understand that the policy at Penn. Uh, is that you may not work during your first

00:44:14.600 - 00:44:31.100

year in law school. And I said, yes, I understand that's the policy. Uh, I was working at the post office at the time. What I didn't say that if I don't work, I can't stay here in the school. And uh so he told me that was

00:44:31.100 - 00:44:46.689

the policy. He never asked me, are you gonna stop working? I never said I would stop working, uh, and I continued to work uh while I was at uh law school. I continued to work in the summers driving a cab. And worked at the post office

00:44:46.689 - 00:45:03.840

for I guess, uh, at least 2 of the 3 years, maybe even 2 of the 3 years when I was uh uh at the law school. Uh, but he was a very unique person. Uh, he was, uh, even though a Southerner by birth, uh, very, very

00:45:03.840 - 00:45:21.699

liberal, and, uh, I remember when I was finishing, about to graduate. Uh, on his own, uh, he, I guess he knew that the chances of a black coming out of Penn or any other school for that matter was not going to be, uh, offered any kind

00:45:21.699 - 00:45:38.989

of uh clerkship in any of the major firms here in Philadelphia. And he did a study for me, asked to have a study done uh to help me determine what cities in the country would be most receptive to blacks practicing law, uh, particularly fresh out of

00:45:38.989 - 00:45:58.320

law school. And I believe the study showed that The first place probably would have been, uh, I think Houston, Texas. Uh, and the next place was, uh, I think Seattle, Washington. I think he told me that the study showed that. There was a great uh migration

00:45:58.320 - 00:46:20.459

of people from Los Angeles and Southern California and California up to the greater uh Northwest and that that migration was mainly upon non-professional people. And the professionals had not followed this migration and therefore, the feeling was uh for a new lawyer practicing, there would be a

00:46:20.459 - 00:46:41.649

significant number. Of uh blacks in the Seattle area which could be a base for for practice, uh, I decided to stay in Philadelphia. And ultimately, I started my what I was gonna be my own practice, you know, when I was in school, all of your friends

00:46:41.649 - 00:46:54.290

tell you that how much work they're gonna give you is a new lawyer coming out, and of course you believe it and you think that you're gonna open your doors with your new practice and you're gonna just knock over the world. Uh, I was fortunate enough

00:46:54.290 - 00:47:12.500

to pass the bar the first time that I took it. I think in those days the passing percentage was so something like um. 48 49%, uh, there were a number of us who were black who took the exam. Uh, and, uh, I think of all those

00:47:12.500 - 00:47:23.820

who took it who were black, I think I was the only one who passed, which was somewhat surprising to me because I thought there were others in the group who were a hell of a lot brighter, uh, than I was and knew a lot more about

00:47:23.820 - 00:47:43.199

the law than I thought that I did. Uh, but, uh, I came out, uh, got my letterhead printed up, got a phone installed. I was with two other young lawyers. Uh, who had started their own business and were in practice, they were, I guess maybe about

00:47:43.199 - 00:47:59.560

8 or 10 years older than I. And then I got a call from uh a firm who said that they knew I had uh finished law school and had taken the bar and passed and wanted to know if I was interested in my First reaction was

00:47:59.560 - 00:48:15.429

no, but they asked me to come down and meet with them and talk with them about the possibility of joining their their firm. As it turned out, that was the uh the Austin artists uh Leon Higginbotham uh firm. I remember meeting with them on a Sunday

00:48:15.659 - 00:48:29.580

and I thought that was, was a good sign that they didn't mind working hard on a Sunday. Uh, and they asked me if I would be interested in coming on board as a, as an associate. It was a brand new firm, I think had been started

00:48:29.580 - 00:48:47.449

just earlier, either in the 1955 or towards the end of, uh, 1954. And my initial reaction was, no, I just started my My own business. I spent my last couple $100 getting a phone installed my letter had printed up and everything, and I was gonna make

00:48:47.449 - 00:49:01.850

all this money from all these friends that they were gonna give me the business. And I went home and they told me to think about it and then I think some uh divine intervention uh hit me in the head and said look fool, you know, you

00:49:01.850 - 00:49:20.330

better start thinking about the practicalities of things. uh, you've got a family. And I decided that I would go back and talk with them, which I did. And I joined them at the end of 1955, and that was probably the most fortunate and most uh fortuitous

00:49:20.989 - 00:49:39.139

uh association that I had in my life. How many other black students were there at Penn in the class of 1955? I believe I was the only one. There may have been one other, but I'm not even sure about that. I know when I started, uh,

00:49:39.149 - 00:49:53.199

at Penn Law, I was the only one in my class. I believe there was one black in the 3rd year, and that may have been Bob Nix. Uh, when I was in the 2nd year at Penn, I think I was, I'm pretty certain I was the

00:49:53.199 - 00:50:06.600

only black in the law school. And then I went into the 3rd year. There was one black who came into the, into the 1st year that may have been Hardy Williams. Hardy Williams, uh senior, I believe, uh, came into the 1st year when I was in

00:50:06.600 - 00:50:22.449

my 3rd year at Penn. Uh, and so that you didn't have to worry about associations, uh, because there were so few of you in, in those days, uh, you associated with the whites. Uh, I started off with a study group, uh, there were, I think, 3

00:50:22.449 - 00:50:40.540

of us, uh, and, uh, there was a tremendous advantage, uh, to being a white at Penn over being a minority at Penn in those days. Uh, because you had the benefit of old exams that people could sit down, you had the benefit of people who knew

00:50:40.540 - 00:50:54.979

other lawyers, they had the benefit of people who knew, uh, lawyers who had just come out of Penn, and they could talk to them about their experiences, and many of them had members of their families who were who were lawyers and they could talk to them

00:50:54.979 - 00:51:11.919

about legal problems. I had none of that, uh, and in those days none of the, the blacks that I knew. Had that kind of benefit and uh it was interesting because the two people who were with me in my study group, both of them dropped out

00:51:11.919 - 00:51:28.149

after the first year so I was kind of on my own and I again I couldn't spend the amount of time uh uh. In my studies that I wish that I could because I was working uh full time at the post office at night uh and

00:51:28.149 - 00:51:42.310

then when in the summers I was working both post offices and driving a cab at the same time. And so you were limited in terms of how much time you could really spend talking with other uh uh your fellow students at the school, but there were

00:51:42.310 - 00:51:56.280

a number of them who were. A very open and very friendly and very helpful, uh, and the same was true of uh some of the, of the professors who were exceedingly helpful and others who could care less about your being in that school and pretty much

00:51:56.280 - 00:52:15.020

ignored you. Did you have a favorite professor? I, I guess if I had. A favorite professor. I'm just trying to think, it, it, one of the people who I thought a great deal about as I've seen was Dean Fordham, who also taught a class there. Uh,

00:52:15.060 - 00:52:33.489

and, uh, the, um, other, uh, would be, um. I'm trying to think of his name. Uh, he taught contracts, uh, vice, I think, uh, went on to, I think at some point in time went up to Harvard to teach. Uh, he taught contracts and I thought

00:52:33.489 - 00:52:52.159

he was just an excellent professor and I thought it was extremely fair. Uh, students often say that the first year is the most difficult. Was that your experience? Absolutely, absolutely. I was, I was so lost in, in my first year. I didn't know really frankly what

00:52:52.159 - 00:53:09.600

I was going or coming. I'm not sure that my experience was any different than the experience of most students going into law school. The first year is a tough year. Uh, I remember I gotten fairly disgusted, uh, and had gotten down to towards the end of

00:53:09.600 - 00:53:24.939

my first year. And I really decided that the law was really not where I wanted to be. I, I think I kind of just stopped going to classes for about a month or a month and a half. And then the final exams were coming up and

00:53:24.939 - 00:53:38.850

uh I decided I wasn't even going to bother taking the exams. And my mother, you know, bless her, uh, she said, you know, well, Billy, you know, you've spent all this time and effort. Uh, the least you can do is take the exams, even if you

00:53:38.850 - 00:53:56.280

don't want to go on into the next year, you ought to go ahead and take the exams anyhow. And I remember cramming, you know, literally 1214 hours a day trying to catch up with my, uh, studies, uh, and, uh, took the, did take the exam and

00:53:56.280 - 00:54:09.850

4th and was able to get by the exams and pass and then I decided maybe I did want to go on to to try the second year, uh, and I'm of course thankful now that I, I did do that and even more appreciative of the fact

00:54:09.850 - 00:54:31.300

that my mother really forced me, you know, just to continue to go on. Now, at that time, they, the law students failed out their first year. The the failure rate was extremely high, uh, and I think we may, we would probably start with about 125, maybe

00:54:31.300 - 00:54:50.709

130 in my class, and by the time we graduated, it probably was something under 100, maybe 9095 who graduated, uh, uh, in 1955, uh, with me. Did that give you a sense of accomplishment that you were able to tremendous sense of accomplishment that the fact that

00:54:50.709 - 00:55:09.030

you just survived the 3 years and actually got out, uh, was, uh, of a lot of comfort to me because I had seen so many. who came in when I came in in 52, uh who had either dropped out voluntarily or who had not made it.

00:55:09.729 - 00:55:25.929

And so I did have a sense of accomplishment of having at least achieved the ability to go through 3 tough years of law school and, and to finish. In the 2nd semester of your 2nd year at law school, the Supreme Court handed down the Brown decision.

00:55:27.010 - 00:55:40.770

Was the decision discussed in class at that time, and did the law students at the time appreciate the importance of that decision? Well, I'm, I'm sure none of us really appreciated the importance of, of that uh of that decision. I think I appreciated it more than

00:55:40.770 - 00:55:59.129

most of my, my classmates. I don't recall and, and now we're talking many, many years ago, 40 some years ago, I don't recall that we had a significant amount of discussion of the Brown decision in law school. Uh, I'm sure that they were, uh, group discussions

00:55:59.129 - 00:56:21.979

of it. I'm certain that there must have been. Some discussions among uh the professors themselves, particularly those who taught constitutional law, uh but I don't remember any significant uh discussion of that case, uh as a part of the law school classes themselves. At some point in

00:56:21.979 - 00:56:40.020

law school, were you struck by The fact that the law was malleable and that from your perspective um civil rights litigation might be something that you wanted to go into? No, I I didn't think that I wanted to go into civil rights litigation when I was

00:56:40.020 - 00:56:55.760

in law school. Uh, I, I wanted to be a trial lawyer when I was in law school, and that's something I've always wanted to be was a trial lawyer. Uh, I thought that the, the litigation process was, uh, where I wanted to be, uh, my. Exposure

00:56:55.760 - 00:57:11.959

to to Bob Nix, he was a trial lawyer, even though he was a criminal trial lawyer, he was an excellent trial lawyer. Uh, my interest in civil rights did not develop until after I left law school and got involved in the practice itself. Uh, I think

00:57:11.959 - 00:57:25.709

that, uh. When I left law school, all I wanted to do was be able to get a job and to go out and practice, and I could really care less what the nature of the practice was as long as I could make a a halfway decent

00:57:25.709 - 00:57:48.110

living, uh, doing it. Now you, you mentioned how you got a job um at No Schmidt, and you mentioned um your interview meeting on Sunday. Why did you decide to go work for that firm? Well, it was a very practical, uh, reason. Uh, one was I

00:57:48.110 - 00:58:08.580

was impressed with the people I met, uh, Austin Norris, who was the, uh, senior member of the firm, was an outstanding individual, uh, well known in, in Philadelphia, uh, then of course, uh, Harvey Schmidt was a well known, uh, lawyer. He practiced primarily in the, uh,

00:58:08.870 - 00:58:33.139

in the criminal uh uh area. Uh Green, uh, Cliff Green, uh, was just a unique person, just an outstanding lawyer, a brilliant, uh, lawyer. Uh, Austin, uh, uh, Leon Higginbotham was fairly new and just starting out. Uh, Doris Harris, uh, was, uh. Uh, a little bit

00:58:33.139 - 00:58:51.409

older than than Leon, and she had a good reputation. Uh, it was one of those unique firms. Uh, there were never more than 7 of us at any one time, and we're almost like family, you know, I'm a godchild to one of Leon's kids, and, and

00:58:51.409 - 00:59:10.439

we worked long, hard hours, uh, Saturdays, Sundays, holidays didn't make much difference. Uh, we had, we struggled because we were a new firm. We were a minority firm, uh, one of the first, I guess maybe the first. Truly minority partnerships in the city of Philadelphia. Oh,

00:59:11.179 - 00:59:28.060

I can remember the struggles. I can remember, uh, in the days when we didn't have really enough money to pay everybody. We would pay the, the, the secretaries, and there may not be enough money for the rest of us, and, uh, in those days sometimes we

00:59:28.060 - 00:59:43.760

would decide who would get paid by whose mortgage was due. And if I had a mortgage due this week, I may get enough to pay for my mortgage, but there were some weeks when we didn't get any any money. The irony of it is that uh

00:59:43.760 - 01:00:01.679

that firm uh and uh it just had some outstanding individuals and a lot of it may be more by coincidence and then by plan. Uh, but they were just outstanding individuals, uh, outstanding, uh, lawyers, uh, and out of that small firm, even though we never had

01:00:01.679 - 01:00:17.919

more than 7 at one time, uh, we got 7 judges. We had 4 federal judges, Judge Higginbotham on the, uh, first district court, and then the Court of Appeals. Uh, we have Judge Green who's now a senior, uh, judge in the Eastern District. We have Herb

01:00:17.919 - 01:00:36.290

Hutton who's this, uh. Uh, Eastern District, uh, uh, judge, uh, we had Bill Hall, who's now retired, uh, from the federal bench as a federal magistrate, and then on the state side, Doris Harris was a, uh, common pleas, uh, court judge, uh, before she passed. Uh,

01:00:36.330 - 01:00:55.459

Harvey Schmidt retired as a common pleas court judge. Uh, Bobby Williams was a Commonwealth court, uh, uh, judge. Uh, in addition to that, we had a number of people who went on to great things, I think. Uh, we had the uh Davenport. Uh, who, uh, went

01:00:55.459 - 01:01:12.229

on to Yale to get his master's degree, went out to, uh, Duquesne to teach for a few years and became the dean of Duquesne Law School for about 10 years. We had Manny Neal. who left us and went with Uh, General Electric to head up one

01:01:12.229 - 01:01:30.399

of their, uh, major units, uh, both in Connecticut and then later back here in Philadelphia, then, uh, later in the King of Prus who's now retired from, from General Electric. Uh, we had, you know, just, uh, so many unique people who came through that, uh, that

01:01:30.399 - 01:01:47.810

law firm. Uh, as a matter of fact, there's a, a book being written, uh, now, uh, on the, uh, Norris uh law firm. And Austin Norris was just one of those very, very unique individuals. He was the, uh, uh, secretary for the board of revision of

01:01:47.810 - 01:02:08.530

taxes for many, many years. They gave him a tremendous amount of power, uh, here in the city because they had a responsibility for assessing for tax purposes every, uh, building in the city, particularly the major buildings, and that of course whether your taxes, uh, were. a

01:02:08.530 - 01:02:26.139

million dollars or whether you were 1.5 million or $2 million made a hell of a big difference, and so he was able to Utilize that kind of power. Uh, and developed the, the law firm and was able to bring in a good deal of business, uh,

01:02:26.149 - 01:02:43.370

to the law firm. Uh, while I was at the law firm, uh, Judge Higginbotham and I were responsible for all the civil litigation. Uh, Judge Green did most of the, uh, estate works and some, uh, some, uh, of the criminal, uh, trial. We all did criminal

01:02:43.370 - 01:02:59.139

trials in those days because that was kind of the bread and butter, uh, issue. Uh, Harvey Smith, uh, pretty much concentrated on the, on the criminal trial work and bringing in. In those days he spoke Spanish so he brought in a lot of Hispanic uh clients

01:02:59.719 - 01:03:19.939

uh and it was a very uh well put together even though it was just serendipitously, uh, put together, uh, it was a well put together, uh, well blended, uh, well matched group of individuals, and I think because of that, uh, we, uh, quickly got a reputation

01:03:19.939 - 01:03:40.979

for just being one outstanding, uh, uh, firm. Both in terms of our litigation practice, but also in terms of the practice. Uh, in the, in the other civil areas, uh, we had an excellent reputation for handling, uh, criminal cases. We represented, uh, most of the, uh,

01:03:40.989 - 01:04:01.149

a large number of the major religious groups from Follow Divine to the National Baptist Association to the AME Church, uh, you name it, uh, we represented practically every, uh, religious, uh, group that you can think of. I remember trying cases back in the. Oh, mid-sixties in,

01:04:01.159 - 01:04:19.179

in Mississippi, uh representing one of these, the church groups. Uh, so we did have um a very broad kind of practice, almost a necessity. Uh, because everything that came in the door, you became a quick expert in, uh, because you needed the clients. Were most of

01:04:19.179 - 01:04:36.459

our clients also minority. The overwhelming majority of our clients were when were minority. Uh, we had some few, uh, white clients, uh, that were primarily friends of, uh, of all sorris, uh, and we did a lot of, uh, free work. We did a lot of pro

01:04:36.459 - 01:04:53.899

bono work, uh, for the NAACP for the Urban League, and many of those organizations we represented. Uh, individuals many times on a pro bono basis even though we were struggling financially ourselves, uh, we did feel we had an obligation to give something back to the, uh,

01:04:53.939 - 01:05:18.270

to the community. Do you remember your first case? I remember it well, the first case I had, uh, uh, ironically enough it was a, uh, uh case involving a minor case, uh, involving a property damage, I think, uh, automobile uh case. Excuse me, he, uh, it

01:05:18.270 - 01:05:34.899

was a case where I was trying against one of the former professors at uh at Penn, uh, I don't even remember his name now, but, uh, I remember, uh, being scared to death. He's a professor who taught me who's now going to be opposing me, uh,

01:05:34.909 - 01:05:49.729

in the, in the uh in the courts. I later found out it was a friend of his who had asked him to take the case on. I was defending. Uh, and as I got into the court, uh, I recognized, uh, uh, this may not have been

01:05:49.729 - 01:06:06.929

the very first case because I did handle, uh, some, uh. Uh, criminal cases because in those days within 2 or 3 weeks of getting to the firm everybody tried cases. You didn't have any choice. You may be given 4 or 5 files and say go off

01:06:06.929 - 01:06:20.810

and try these cases, so you've got a chance to go into the court very quickly. But this case sticks out in my mind because it was opposed. I was opposed to my former professor and as I got into the trial of the case and in those

01:06:20.810 - 01:06:37.330

days you had the municipal court which had. Limited jurisdiction I don't think was more than about a $1500 maybe a $2000 limit on the cases you could bring in the uh municipal court. Uh, but you get to have a jury trial for even that small an

01:06:37.330 - 01:06:49.370

amount, and I remember being scared to death thinking that this guy was just gonna slaughter me on the other side. And then when I got into the trial, uh, finding out that he didn't know any more about the procedures and things and I did, I think

01:06:49.370 - 01:07:04.100

he had had not done very much practicing, uh, out in the, uh, in, in the area and so that I, I don't think that uh. He had any advantage over me and as it turned out I happened to win the case. I don't think it had

01:07:04.100 - 01:07:21.580

anything to do with my my ability because I was just horrible in those days uh you feeling your way along and unlike the major law firms where you have people that you can uh be monitored and and mentored by and watch try cases uh in those

01:07:21.580 - 01:07:39.030

days uh. Because everybody was so busy trying to make a living, uh, and everybody had their own cases they didn't have very much time to sit with you to help you develop your your trial skills and so that, uh, I made my share of mistakes. uh,

01:07:39.040 - 01:07:56.850

hopefully I didn't make the same ones over again and within a relatively short 3 or 4 year period of time we had as a firm a reputation for just being one outstanding uh law firm. I remember we would go into into court many times if we

01:07:56.850 - 01:08:14.969

set a settlement amount on a case and even if it was a $500 difference, uh, if the other side wouldn't give in. Uh, we will go to trial. Uh, and we decided we had to do that in order to establish our reputation in order to make,

01:08:15.340 - 01:08:32.930

uh, particularly the insurance companies and the major law firms in the city recognize that when we had the attorneys who were damn good attorneys, uh, attorneys who were willing to try, uh, these kinds of cases, particularly civil cases, and attorneys who could put on a good,

01:08:33.060 - 01:08:49.000

uh, trial and handle themselves well in court and. Indeed get good results and we felt only by doing that were we going to get to the point where the insurance companies and the law firms were going to recognize our ability and then we felt we would

01:08:49.000 - 01:09:06.819

be in a much better position to settle a lot more of our cases than having to go to trial on every case that you put your hands on. What advice would you give to a person starting out today who wants to be a litigator? I think

01:09:06.819 - 01:09:22.759

that the best advice I could give for someone starting out is to get as much experience as you possibly can. Uh, for those who are fortunate enough to start with a large law firm, uh, it's understandable that they're not going to get into court anytime soon.

01:09:23.290 - 01:09:38.839

Uh, they're likely not to get into court maybe for 5 years or more. That was even true when I started practice. The, uh, classmates of mine who came out of law school with me who went to the major law firms didn't get into court for 345

01:09:38.839 - 01:09:53.560

years after they graduated. I was in court literally uh within a matter of weeks after I had been admitted to to practice almost as soon as I went with the firm, uh, I was being given cases to to try. That makes a big difference because in

01:09:53.560 - 01:10:11.020

those days we didn't have, we didn't have the voluntary defender who could take on a lot of the smaller uh criminal cases. Uh, we didn't have no fault, uh, in those days, so we got a lot of work. For a minor uh automobile accident cases and

01:10:11.020 - 01:10:26.729

fall down cases and things of that nature, you want to get as much trial experience as you can. Uh, you may wanna take uh courses like uh the uh NIDA program, uh, the National Institute for Trial Advocacy program, and you want to go off and watch

01:10:26.729 - 01:10:45.049

uh good lawyers in court and see how they, uh, perform, see how they handle themselves. Uh, you want to, if you have the luxury of going into, say, the US attorney's office and getting some real trial experience, litigation experience, uh, get exposed to the various judges,

01:10:45.339 - 01:11:00.060

uh, in the courts, uh, all those things are, are needed and all those things are very helpful in terms of developing your skills as a trial attorney, and there's just no substitute for getting out and doing it, you know, you can read all the books you

01:11:00.060 - 01:11:18.279

want. You can take all the courses on how to go about being a good uh litigator, but until you get out into that courtroom and you handle your cases on your own. Uh, and make your own mistakes and but come back and, uh, uh, correct those

01:11:18.279 - 01:11:35.319

mistakes. Uh, I think in time you're gonna be uh a good litigator. Now the other thing that you have to say is that. You've got to love the work. Uh, this is not the kind of business to be in if you don't really enjoy the uncertainty,

01:11:35.410 - 01:11:54.399

uh, of a litigator. Uh, it's not like you have the luxury of sitting down in your office and spending the next two days researching a legal problem. When you're on trial, literally, many times the outcome of that trial may very well depend upon. Uh, a group

01:11:54.399 - 01:12:10.330

of maybe 2 or 3 seconds. Do I make this objection or don't I? Uh, is this the position I want to take? Uh, and many times you have to make those judgments, uh, split second kinds of judgments, and, uh, for those people who don't enjoy that

01:12:10.330 - 01:12:26.229

kind of pressure, then being a litigator is not the place for them to be, and they ought to be in something where it's much more relaxing in business or bankruptcy. Uh, estates or any number of other major areas tax work or whatever, uh, where you don't

01:12:26.229 - 01:12:46.080

feel the kind of immense pressure that you have as a litigator on a day by day, almost hour by hour basis because you know that one mistake, uh, while you're on trial may very well be the difference between winning and losing that case. Just to bring

01:12:46.080 - 01:13:00.500

it back to 1964 for a minute. You mentioned that you did a lot of pro bono work. I know you represented a lot of, um, sit-in defendants. Can you describe the climate and events that led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Well,

01:13:00.660 - 01:13:18.419

yeah, we, we had the, uh, the march on Washington, and I remember, uh, Leon and I, uh, uh, Leon Higginbotham and I trying a case, uh, down in the, I think it was Annapolis, Maryland, but we had been asked, uh, to represent a group of, uh.

01:13:18.930 - 01:13:41.459

of students who had been arrested for sitting in. Uh, this was before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of '64. It didn't become effective until 1965. Uh, and we went down there, uh, uh, uh, a lawyer in Baltimore. Uh, asked us to represent a group

01:13:41.459 - 01:13:58.379

of sit-ins. They were both, uh, it was a totally integrated group of students, and they came from the Philadelphia area, uh, the Delaware Valley area, indeed from a large segment, uh, of, uh, the student, uh, particularly college students who came down to participate in the sit-in,

01:13:58.620 - 01:14:14.120

uh, both black and and white, and we were asked to represent them in this, uh, trial, uh, where they had been arrested for sitting in. Uh, one of the, uh, restaurants, uh, down there. Uh, and the interesting thing, what we did, we, uh, subpoenaed all the

01:14:14.120 - 01:14:32.899

records of the, uh, the police department, the fire department, the, uh, health department in an effort to show that this was not a private restaurant but was subjected to all the public, uh, aspects. They had licensing requirements and all that and it was a jury, uh,

01:14:32.959 - 01:14:52.700

and it was of course all white jury. Uh, and we met with the students and I was tremendously impressed with them. Uh, one student, uh, fellow, uh, his family had a lot of money. And when he was arrested, he was disowned by his family. Uh, and

01:14:52.700 - 01:15:08.540

these students were just some of the most outstanding people you've ever wanted to see. When we put them on the stand to testify, I mean, you really had to be proud of them. Uh, and, uh, it was interesting, the, uh, jury, I remember vividly, uh, half

01:15:08.540 - 01:15:27.479

of them were asleep during most of the trial. Uh, we really didn't have very much expectation that we were gonna win, uh, given the climate, uh, in those days and given the situation of being in, in, in Maryland. Uh, and the jury didn't take very long

01:15:27.479 - 01:15:44.560

to, to convict them. Uh, we made a significant pitch. Uh, Leon and I were the two attorneys representing them, and we made a tremendous pitch to the, to the jury. that they had an obligation to make certain that people were being treated fairly and to look

01:15:44.560 - 01:16:01.669

at the evidence. Um, and, and it was interesting that when we look back on it. I remember in our voir dier asking whether or not they felt, uh, given the climate that they could be fair to this group of people who were coming down and disrupting

01:16:01.669 - 01:16:17.430

their way of life and could they be fair to people who believed in integration and did not believe in segregation. Uh, and most of them, uh, nodded yes. There was one fellow who said, look, I don't think I can be fair. I feel so strongly about

01:16:17.430 - 01:16:32.700

segregation that I just can't be fair. Uh, in listening to this evidence. And I, I thought to myself, this is one of the few honest people on this jury because I had no doubt in my mind that a number of the others felt the same way.

01:16:33.399 - 01:16:51.669

But wouldn't be honest enough to tell us that. Uh, they were convicted, uh, oddly enough, uh, we had an opportunity to get them out on bail, and each of them, uh, refused to come out on bail. In those days, I remember, I think there were 2

01:16:51.669 - 01:17:06.330

black sheriffs in the country. I think 1 may have been in Texas, the other was down here in, in Maryland. And uh the uh students while they were in, I think this was over one of their holiday breaks. I don't know whether it was an Easter

01:17:06.330 - 01:17:22.649

break or sometime like that, they said, you know, this jail is kind of dingy, but if you give us the paint. We will paint this jail for you. And so while they were incarcerated, uh, the, the, the sheriff went out and bought them gallons of paint

01:17:22.649 - 01:17:39.120

and they painted the jail for them. And then they came out, of course, afterwards, so later on it was the, the, the um. The convictions were all reversed. Uh, but some of the, the, uh, students never really recovered. The one fellow, I don't think his family

01:17:39.120 - 01:17:57.609

ever accepted him back, at least the last I'd heard about, they had not accepted him back. And I have no doubt that those students now are probably some of the Uh, leading, uh, people in this country, uh, because the kind of character that they exhibited. When

01:17:57.609 - 01:18:11.770

we were down there during the course of that trial and the kind of commitment that they showed even at their own sacrifice and even though they knew that they might be paying a penalty for it and even though there was a significant threat of uh of

01:18:11.770 - 01:18:31.830

harm to them, I never wavered in their commitment to believing that people ought to be able to eat in in a public place and uh be able to be treated as human beings. And that is something that is akin to some animal or something. And I

01:18:31.830 - 01:18:51.560

think that if we were able to go back and identify all those people, you'll find that they're In this life and at this time probably some of our leading citizens in this country. One case I wanted to ask you about before I ask you that, how

01:18:51.560 - 01:19:06.899

did the passage, once the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, how did that affect your practice and your ability to make um. To make arguments that people should be treated equally, um, Did it make things easier, or was it, were you still running into the

01:19:06.899 - 01:19:27.819

same prejudices um in the courtroom? Well, you still ran into the same prejudices in the courtroom. In fact, when we started practice, uh, even many of the judges were openly hostile to black attorneys. Uh, I remember Aus Austin Norris saying that when he started practicing. Many,

01:19:27.830 - 01:19:41.020

many years ago, black lawyers were not even permitted to sit where all the other lawyers but had to sit back, uh, where the uh the audience and many times even the, the people who had been accused of crimes had to sit and you could not go

01:19:41.020 - 01:20:00.290

up until your case was actually called. Uh, I, I think that the initially uh the impact was that we were asked to represent a number of people uh who uh had charges. Of discrimination based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as you recall, it did

01:20:00.290 - 01:20:19.240

not become effective until 1965 and so in those early days, the NAA would ask us on a number of occasions to represent people uh under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and we took on a lot of those cases and I think that was my. A

01:20:19.240 - 01:20:37.080

beginning in terms of the actual handling of many of the civil rights cases and issues we'd handle some others, police brutality cases we handle a number of those down through the years uh we handle a number of other civil rights issues involving education and things of

01:20:37.080 - 01:20:56.569

that nature, but once the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was passed or 1964 was passed and effective in 1965. It really gave us for the first time an opportunity to bring an action. Now you recall there still was no enforcement powers under that act, and those

01:20:56.569 - 01:21:17.859

enforcement powers did not come into effect until 1972. Uh, we could, uh, go through the process. We could represent them before the EEOC. We could file charges for them. Uh, and then we could ask to have, uh, the, uh, uh, many times you could ask to

01:21:17.859 - 01:21:38.120

have the, uh, Department of Justice which had the responsibility for, uh, uh, handling those cases to come in, but of course very few of them, uh, very few of them did. Uh, and we could take the case as an individual attorney representing them, uh, but EEOC

01:21:38.120 - 01:21:56.709

in those days had no enforcement powers where they using their own attorneys could go into court and represent these individuals in court. One case I did want to ask you about was Cecil B Cecil B. Moore versus the NAACP in 1967. Um, you've done your homework

01:21:56.709 - 01:22:14.169

or you represented the NAACP. Um, you obviously remember that case. How did that arise? And how did you come? Well, we had represented the NAACP in a number of cases before then. Cecil Moore, who was just an outstanding civil rights advocate and probably one of the

01:22:14.169 - 01:22:34.660

best. Certainly uh trial lawyers in in this city and who I had and still have a tremendous amount of respect for uh he wanted to divide the uh NAACP. He wanted to break the chapter up and establish a chapter in uh North Philadelphia, and we were

01:22:34.660 - 01:22:57.009

asked to represent the national, uh, NAACP and the position of the national at that time was that we didn't need to. Uh, chapters of, uh, NAACP within the city of Philadelphia and so I was asked to represent the national in opposing the split of the uh

01:22:57.009 - 01:23:18.089

of the uh Philadelphia chapter into two separate chapters and as I recall. And this goes back many, many years. I believe we were successful in at that time blocking. Uh, the split of those two, chapters. Uh, subsequently, of course, uh, the chapter was, uh, divided, uh,

01:23:18.100 - 01:23:36.850

by agreement with the, with the national organization and I think, uh, all for the better. What did, what did it mean to you to be a black lawyer in the 1960s? It was a, it, it was a difficult time uh in, in the 60s being a

01:23:36.850 - 01:23:55.830

black warrior because you knew that you're Uh, primarily, uh, you're gonna be servicing black clients, uh, and, and for the most part clients who had very little money, uh, you represented a large number of people who could barely afford to pay you for your services, uh,

01:23:55.839 - 01:24:14.160

who had to struggle to pay you. You also were fighting this, uh, perception and it was a perception. That black lawyers did not have the same kind of clout, did not have the same kind of respect, did not have the same kind of Of, uh, entree

01:24:14.160 - 01:24:35.350

to, to courts and to judges that white lawyers did and so you had an ongoing fight with your own community as to whether or not uh you were the appropriate person to represent them in that litigation. Uh, many, many, uh, blacks, uh, believing this went to

01:24:35.350 - 01:24:53.160

white lawyers for certain kinds of representation. The irony was that if you had a small criminal case or if you had a small civil case, they would come to you. And ask you to represent them. When they had a major case, in particularly they had uh

01:24:53.160 - 01:25:10.720

maybe a death by an auto or they had a major injury case or they had a major malpractice case, uh, they would not come to you, they would go to the white lawyers even though you had been their lawyers in many other smaller cases when it

01:25:10.720 - 01:25:29.149

came to the major cases, the feeling was the perception was that it still took a white lawyer. Because a white lawyer in their minds and to the extent it was certainly true had better contacts with the court had uh better relationships with the judges, knew more

01:25:29.149 - 01:25:46.830

of the judges uh better and therefore they there was a feeling that uh before juries, which in those days were primarily white juries, they would fare better if they had a white attorney representing them so it became a very difficult struggle. For, uh, blacks in the

01:25:46.830 - 01:26:07.189

practice and you'll think you'll see that in those days, uh, most of the black practitioners were in one or two person, uh, firms many times they were sharing expenses, sharing, uh, the cost of the uh of the rent, sharing a secretary and things of that nature.

01:26:07.229 - 01:26:25.209

There are only a few, uh, truly black, uh, law firms, the, uh. Uh, Ray Pace Alexander, his wife had one of the few black law firms, a little bit smaller than than ours, but, uh, had indeed, uh, an, an excellent practice. Uh, and in those days

01:26:25.209 - 01:26:41.290

the number of blacks on the court, even on the common police court in Philadelphia, were very, very limited. I think the first uh that went on was uh Judge Mille who went on the municipal court. Uh I, I guess back in the, in the 50s, Judge

01:26:41.290 - 01:27:01.859

Spaulding was one of the early uh persons who went on the court. Uh and so you had very few. Judge Alexander became the first black to go on to the Court of Common Pleas uh here in, in Philadelphia. Uh we had uh. I think 6 and

01:27:01.859 - 01:27:20.240

later 7 courts in of common pleas in Philadelphia. Each court had 3 members. And that was the extent of the town police court. Then you had a municipal court which handled primarily domestic relations and juvenile, uh, types of cases, and you had the, the orphans court

01:27:20.240 - 01:27:38.680

which handled the, uh, the estates and the state work, uh, then you had of course the, the appellate courts, uh, but. Uh, you had to be in those days admitted to practice before each court, and we did not have a statewide practice. You were admitted to

01:27:38.680 - 01:27:54.189

a single county. So when I was admitted, I was admitted only to practice law in Philadelphia. If I went into Chester County or Delaware County or Montgomery County, I'd have local counsel with me to go, this is not only true of of myself or blacks, this

01:27:54.189 - 01:28:08.120

is true of all of the lawyers who practiced in those days. So it was a much. More parochial kind of practice, much more limited kind of practice than what we had, and some of us who were fortunate enough to get down into the federal courts from

01:28:08.120 - 01:28:27.359

time to time, but that was a small percentage of of the entire uh uh bar generally, but even a very, very small portion of the black lawyers ever got into the federal courts. Now in 1968 you made the move to the district attorney's office in Philadelphia.

01:28:27.569 - 01:28:42.209

How did that come about? Well, I, I had known the Arlen Spector for a number of years, uh, and, uh, thought an awful lot of Arlen, uh, and when he was running for the first time for district attorney, I was working at the, uh, Norris firm.

01:28:42.850 - 01:29:01.509

And I remember saying to him, you need a uh commercial uh consumer uh customer kind of fraud unit in the DA's office, and he always said, well, Bill, if I get to BA DA I'm gonna, I'm gonna establish one. And he, he was elected and he

01:29:02.040 - 01:29:15.859

said, uh, he called me one day he said, right, Bill, he said, I've established uh a consumer fraud uh in in the DA's office, and I want you to come in and head it up. And I said, oh, you know, I, I'm in practice. I can't

01:29:15.859 - 01:29:29.189

afford the kind of money you're paying over the DA's office. I can't afford to get out of the practice now. He said, you gave me a commitment that if I did it, you would come in. So I said, I'll tell you what I'll do before your

01:29:29.189 - 01:29:43.500

term ends, I will give you a commitment of one year to work with you in the DA's office. Uh, and he said, OK, that's that I'll accept that. And just as he was getting to go into his last year, he called me and said, you know,

01:29:43.540 - 01:29:57.049

your chip is due, and uh, it's time for you to come into the DA's office. I wanna, I wanna make you chief of the fraud unit in the DA's office. And I said, yeah, I made the promise and I'm gonna do it. And so I did.

01:29:57.129 - 01:30:19.509

I went in, I think early in 1968. And shortly after I started with uh Arlen, he made me deputy district attorney. There were 2 of us who were deputies and uh one first assistant, uh. And I served in the DA's office from I guess early '67

01:30:19.509 - 01:30:36.990

until about uh I don't know, maybe October of '68, both as Chief of frauds and as the deputy district attorney, thoroughly enjoyed it. Uh I had a chance to see a lot of new young bright people coming in. The thing that Arlen did is he went

01:30:36.990 - 01:30:52.200

to most of the major law firms and say, give me some of your best people for two years, and let me bring them into the DA's office and by doing that. Uh, he put together, I think, one of the best DA's offices I've ever seen. He

01:30:52.200 - 01:31:11.520

had just outstanding people in the DA's office, many of whom are almost household names around the, uh, around the city, uh, now. And so I served in the DA's office on Allen for a little bit less than a year. And after, after, after you left the

01:31:11.520 - 01:31:29.620

DA's office, um, well, you chaired the EEOC, uh, who first contacted you about that position? That, that's a case of being at the right place at the right time. I was contacted uh about the uh the possibility of going to the commission as a commissioner, not

01:31:29.620 - 01:31:45.569

as a, as a chairman. Uh, there was a fellow on the commission, the name was Sam Jackson, and you may know that, uh, that commission is required to be bipartisan. You can have no more than 3 members of the same political party, uh, as a part

01:31:45.569 - 01:32:03.479

of the commission. I was a Republican and had been a Republican. And Sam Jackson was a Republican. In those days, he was not getting along well with the chairman of the uh of the commission, uh, uh. Alexander was his name. He was the chairman of the

01:32:03.479 - 01:32:26.109

commissioner of the commission. Lehan had good contacts with the White House with President Johnson. And had recommended. My name to be considered for this position because Sam was not Sam Jackson was not going to be reappointed, at least that was the word. and had submitted my

01:32:26.109 - 01:32:50.250

name to the White House and had talked to. Uh, Senator Scott, who was the uh uh the senator from Pennsylvania. And the name was uh submitted to the White House. Uh, early, uh, about the middle, I think of, uh, of 1968. And I went down for

01:32:50.250 - 01:33:06.709

a series of interviews and things, and it looked like I was gonna be uh named but about that time, you might remember you probably don't remember, you're much too young to remember some of these things, but. Uh, Abe Fortas, uh, Lyndon Johnson was trying to get

01:33:06.709 - 01:33:26.209

in as the, uh, new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. And he had in trying to get the number of senatorial votes that he needed had promised some of the senators various positions. Uh, a commission on EEOC, which was vacant, was, was gonna be one of

01:33:26.209 - 01:33:47.899

those. And so he pulled back the uh the uh my nomination, did not send it uh forward. Uh, Senator Scott met with me saying, you know, uh, he wants to use these for, uh, bargaining chips to get the votes for Fortas. Uh, that did not happen.

01:33:48.350 - 01:34:08.569

Uh, Abe Fortas. He couldn't get enough senators to vote to, to put him in as a Chief Justice. And so he then pulled back these commitments he'd given to various senators. And so the process went forward again. I remember, uh, people coming to me I guess

01:34:08.569 - 01:34:20.569

over a 5 or 6 year 5 or 6 month period of time saying what have you done? The FBI has been out to talk to me and uh that seemed to be going on and on and every time I think it stopped and it start up

01:34:20.569 - 01:34:40.180

again. We got down to the towards the end of the uh the Congress uh session. And the, the name had not uh been been sent up. And so, or it may have been set up but had not been acted on. Uh, then the determination was made

01:34:40.180 - 01:34:56.680

that the Congress was going to adjourn. And uh Scott called me Senator Scott called me to say that though, you know, it looks like it's dead. uh Lennon has never made any uh uh interim or recess appointments, and, uh, he's not going to do it for

01:34:56.680 - 01:35:11.839

you. So I said fine. I was enjoying the work I was doing in the DA's office and my year was almost up anyhow. And then about 2 or 3 days later I got a call from Senator Scott saying, Bill, I don't know what happened, but, uh,

01:35:12.020 - 01:35:32.720

President Johnson has decided he does want to submit your name uh on an interim basis. Uh, and, uh, put you on the commission, which he did. I started on the commission, I think. Probably mid to late October '68 when I went down there, it didn't require

01:35:32.720 - 01:35:54.779

Senate confirmation because it was an interim appointment. And then of course, as you know, he decided not to run. And uh President Nixon was elected, came in in January. My uh my uh appointment was pending to be a commissioner and then President Nixon withdrew those that

01:35:54.779 - 01:36:11.020

were pending all of the mine was not just one of them, but mine just happened to be one of them. So I was serving as a commissioner recognizing as soon as someone was was named and confirmed that I would be out. Um, then a number of

01:36:11.020 - 01:36:35.109

people, Scott and then uh. And uh Arlan and others. And major people from Philadelphia, president of the bar association, a number of other people who I'd come in contact with in my years of practice, started a letter writing campaign and started making contacts and everything. And

01:36:35.509 - 01:36:50.040

as a result, uh, I remember sitting. In my office and the Secretary of Labor called me and said, Bill, I'd like to have lunch with you one day. Uh maybe today or tomorrow when he said one day I assume you know it's going to be much

01:36:50.040 - 01:37:04.450

further off in the in the future. And we, I met him. I, I thought that there must have been something he wanted to talk to me about. I knew he had been from Lockheed. And I was afraid that he wanted to talk to me something about

01:37:04.450 - 01:37:22.759

uh Lockheed uh and their relationship with the EOC. I pulled all of their EU1 reports and sure enough he had signed off on some of the EEO one reports. I met with him for lunch. He never said anything about Lockheed. He never said anything about the

01:37:22.759 - 01:37:38.279

commission. And throughout lunch I'm trying to figure what is the purpose of this meeting. I had not the foggiest idea why I'm having lunch with the Secretary of Labor. And then as we were finishing up the lunch and getting ready to go, he says, Bill, I

01:37:38.279 - 01:37:57.899

guess you know that the president, this is Nixon at the time is considering uh resubmitting your name. And if you're confirmed of, uh, uh, naming you as chairman of EEOC, well, I didn't have the idea that was even being considered. And I thanked him, and the

01:37:57.899 - 01:38:23.819

name did go up to the Senate. Uh, and it, uh, Senator Dirksen. Put a hold on it. And uh It's uh Alexander, who's a chairman, is still there. I'm being touted as the next chairman. Uh, and I, uh Went through a long time back and forth

01:38:23.819 - 01:38:39.569

as to what was going to happen. And finally I got a call from Senator Scott who had arranged a meeting with Senator Dirksen. In an effort to try to get him to lift his hold on the nomination so the Senate could vote on it. And I

01:38:39.569 - 01:39:00.189

remember meeting with Senator Dirksen in his office down in uh. In uh in Washington. And we talked about a lot of things and not much about the commission or my views about the commission or my views of Title VII or anything else. And towards the end

01:39:00.189 - 01:39:19.069

of that conversation, he said, you know, uh, Bill, he said, uh, I'm impressed with you, he said, uh. I think you'll do a pretty good job as the chairman of EEOC. Uh, and we left. They went to the floor for the vote, and I understand he

01:39:19.660 - 01:39:40.430

took the floor and denounced me, uh. That's politics, I guess, in, in, in Washington. I'm not sure it's changed very much these days sometimes. Uh, but the vote, uh, carried and I was elected, uh, I was approved, uh, the nomination was confirmed and I was, uh,

01:39:40.439 - 01:40:02.299

then the, uh. Uh, a commissioner on the EEOC and then later the president designated me as the chairman. We had a, uh, I, uh, Rose Garden swearing in ceremony as the chairman of the EEOC. Interestingly enough, during that period of time, Cliff Alexander, who had been

01:40:02.299 - 01:40:22.250

the chairman, was still serving as a commissioner. On the commission. So uh it was a difficult 3 or 4 months. Uh, because, uh, while I was chairman in name. Uh, as far as the people who worked at the commission, they still recognize Cliff as being chairman,

01:40:22.290 - 01:40:37.169

in fact, and they addressed him as chairman. I guess it's kind of like the. Kentucky, uh, colonel, once a Kentucky colonel, you're always a Kentucky colonel, you know, and or if you're a general, you're always a general or whatever. And so while they call me chairman,

01:40:37.240 - 01:40:56.500

they also called him Mr. Chairman, the, the, the tourist. And it was an interesting time and I, I enjoyed the, the time that I served at the commission and I served as chairman from I guess early uh maybe spring of '69 until December of uh of

01:40:56.500 - 01:41:16.319

uh I guess '73 when I left the uh commission. You mentioned that, well, you mentioned Senator Dirksen. He had also criticized the previous chairman, Clifford Alexander, as being anti-business, um, and Mr. Alexander had resigned, citing a crippling lack of administrative support, um, and charging that the

01:41:16.319 - 01:41:30.370

present administration lacked a serious commitment to enforcing job bias laws. It seems to me that the issue in those days was really what role the EEOC was gonna have um in enforcing. That that certainly that was a part of it and, and you know it's, it's

01:41:30.370 - 01:41:46.100

interesting, uh, Dirksen did attack uh Alexander and said I will go to the highest levels to to get you out of the job, but everybody knows, uh, or certainly people in Washington know and people who are familiar with the Washington scene when a new administration comes

01:41:46.100 - 01:42:02.020

in. You as the chairman are serving at the pleasure of the president, so everybody knew that Cliff could not continue as the uh as the chairman of that agency. He could stay on because you're giving a 5 year term. He could stay on and serve his

01:42:02.020 - 01:42:22.140

term out. The Dirksen attacked him publicly that made all the newspapers and said he was going to go to the highest levels of the land to get him put out. Uh, and of course that made Cliff, uh, and, uh, he finally resigned from the commission, I

01:42:22.140 - 01:42:41.490

think in about August, I want to say of 1969. But it was clear to everyone, uh, that Cliff could not continue as the chairman of the of the commission, the brand new administration, uh, different political parties, uh, and so that there is nothing unique about that,

01:42:42.009 - 01:42:58.810

uh, but from that point on it made my life at the commission a little bit easier. Because now I could set my own priorities. I could put my own stamp on what the commission was doing, and I could in fact act as the chairman, in fact.

01:42:59.830 - 01:43:19.729

Uh, during those uh fairly turbulent times. Was the EEOC an effective agency when you became chairman? It was effective only to the point that it could be effective. We had no enforcement powers and so what we would do is a kind of uh bang on people

01:43:19.729 - 01:43:35.290

to try to make changes. Uh, we couldn't do very much to take them in the court in the event that they saw fit not to make these changes. Uh, there was a lot of resistance among the major, uh, companies and corporations in the country. Uh, in

01:43:35.290 - 01:43:56.319

terms of Title VII and how they were going to abide and obey the law. Uh, we did have the benefit of having, uh, hearings across the country which would, uh, highlight some of the problems of discrimination and particularly discrimination among major corporations and so that, uh,

01:43:56.330 - 01:44:14.200

we went off to, to do everything possible to try to get enforcement powers for the agency. It was Durson. Who in fact when they had been enforcement powers uh proposed who gutted that portion of the bill and had taken out all the enforcement powers and then

01:44:14.200 - 01:44:31.959

turned around and led the fight to have it passed. It was pretty much a a paper tiger. It didn't have hardly any enforcement powers and had very little clout to enforce the law, but in spite of that. Uh, there were significant changes that came about, uh,

01:44:31.970 - 01:44:50.000

because of the activities and the commitment of not only the commissioners but more importantly the staff of, of the EEOC in those days, and we did make a lot of changes even without the enforcement powers. Those powers didn't, uh, weren't given to EEOC until, uh, the

01:44:50.000 - 01:45:08.439

Civil Rights Act of 1972 when for the first time we were given the. Authority to go directly into the court with our own attorneys on our own. After you received enforcement powers, you wasted no time. You filed, um, eventually filed over 160 discrimination suits against major

01:45:08.439 - 01:45:28.350

corporations. In 1973 alone, you filed 5 major discrimination cases and settled a landmark claim with AT&T. Can you tell me how the claims against AT&T, GE, GM, Ford, Sears, and the IBEW originated? Yes, uh, we, we took a look, uh, when I was at the agency

01:45:28.740 - 01:45:49.209

and We found that a significant percentage of our cases that we handle charges came out of the AT&T. AT&T in those days was one unit, but it had 23, 22 or 23 separate operating companies. Each one had their own president. Uh, and I decided that, uh,

01:45:49.220 - 01:46:06.020

we needed to make a better, uh, make a better utilization of our resources and so I had asked our research department to take a look at our whole structure and to take a look at the uh number of charges that were being filed to see if

01:46:06.020 - 01:46:26.930

there was some way we could uh better utilize the limited resources that we had. Uh, they did a study, uh, and they determined that AT&T represented something like 7 or 8% of all the charges that we had across the country. I thought that if we could

01:46:26.930 - 01:46:48.129

make some sort of general push on AT&T, we could resolve the large number of our pending charges. Uh, and it was fortunate that at the time. The FCC was having hearings on the long distance rates that were being requested by AT&T. And so we decided to

01:46:48.129 - 01:47:08.930

ask AFCC, the Federal Communication Commission, if we could intervene in that case. And have as a part of their, uh, their findings and a part of their, uh, hearings, the cost of discrimination. Uh, at AT&T because they did have enforcement powers and they had a pretty

01:47:08.930 - 01:47:27.729

much a good hammer over the company. Well, they decided that it would not be appropriate for us to be involved in the rape case itself, but they said that that we would have the ability to have hearings on the enforcement of uh equal employment opportunity with

01:47:27.729 - 01:47:45.709

the company as a part of piggyback on the enforcement powers that the FCC has. And uh I have to be honest to say that when we got involved in that case, Uh, I was kind of naive. I didn't realize how large the operation was and if

01:47:45.709 - 01:48:03.759

I had known those, maybe we wouldn't have gotten involved, but we did a file to intervene in the FCC proceedings. Uh, we did not have, uh, hardly any lawyers at the, uh, commission in those days that had any litigation experience. I had more litigation experience, I

01:48:03.759 - 01:48:21.770

think, than any lawyer in the, in the entire commission, and we had a very limited staff. We only had. I'd say maybe about 50 lawyers in the entire commission and we had only up to that point had been handling appellate work. We had not handled any

01:48:22.819 - 01:48:43.640

uh direct trial level litigation because we had no enforcement powers. Sometimes we would go in to try to enforce a subpoena for information or something like that. But what I did was when I saw the report, we put together an AT&T task force. Uh, and their

01:48:43.640 - 01:49:03.540

responsibility was to prepare this case for, for a hearing, and we got some outstanding people, outstanding experts, uh, Phyllis Wallace, who was then a professor at the Sloan School up in the, uh, MIT. I asked to, uh, and she had been at the commission at one

01:49:03.540 - 01:49:20.879

time. I had asked her to put together a group of experts who could come in and testify. Uh, we put together a team of lawyers who were gonna handle that case. We recruited, uh, law students from all across the country. We even recruited a number of

01:49:20.879 - 01:49:40.100

law students from the University of Puerto Rico, uh, to come in and they would work Saturdays and Sundays and holidays. I remember saying to the group, if I were AT&T, you remember this was all one unit then it had close to a million employees. Uh, if

01:49:40.100 - 01:49:55.970

I were AT&T, I would back up the truck and just dump off all of the paper in the world and just swamp this small agency, and that's pretty much what they did. I think we had 100,000 or more documents that they reviewed law students. I'd come

01:49:55.970 - 01:50:13.939

in there on a Saturday or a Sunday or a holiday and they would be working away. Uh, because they felt committed to making changes in the society, making changes in the major corporations. And as a result of that we went to trial we had uh hearings

01:50:13.939 - 01:50:31.120

on all of our, uh, put on all of our case, all of our witnesses, and they were impressive. I mean they had gone through documents and I think AT&T never really looked at those uh documents themselves before they turned them over. And we found one document

01:50:31.120 - 01:50:47.180

where one of the major uh uh people in the uh company had called it one of the most sexist racist organizations he'd ever seen. We had him on the stand and he was saying, oh no, this was an excellent uh company. They did great things and.

01:50:47.919 - 01:51:06.520

And then we confronted him with his own, his own report and his own words. Uh, and, and the, and the case went well. Uh, it finally settled. Before AT&T put on their case, I think it settled mainly because Bob Lilly, who was then the president, was

01:51:06.520 - 01:51:29.770

a very, very decent, just a class act person and was committed to making certain that AT&T really lived up to its obligations under uh EEO. And so we went from, excuse me, from time to time. When I had a group who were responsible for this, he

01:51:29.770 - 01:51:44.419

had a group that was responsible, uh, and sometimes they would get at loggerheads, the thing would come to a halt and so we decided the two of us had to meet. He was reluctant to meet at the at the commission fear someone to see him going

01:51:44.419 - 01:52:08.379

in there and think adverse about him. I was reluctant to go to AT&T quarters headquarters, but AT&T knows had a suite of offices in uh uh the Sheridan in Washington. So what we decided to do was to uh get together and uh meet uh there. Uh,

01:52:08.959 - 01:52:25.879

which was something that we did meet very secretly, and we kind of push our people to continue to work together and to talk together to see what was going on. And that went on, uh and we finally were able, I guess in early '73 to work

01:52:25.879 - 01:52:47.080

at a settlement. I remember getting a call, excuse me, from. One of the lawyers, uh, Satterfield was his name, who worked on the matter with AT&T. Pretty much the morning where we had given them a deadline when this deal had to be signed off on. And

01:52:47.089 - 01:53:05.859

he called and said that uh uh Lily had asked him to call. And he wanted to know with that deadline was the deadline and whether there was any uh flexibility in extending it and uh I told him absolutely no. It had to be signed that day

01:53:05.859 - 01:53:26.160

or we were going to proceed. And he got back to to Bob, uh, and Bob then had the very, very difficult task of convincing 23 independent presidents of each of the bells. to agree to this settlement, and you might remember the The fallout from that was

01:53:26.160 - 01:53:49.250

that people accused AT&T of selling out and everything else, uh, and it was a landmark. settlement because nothing like that had ever been done. And uh and it worked and it worked well. You know, we made tremendous changes in the structure of AT&T. Uh, there were

01:53:49.250 - 01:54:07.009

people who would come up to me 2 or 3 years later who, you know, were so thankful that we had taken them on. And who said that uh I am where I am today because of your your lawsuit. Minorities and women. Who up to that point

01:54:07.009 - 01:54:26.990

in time had been relegated to the traditional areas of being a telephone operator or, you know, uh, in, in some of the clerical functions. Uh, and, uh, it's interesting because We found there was one unit, uh, which was different than all the other 22 companies where

01:54:27.600 - 01:54:47.500

what they call a frameman, that was the actual term. Uh, was a, a job which was considered a craft job and therefore paid at the craft level. One telephone company classified it as clerical, same job, same responsibilities, and it was, uh, classified as a clerical level

01:54:47.500 - 01:55:02.609

and obviously paid as a clerical level, but we eliminated that. We got people who were, uh, males who were able to become telephone operators, you know, up to that point in time, the only time you heard a male voice. As an operator was because they were

01:55:02.609 - 01:55:20.020

on strike or something and there was a walkout and then they would fill in. These were the supervisors and managers who had to fill in and the whole face of that company changed tremendously in a short period of time, but more importantly than that. The major

01:55:20.020 - 01:55:38.859

corporations of this company of this country began to realize if AT&T could be taken on and could be convinced to settle on the terms that we had settled that they were also a prime target and it was later that year when I signed off on the

01:55:38.859 - 01:56:01.169

other five commissioners' charges, the ones you mentioned, the GEs and the Ford, I think, and the GMs and. And the uh and the uh one of the IBW I believe was one because my intent was uh using the AT&T format as to set up separate units

01:56:01.819 - 01:56:16.220

uh which you could take on each of these major corporations and we would go after them the same way we had after uh uh AT&T. And if we couldn't work out a settlement, what we would do is then take them to court because by that time

01:56:16.220 - 01:56:38.129

we now had court enforcement powers. Uh, and that would have made a tremendous amount of difference. OK Clarence Thomas also headed the EEOC after, after you, and he actually settled a lawsuit that you began against General Motors, um. Do you think Clarence Thomas did a good

01:56:38.129 - 01:56:53.450

job as EEOC chairman? Um, what do you think, what do you think of him as a Supreme Court justice? And do you think it was appropriate for Leon Higginbotham to write the now famous open letter to Clarence Thomas that? Yeah, that's a mouthful. Uh, first, Clarence

01:56:53.450 - 01:57:12.399

came in at a different time, uh, and I would have to be honest to say I, I didn't think that the settlement was a good settlement. Uh, I, I think that, uh. Those the settlements of of those cases, uh. I really should not have been settled

01:57:12.399 - 01:57:30.069

on the basis that they were. Uh, I'd have to be honest to say that when I left, uh, those units which we had established kind of languished, and not much was done about class action, uh, lawsuits even though at that time they had the authority and,

01:57:30.080 - 01:57:51.379

and the ability to go into court on many of those, uh, cases, uh, I, I thought that uh Thomas's positions early on were appropriate because I remember testifying. Before Gus Hawkins, uh, committee, uh, on the House side, uh, in support of Clarence Thomas in terms of

01:57:51.379 - 01:58:08.379

his requirement that the federal agencies had to in fact make reports on affirmative action and their numbers, and I testified before that committee in support of Clarence Thomas's position, which at the time was that he felt that they did have the obligation and he was asking

01:58:08.379 - 01:58:28.180

the uh House committee to. Uh, if they had to hold back some of the fundings for those agencies who refused to do that. Uh, ironically, about a year later, I was asked to come back to testify again. Even though my testimony had not changed, he had

01:58:28.180 - 01:58:45.529

changed. He now was saying that goals and timetables uh were not appropriate, that numbers didn't mean anything, which I think is just a crock, frankly. Uh, I thought that uh. Uh-huh, and, and I'm gonna be perfectly honest, I thought that his elevation to the Supreme Court

01:58:45.529 - 01:59:06.540

of the United States was a farce. Uh, I thought that the fact that, uh. Uh, President Bush could get up before the, uh, entire country and say to the entire country that Clarence Thomas was the best possible candidate for the Supreme Court, uh, were words he

01:59:06.540 - 01:59:26.350

should have choked on. Uh, because as I looked as objectively as I could at Clarence Thomas's background, there's nothing in Clarence Thomas's background that would in fact, uh, Even should have considered him. Uh, for service, not on the Supreme Court, for service on the Court of

01:59:26.350 - 01:59:42.580

Appeals. Yeah, and uh while some people don't like to hear you say this and then I. If I was uh a lot younger and and had better sense, I think maybe I shouldn't say it, but the truth of the matter is if Clarence Thomas with his

01:59:43.069 - 02:00:03.279

uh same credentials as he possessed when he was nominated for the Supreme Court by uh uh by President Bush had been white, he would not have been on the court of appeals. There is nothing in his background when you look at his background objectively which qualifies

02:00:03.279 - 02:00:22.020

him to be on that court, and I know that uh Judge Higebotham uh went after Clarence Thomas almost with a vengeance. Uh, his letter to the open letter to the to the justice I thought was a masterpiece the way he spelled out the things that Clarence

02:00:22.020 - 02:00:39.490

Thomas could not do. Uh, I was one of the first to testify against Clarence Thomas in his hearings. Uh, along with Dean Griswold, I think we may have been the two lead off witnesses. Uh, I was, uh, one of the co-chairs of the Lawyers Committee for

02:00:39.490 - 02:00:55.399

Civil Rights Under Law, and I know we had a battle internally as to whether or not we should oppose, uh, Justice Thomas. And my position was, uh, even though many people said, well, if we don't get Justice Thomas on now, we may not have a black

02:00:55.729 - 02:01:14.569

on the Supreme Court for 5 or 10 years. I was adamant that I thought we were better off without Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court than having a white in that position even though at that time, obviously I didn't know that there that the President Clinton

02:01:14.569 - 02:01:30.160

was going to be elected. I don't think most of us recognized there was even a possibility of a Democrat going in, but I honestly felt that we would be better off not having any black on the Supreme Court if it were to be Clarence Thomas. And

02:01:30.160 - 02:01:47.490

they have a white on the Supreme Court. And I've never changed from that. I've written them in uh articles that I have, uh, when after I testified against him and we testified in the early stages, not on the sexual harassment aspect of his confirmation, but we

02:01:47.490 - 02:02:04.290

did not feel, and I did not feel that he had the kind of background, he had the kind of skills that he had the kind of uh. Uh, of background that you would want to see in a, uh, Supreme Court justice, uh, and both, uh, Dean

02:02:04.290 - 02:02:24.600

Griswold and I articulated those positions very clearly during the course of that of those hearings, uh, and I think that, uh, what I said to the court reporter, to the, uh, newspaper reporters who asked me about my testimony afterwards, don't you think that, uh. Uh, Justice

02:02:24.600 - 02:02:39.479

Thomas could change or will change after he's on the bench knowing he has a lifetime job, and I said, you know, I hope that I'm, this is the one thing I'm absolutely wrong about. I hope that I'm wrong about it, but as far as I'm concerned,

02:02:39.560 - 02:02:57.000

I do not see him changing. I, I think that there's a possibility he may become worse and unfortunately I was right when you look at the decisions that Clarence Thomas and Justice Thomas has uh. I've been, uh, in the majority on he's using the swing vote.

02:02:57.450 - 02:03:13.180

We have a whole series of 5 to 4 decisions where Clarence Thomas is voting with the 5. And I do not understand. I don't understand as a lawyer. I don't understand as a former uh government employee at a fairly high level. I don't understand certainly as

02:03:13.180 - 02:03:33.709

a as a black man in in this country, I don't understand how someone growing up in the kind of poverty and discrimination that Clarence Thomas grew up in, how anyone can think that a prisoner, for example, who is shackled and handcuffed and beaten. Does not have

02:03:33.709 - 02:03:50.620

their constitutional rights violated. I don't know what world he can be living in, frankly, and when I look at a lot of the other decisions that he has been in the majority on 54 decisions which could go either way. And when I look at the fact

02:03:50.620 - 02:04:10.180

that he is a person who is, uh, uh, coming behind a Thurgood Marshall who was just an outstanding advocate, not just for for minorities and blacks. But an outstanding advo for for the poor, for the disenfranchised for him to come behind someone of that statute and

02:04:10.180 - 02:04:27.080

that commitment is a travesty and I, and I, uh, every day I look at those decisions that they are being articulated by the Supreme Court and seeing how they are setting us back. Uh, in terms of the advancements that had been made up to this point

02:04:27.080 - 02:04:46.129

in time, I am appalled by it, and I think that the, uh, Justice, uh, uh, Judge, uh, Higginbotham's attack on Thomas as bitter as as it was and as ongoing as it was, uh, was a classic example of someone who had come up the hard way,

02:04:46.399 - 02:05:05.410

who had known poverty, who had known discrimination, but who did not forget where he came from. Uh, was appropriate. I think, uh, Justice Thomas has forgotten his days in Pinpoint, Georgia, has forgotten where he came from, has forgotten, even though he may not acknowledge, he would

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not have gotten into Yale without affirmative action.