Forty-one years ago this weekend, America was changed forever when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

  

Howard Dodson

The Crushing Tragedies of 1968

Everything came crashing down in 1968. April of 1968 to be exact. I had been on the high of highs since 1964. Took my first airplane ride that year.  Flew from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Los Angeles, California.  Flew from 4° temperatures and snow in Philly to lovely LA and 75°.  Hating the cold as I did, I swore that I’d never live in cold weather again.

Spent three months at UCLA and a month in Puerto Rico before being shipped off to Ecuador, where I would spend two years of the most rewarding and transformative experiences of my life as a Peace Corps volunteer. New worlds, new people, new societies, new languages, new me! I had an incredibly successful tenure as a volunteer, organizing credit unions throughout coastal Ecuador. Organized 15. Twelve were still operating when I last checked a few years ago – 40 years later!!

I returned to Peace Corps headquarters in Washington in D.C. in 1966 and became one of the best Peace Corps recruiters in history.  Promoted to Director of Minority and Specialized Recruiting and Deputy Director of Peace Corps Recruiting nationally, I was at the top of my game. I had been offered jobs overseas with the Peace Corps and the USIA. My future was at its brightest. And then it happened on that memorable day on April 4, 1968. They killed Martin Luther King, Jr. and turned my life upside down.

I was running a recruiting campaign for Peace Corps in Philadelphia when I heard that King had been shot and killed. I took the first train smoking back to D.C. the next morning.

I made my way to Peace Corps Washington headquarters from Union Station. The fires and gunshots had already started and the city was in a total state of panic. The Peace Corps office was located at Connecticut and H Streets, two blocks from the White House and three blocks from “K” Street. “K” Street, a major thoroughfare and route to Virginia, had turned into a giant parking lot. Cars were parked-on the street, on the sidewalks, in the medians-engines running, doors open, passengers gone-gone walking-headed out of Washington. Smoke was seen at a distance in all directions. The crackle of gunfire, heard within earshot of the White House.

Within less than twenty-four hours, the U.S. military had occupied “Chocolate City.”  “Peacekeepers” with tanks and automatic rifles were stationed at checkpoints around the city- peacekeepers with weapons of war in the nation’s capital, trying to contain the rage and put out the fires ignited by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of peace.

I managed to make my way through the roadblocks and spend the night with my roommate and some friends in Maryland, just across the D.C. border. When I returned the following morning, the occupational force was at full strength. The fires were still burning and the guns were still crackling in random rhythms against the silence.

Wanted to help. Help in any way I could. Needed to do something to break the funk-to fill the void, the emptiness.  Needed to help make peace.

Made my way to a church that had been set up as a relief headquarters.  Emergency calls for food, clothing and sometimes medical care were being directed there. I needed to help make peace-to be of service. I volunteered again and took an assignment in the city.

Virtually everyone at the Church was white. The calls for help were coming from the black areas of the city where the fires were still smoldering and where gunshots still crackled. Someone was needed to make deliveries. I either volunteered or was drafted to run the military roadblocks and deliver food, clothing or other goods to those in need who had called. I made several runs in the white truck with the Red Cross sign on both sides.  I was stopped at several checkpoints by young, deathly scared, white National Guardsmen with weapons of war who thought I was a looter.

I made my way through the occupation and the funeral-King’s funeral-before I realized how deeply I had fallen-how much I had crashed. Trying to dig myself out, I started working on the Poor People’s Campaign and promised to join the Bobby Kennedy campaign as soon as I had finished a Peace Corps training project. The rains came and stymied the Poor Peoples Campaign. Another assassin’s bullet killed Bobby, and for all intents and purposes, my season of hope ended.

I was crushed by the accumulation of tragedies in 1968. The assassination of King, and the racial conflagration that followed it; the dashed hopes of the Poor People’s Campaign; the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and the prospects of a Nixon Presidency all combined to plunge me into a deeper state of depression. At first I ran- took a flight to Hawaii to put some distance between me and the Kennedy assassination in June. A week or so on the beaches of Hawaii didn’t pull me out. I returned to Washington later in the month, still searching for a way out.

A chance encounter with a new television series started me on the path to recovery. In response to the King assassination and the turmoil that followed, CBS television sponsored a series of 120 half-hour programs on black history. Vincent Harding, a Columbia University Ph.D. history professor at Spelman College in Atlanta, Ga. and the memorable John Henrick Clarke, Harlem’s dean of lay historians of the black experience, co-produced the “Black Heritage” television series.  Even though it aired at ungodly hours in the morning (5 and 6 a.m.), I made it my business to watch every episode I could. Something about this plunge into the black past salved my psychic and spiritual wounds. I craved more.

I had been collecting copies of paperback books on black history since I started recruiting for Peace Corps in 1966. Every campus I went to, I made visits to the campus bookstores a must. Paperback books were still relatively new and cheap, especially if they were used.  I gobbled them up-books about black folk that I hadn’t known existed during my undergraduate and masters level studies. By 1968, I had a pretty good collection-most of them unread.

The television series convinced me that I might be able to find my sanity in our historic past if I immersed myself in these books. I shipped them off to Puerto Rico-over twenty boxes of them-and took off for San Juan. Spent a couple of months there and moved to the mountains in Mayaguez on the western side of the island-searching for my sanity, searching for meaning and renewed purpose in life, searching in the black past.

My unquenched quest in Puerto Rico led me to a new Ph.D. program in the History of Black People and Race Relations at the University of California at Berkeley. A “year abroad” in Atlanta, Georgia at the Institute of the Black World (in 1970-1971) transformed my sanity search into a sense of purpose and a vocation. My search for purpose and meaning of the traumas of 1968 put me on the path that would prepare me for my life’s work as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Howard Dodson, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library since 1984, is a specialist in African-American history as well as a noted lecturer and consultant.  His publications include Jubilee: The Emergence of African American Culture (National Geographic Press, 2002), In Motion: The African American Migration Experience (National Geographic Press, 2004) and Becoming American: The African American Journey (Sterling Publishing, Inc., 2009).

Learn more about the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.

  

Reverend Dr. Susan Newman

The Day the Dream Died

Thursday, April 4, 1968, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. I was in the fifth grade at Adams Elementary School in Washington, D.C. The teachers began crying and screaming as they huddled together in the hallway, holding each other. We were told that Dr. King had been shot and we were sent home early.

As night fell and news of Dr. King’s death came across the radio and television, all of the clothing stores in black neighborhoods were in flames. Angry crowds of people ran up and down the streets, breaking windows of businesses-looting and running off with whatever they could carry. Black owners of barbershops, liquor stores, and other businesses spray painted “Soul Brother” on the front of their doors so the angry mobs would not steal and destroy their life’s investments.

President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered the National Guard to keep peace and order in the streets. The city was under curfew. No one could be outside of their homes between 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.  This was the first time I ever remember seeing my father cry, as he and my mother sat with us on the sofa, listening to the news in tragic disbelief. Political and racial tensions in this majority black city were high. Washington was changing, and so was I.

A significant impression was made upon my heart during those days of grief, as people searched for the meaning of this tragedy. This man did something so wonderful, so meaningful with his life that everyone in the world seemed to be moved by his death.

During the days approaching his funeral, newscasters kept playing a clip from a speech Dr. King delivered the night before his assassination. He had gone to Memphis, Tennessee to support African-American sanitation workers who’d been on strike protesting unequal wages and working conditions. The look in Dr. King’s eyes, and the conviction in his voice stayed with me from that day on when he said:

“I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

There was something birthed into my spirit that shaped my calling into ministry-do something that I felt so passionately about, that I was willing to live unafraid of dying.  And, thanks in large part to the unforgettable Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I am.

The Reverend Dr. Susan Newman has had a 33-year career as a pastor, a community advocate, a teacher, a chaplain, and author. She is the President of Sincerely Susan Ministries, and is an Adjunct Minister of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ, Washington, DC. She is an inspirational, motivating and humorous speaker whose soul-stirring, thought-provoking insights on healthy relationships from a spiritual perspective have garnered nationwide attention and acclaim. Hailed by Ebony Magazine as one of the Top Black Women Preachers in America, She has been called “down-to-earth,” powerful,” “life-changing,” and “a reality check for the church.”

Learn more about Dr. Newman.

  

Esther Iverem

‘Bewitched’ and Bare Feet: Philadelphia Memories in Prime Time

Growing up in Philadelphia during 1968, most of my world revolved around attending Mrs. Johnson’s second-grade class at Harrison Elementary School, traveling on Sundays to my Uncle Jimmy’s church in South Jersey, riding my bike in the neighborhood and watching TV-lots of TV. So it figures that news of the death of the Rev. Martin Luther King came to me while I was watching “Bewitched.”

Amid what must have been another episode about the modern-day witch Samantha and her doofus husband Darren, I remember a ribbon scrolling at the bottom of the screen that said something like, “THE REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING HAS BEEN SHOT AND KILLED IN MEMPHIS…” I was sitting with my older sister Elaine and I remember that we immediately jumped up and told our parents. We were ruling the TV and we had gotten the word first.

Though I was only eight years old, I was very aware that King’s death pertained to me and my blackness. I realize now that I was a sensitive child and in my young mind, racism (usually discussed in terms of “white people”) and injustice loomed large as an issue that adults talked about with knowledge and passion in homes, bars, sometimes  at church and on WDAS (AM and FM), one of two local black radio stations.

I lived in a somewhat racially-charged environment, with Frank Rizzo, the city’s police chief, always locked in controversy about the brutality of white officers in the black community. Philadelphia is a Northern city but, at that time, there were deep divisions between the city’s black community and some of its white, working class ethnic enclaves. (Two years after King’s death, not far from my home, Rizzo’s officers would conduct the infamous strip search of members of the Black Panther Party, large photos of which I saw in The Philadelphia Daily News delivered to our house.

And I had my own sense of the importance of King as a sort of royal man who was on TV speaking on these race issues of the day. I thought of him like an actual king.  He was pointed to as an example of the importance of education, reading well and speaking well.  But he was also a representative of very proper, middle class Negroes, which we were not. I remember my mother taking exception to one of his speeches we heard on the radio, when he seemed to mock preachers who were perhaps less eloquent than him and more filled with spirit in their delivery. She took his comments as a slap against more charismatic churches and denominations such as hers.

Much of what I understood about King, his death and his legacy came though the news and TV. But one lasting personal experience I will never forget after King’s death is approaching my elementary school and seeing, about a block away, a massive march of humanity spilling down the wide Girard Avenue. I ran toward it and watched from the sidewalk. My memory is that someone told me that the march was related to the Poor People’s March that occurred after King’s death, or that it was a march in remembrance of King. I remember being struck by the presence of so many white people in the March; some people were walking in their bare feet. I knew something had shifted in the world. I knew that something had changed.

Esther Iverem is a journalist and author whose most recent book is We Gotta Have It: Twenty Years of Seeing Black at the Movies, 1986-2006 (Thunder’s Mouth Press/De Capo). A former staff writer for several newspapers, including The Washington Post and New York Newsday, she is founder of SeeingBlack.com, a Web site for black critical voices on arts, media and politics. Iverem is a member of both the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the Washington Area Film Critics Association. She is the recipient of numerous honors, including a USC Annenberg/Getty Arts Journalism Fellowship, a National Arts Journalism Fellowship and an artist’s fellowship from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is also the author of two books of poems.

Visit www.SeeingBlack.com

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Much of the history of the Civil Rights Movement has focused heavily on the stories of great men like Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, and many others. These men are the embodiment of the movement. But the movement’s successes would not have been achieved without the support, dedication, defiance, intelligence and hard work of many women. Historically, black women especially had to contend not only with racial discrimination, but also with sexism from both white and black men within the movement itself and from the larger society. In spite of these challenges, black women at all levels of society continued to juggle women’ s work and race work. Here we showcase just a few women pioneers who have been instrumental to helping LDF fulfill its mission to defend, educate and empower African Americans and others seeking justice and equality in America.

Elaine R. Jones

As the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s first woman leader, Elaine Jones is a trailblazer known for her work as one of the first African-American women to defend death row inmates. The daughter of a Pullman porter and a teacher, Jones became the first black woman to enroll in and subsequently graduate from the University Of Virginia School Of Law in 1970. She turned down an offer to join a top Wall Street law firm and pursued her lifelong goal by joining LDF, where she spent all but two years of her career.

In 1977, Jones created the position of legislative advocate in LDF’s Washington, DC office, building a reputation as an expert negotiator and a passionate voice for the victims of injustice. She served as LDF President and General-Counsel from 1993 to 2004 Under her direction, LDF broadened its mission to include such emerging issues as environmental justice and health care reform, while continuing to work for educational equity, fair employment, voting rights, fair housing and an end to bias in the criminal justice system.

Marian Wright Edelman

America’s best-known and most highly-respected children’s advocate Marian Wright Edelman began her career with LDF. In 1963, after graduating from Yale Law School, Edelman worked for LDF first in New York, and then in Mississippi, where she became the first African-American woman to practice law in that state. After moving to Washington, DC, Edelman was instrumental in organizing the Poor People’s Campaign, leading her to focus on issues relating to child development and children in poverty. In 1973, Edelman founded the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), which has become a leading voice for policies and programs to lift children out of poverty; protect them from abuse and neglect; and ensure their access to health care, a quality education and a moral and spiritual foundation. The author of several books, Edelman keeps CDF financed entirely with private funds. Among her many honors are a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship; the Presidential Medal of Freedom; more than 65 honorary degrees; and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement for her writings, which include eight books.

Constance Baker Motley

One cannot consider civil rights in America without paying homage to Constance Baker Motley, who brought her legal brilliance to the most important civil rights cases for 20 years, and became the first African-American woman to serve as a federal judge and in the New York Senate, among other historic milestones. While attending Columbia Law School, Motley volunteered at LDF. After graduating in 1946, she accepted full-time work for LDF, fighting housing cases to break down barriers that barred blacks from white neighborhoods, for the salary of $50 a week. LDF assigned her the James Meredith case in 1961, and the nation saw her escort the young student as he braved a jeering crowd to integrate the University of Mississippi. She called the day Meredith graduated in 1963 “the most thrilling” in her life. She won cases that struck down segregation in Southern restaurants and lunch counters. She lent her expertise to the briefs in Brown V. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation case fought by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), led by Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg. A key player in the struggle to desegregate the South, Motley hung out with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while he was in jail; sang freedom songs in bombed churches; and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers before he was murdered. Throughout her career and until her death in 2005, Motley was renowned for the quiet but powerful way in which she prepared and presented the lawsuits that led to greater equality for black people.

Lani Guinier

Lani Guinier became the first black woman tenured professor when she joined the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1998. The Yale Law School graduate had chosen her life path when as a child, she saw pioneering civil rights attorney Constance Baker Motley on television escorting James Meredith through a hostile white crowd to desegregate the University of Mississippi in 1962. After graduating law school, she followed Motley’s example and joined LDF as Assistant Counsel. She left four years later to serve as special assistant to then Assistant Attorney General Drew S. Days in the Civil Rights Division in the Carter Administration. After Ronald Reagan was elected, Guinier returned to LDF, where she became head of the Voting Rights program, litigating cases throughout the South, helping to win major victories in voting rights cases in Alabama and other southern states. She became one of LDF’s top litigators, winning 31 out of the 32 cases she argued. Guinier was thrust into the spotlight when President Bill Clinton nominated her to the Justice Department’s top civil rights post in 1993, then withdrew the nomination. Guinier has authored several books and won numerous awards, and in 1996 she formed a nonprofit organization, Commonplace, to create a dialogue about issues regarding race between the media and academic sectors.

Constance Rice

Civil rights crusader Constance Rice is acclaimed for her success in addressing the issues of inequity and exclusion. She attended New York University School of Law on the prestigious Root Tilden Public Interest Scholarship. After graduating in 1984 and serving as law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, and at Morrison & Foerster as a litigation associate, Rice joined LDF in 1991. In 1996, she became co-director of LDF’s Los Angeles office. As a litigator, Rice is known for her work with class action civil rights cases redressing police misconduct, race and sex discrimination and unfair public policy in transportation, probation and public housing. At LDF, she filed a landmark case on behalf of low-income bus riders that resulted in a mandate that more than 2 billion dollars be spent to improve the bus system in Los Angeles. In 1999, Rice launched a coalition lawsuit that won $750 million to build new schools in Los Angeles, money that had been slated for more affluent, less crowded suburban school districts. Beyond her litigation work, in the 1990s, Rice served as counsel to the Watts gang truce and led a statewide campaign to save equal opportunity programs. Now co-founder of The Advancement Project, a public policy and legal action group that supports organizations working to end community problems and address racial and other barrier to equality and opportunity, Rice has received numerous awards for her work in expanding opportunity and advancing multi-racial democracy.

Sherrilyn Ifill

Recognized nationally as an advocate of civil rights, voting rights, and judicial diversity and decision-making, Sherrilyn Ifill is a Professor of Law at The University of Maryland School of Law who began her career as Assistant Counsel at LDF. She litigated voting rights cases, including Houston Lawyers’ Association v. Texas, in which the Supreme Court held that judicial elections are subject to the provisions of the Voting Rights Act. Ifill is renowned as an expert for her writings and work related to race, the need for judicial diversity and impartiality in judicial decision-making. Her writings on the history of racial violence and reconciliation efforts are widely praised, and her book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, is widely respected. In the spirit of LDF, Ifill has continued to litigate and consult on cases involving low-income and minority communities throughout her tenure at The University of Maryland School of Law.

Cissy Marshall

Cecilia “Cissy” Marshall is the widow of Thurgood Marshall, the former director counsel and founder of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.  Over the years, Marshall has served as a member of LDF’s board and has helped the organization maintain ties to its founder, lending her name to and chairing many of LDF’s events. She was working as a secretary for LDF when the couple married on December 17, 1955. When Marshall Marshall, who is Filipino-Hawaiian, expressed her concern that an interracial marriage might attract negative attention to the LDF and to Thurgood, her husband-to-be replied, “So what?” The couple had two sons, Thurgood Marshall, Jr. and John Marshall, and they remained married until Thurgood’s death in 1993.

Vanita Gupta

Vanita Gupta was a young, talented attorney for LDF’s criminal justice practice division. She worked as the lead lawyer in the Tulia, Texas case in which more than a tenth of the town’s black population was arrested and wrongly convicted in a drug sting based the uncorroborated testimony of undercover officer. When the case came across her desk, Gupta organized a number of large law firms that worked with LDF on the case. Ultimately prosecutors conceded that they had made a catastrophic mistake, and led a Texas judge to recommend that every conviction be overturned because the detective was not a credible witness. The Tulia case garnered nation-wide attention and became a symbol of racial injustice in the country’s criminal justice system. After LDF, Vanita joined the American Civil Liberties Union, where she worked on a landmark case, which greatly improved conditions for immigrant children and their families in the T. Don Hutto Detention Center in Taylor, Texas.

Lia Epperson

Lia Epperson is an assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, where her courses focus on constitutional law, civil rights, and education. She worked as the director of LDF’s education law and policy group. While at LDF, she litigated in federal and state courts, advocated for federal administrative and legislative reforms, and co-authored multiple amicus briefs to the United States Supreme Court in the areas of education and affirmative action. In addition, she represented LDF in several national civil rights leadership coalitions, including serving as chair of the Education Task Force for the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights, a coalition of nearly 200 national organizations. Epperson’s research centers on constitutional interpretations of educational equity and the role of public schools and universities in making manifest the Constitution’s promise of equal opportunity. She has served as an editor of the Stanford Law Review as well as  the Stanford Law and Policy Review. Epperson is also the wife of Benjamin Todd Jealous, who is the current president and chief executive officer of the NAACP, LDF’s sister organization.

Jean Fairfax

Jean Fairfax is the former head of the division of Legal Information and Community Service at LDF. She was responsible for establishing and maintaining relationships between LDF and community organizations and attorneys across the country. She was also a civic leader, with careers in academia and philanthropy. As a dean at Kentucky State College and Tuskegee Institute, she organized youth programs in social justice, peace and community service in Europe, Israel, Mexico and the USA. Participating with her students in the 1940s in the work of the YWCA in the South, she demonstrated the important role of women in challenging institutional racism. Jean is revered for her work with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in post-World War II Austria and in its southern civil rights program. A professional civil rights worker for almost 30 years, Jean developed programs to advance civil rights, to educate low income and minority communities about their rights, and to implement civil rights laws and court orders at national and grass roots levels. Highlights of her career include involvement in the first desegregation of Mississippi’s schools and the integration of higher education systems across the South. She organized an interfaith group of churchwomen to expose failure of schools to provide meals to needy children, leading to reform of the National School Lunch Program. Since 1970, Jean has built a national reputation for increasing the participation of women and minorities in grant making institutions as donors, policymakers and recipients.

Stacey Patton is Senior Editor/Writer of TheDefendersOnline and The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

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Today, on what would have been Chávez’s 82nd birthday, President Obama issued a statement hailing the former Farm Workers president as “an educator, environmentalist, and as a civil rights leader who struggled for fair treatment and fair wages for America’s workers.”

Chávez’s rallying cry, “Sí Se Puede”—”Yes, We Can,” was more than a slogan, it was an expression of hope and a rejection of those who said farm workers could not organize, and could not take on the growers. Through his courage, César Chávez taught us that a single voice could change our country, and that together, we could make America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation.

The AFL-CIO is supporting efforts to create a national holiday to honor Chávez. Last year during the presidential campaign, Obama said we should have a holiday for Chávez.

It’s time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union.

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The honors cascade upon Elaine R. Jones, woman of extraordinary accomplishment, like an avalanche schussing down a high mountain slope. But, albeit the honors, awards, compliments from prominent organizations, institutions and civic groups, Elaine Jones remains the same: An ebullient personality handling with aplomb a whirlwind schedule – while holding fast to and holding up the banner of the struggle for freedom.

Wednesday, Jones, the former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), received yet another award: the George Bundy Smith Pioneer Award of the New York State Bar Association. The award was given by the bar’s Commercial and Federal Litigation Section during a reception at Lincoln Center, in Manhattan.

In introducing Jones, Bernice Lieber, president of the state bar association, and a partner at Arent Fox LLP, in New York City, said Jones’ career exemplified the “commitment to legal excellence and sustained public service” that the award was intended to bring to public notice.

There was a special poignancy to the moment, and not only because George Bundy Smith, whose distinguished legal career included service as an Associate Judge of the New York Court of Appeals for 14 years, was there and spoke briefly but movingly of his admiration for Jones.

The connection between the two goes deeper. George Bundy Smith, now a partner at Chadbourne & Park LLP in New York, began his career as an LDF attorney in 1961. He was hired by Jack Greenberg, who had just succeeded Thurgood Marshall as LDF President and Director-Counsel.

A decade later, Greenberg would hire a newly-minted University of Virginia Law School graduate: Elaine R. Jones.

Typically, Jones brushed past her own achievements in her acceptance speech in favor of a discourse that was part laser-like dissection of some of the nation’s current social problems, part pitch for greater support of LDF, and part revival-meeting call for her audience to continue the struggle for equality.

“Anything I have accomplished,” she said, with her usual vibrant force, “I have accomplished with the help and support of others,” adding after a moment that, albeit all the progress that can be justly celebrated today, it is “not enough.”

For example, referring to the composition of the federal courts, Jones was blunt.

“I don’t think there is a progressive side anymore. There’s no Left there,” she said. “There’s too much sameness there, and I’m going to do all I can as one person to change that. I’m putting you on notice,” she emphasized, as the gathering laughed in appreciation.

It was clear long before the speech’s last words that Jones’ credo remains what it has always been: “There is much work yet to be done, and the work goes on.”

Jones’ audience included a healthy contingent of friend and former colleagues from LDF. They included two former LDF Presidents and Directors-Counsel, Jack Greenberg and Ted Shaw, both now professors at Columbia Law School,  Ted Wells, co-chair of the LDF Board and partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Garrison & Wharton, Toni Fay, a former executive at Time Warner, Nannette Gibson, a senior member of the Board, Jacqueline Berrien, Associate Director-Counsel, and Board member Clifford Case III and his wife, Karen Dubno.

Lee A. Daniels is Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline and Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

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Carlotta Walls LaNier

When I entered the room, a few eyes followed me. I noted that the room was full, with about 40 African-American students and a handful of other races. Waiting for the lecture to start, I wondered: what does an iconic historical figure look like in real life? The image that kept playing in my mind was the vivid black-and-white footage of the Little Rock Nine escorted by armed U.S. Army soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division up the steps of the high school amongst an angry crowd.

To be honest, that whole incident seemed so far away and long ago that it hadn’t occurred to me that the members were still alive and living amongst us as everyday people. Carlotta Walls LaNier has been living in my home state of Colorado since she moved here to attend college decades ago. When I received the email from the BLSA (I’d signed up for their distribution list) saying that Ms. LaNier would be speaking, such issues as integration and segregation seemed so far removed from my life and the present. But I recognized the amazing opportunity to learn from someone that lived through segregation in the South, the youngest girl of the Little Rock Nine, and I didn’t want to miss it.

Ms. LaNier stood in front of us, a roomful of bright-eyed, optimistic law students, a 67-year-old woman with a robust spirit. As she spoke in her smooth, steadfast voice, I could see her mixture of strength and humility. Shoveling forkfuls of the soul food into my poor, hungry law-student mouth, I listened intently to her message of education, progress, hope and resilience.

At 14 years old, Ms. LaNier had walked into the middle of the integration battle. She endured harassment from her classmates, teachers and town members until she graduated. Of the nine students integrating Little Rock Central High School, she was the only one able to participate in the official graduation ceremony proceedings.

As a child deciding to integrate the school, she simply wanted access to the best education that she could receive. Labeling herself “an old relic of history,” Ms. LaNier told us she is “ready to pass the torch to a new generation to push ahead.” She shared with us that, as a woman and mother, she tried to teach her own children to have confidence, to set goals, and to see things through to the end.

She told us that she had not expected to see an African-American president in office during her lifetime. She was, however, “amazed” by the mobilization of the youth in Denver and in the nation as we voted Barack Obama into office. She also said she hoped that by the end of the year, we would stop calling him our first African-American president and simply call him President of the United States.

Listening to Ms. LaNier, I realized that integration wasn’t as remote as I had thought. I saw that it had directly impacted me. In Keyes v. Denver School District No. 1, the U.S. Supreme Court found de facto segregation, which was considered insufficient grounds for judicial intervention, but the court asked Denver to start citywide busing to encourage racial balance.

In the very late 1970s, the school system bussed my older sisters into an inner-city elementary school, which they attended in the name of integration until the program was phased out. Later, my sisters were the only two white girls in elementary school class.  My parents always made the effort to surround us with people from a variety of backgrounds, and busing wasn’t against their ideas of inclusion.

I firmly believe that tolerance and education begin in the home, around the dinner table. My parents escaped the city when I was young because they wanted more land in the countryside. This dramatic change left my sisters feeling like outsiders, surrounded by white people for the first time since they were bussed. My sisters ardently took over supplementing my education with books and movies about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

In elementary school, I knew of black people only through the books I read and the movies or television shows I watched. In high school, the civil rights movement seemed to be just a paragraph in my history textbook. However, my true racial education and experience with integration did not come from the classroom, but on the basketball courts on which I played in junior high and high school.

I came of age playing with people of all racial and cultural backgrounds through my high school team and in the AAU competitive leagues. Integration came from teammates and teamwork. For the most part, I was unaware of cultural differences because we were so focused on our common goals. Hearing Ms. LaNier’s story brought the remoteness of the past into the present.

Then, one of the black law students in the audience thanked Ms. LaNier for everything she had gone through because black students today wouldn’t be where they were without the Little Rock Nine. I wanted to thank Ms. LaNier personally, too, but I felt uncomfortable raising my hand. I didn’t know how my classmates would react because they might not think it was my place to speak about how her actions have touched my life. I wanted to express my gratitude, because I cannot imagine my life without my friends, whom I consider family.

The benefits I have received from integration are liberating for me. They have opened up worlds through the voices of my friends, worlds that I would otherwise not have known. I think about the people I love that I wouldn’t be able to have by my side in a restaurant or a classroom.

I recognize the need for us to encourage more young black people to pursue higher professional education, such as law school. When I entered law school in Denver, I was shocked that there was only one black male in my entire entering class, although my school has a healthy population of Arabic, Asian, Indian, Native American and Latino students.

Carlotta Walls LaNier left us with a message that more must be done to further legal justice. She encouraged us young law students to look to Thurgood Marshall as a role model, because lawyers are the foot soldiers and watchdogs of the law to ensure that human rights are being upheld and further progressed. When she said this, she hesitated, looking at the law students sitting before her. I wondered, was she directing this message solely towards the members of the Black Law School Association? Or was it meant for everyone? It is a universal message, and part of my American identity. Which leaves me to wonder: what is my role in the future in regards to encouraging not just more diversity, but participating in each others’ lives beyond mandated quotas?

What is my place in all of this?

I am not speaking from a place of naiveté or white guilt, but as a young, aspiring white woman attorney with a genuine commitment to strengthening my nation and living my life with integrity. I think about when I finish law school and pass the Colorado Bar exam. I will have the privilege of taking the Colorado Attorney Oath of Admission before becoming sworn-in and admitted to the practice of law. In that Oath, I will have to solemnly sear that:

I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Colorado;

I will maintain the respect due to Court and judicial officers;

I will employ only such means as are consistent with truth and honor;

I will treat all persons whom I encounter through my practice of law with fairness, courtesy, respect and honesty;

I will use my knowledge of the law for the betterment of society and the improvement of the legal system;

I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed;

I will at all times faithfully and diligently adhere to the Colorado Rules of Professional Conduct.

These are words that I will be guided by throughout my life. Hopefully, all my peers will take these words to heart, too. As aspiring attorneys, we have a responsibility to our families, communities and peers to take a moment to think about how far we have progressed as a nation, and what we hope our individual roles will be in the future.

Because I did not raise my hand to address Ms. LaNier directly, now I am taking the time to thank her. In Women’s History Month, I pay tribute to you, Ms. Carlotta Walls LaNier, as a strong, black, trailblazing woman, mother, and historical icon.

Thank you, Ms. Carlotta Walls LaNier, for walking up those stairs that fateful day and seeing it through until graduation. Your courage in the past and encouragement in the present has had a profound impact on me. I am deeply grateful that I joined my fellow law students in hearing your story and for the inspiration and example that you have provided for us all.

D. Carene Bull is a law student at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law.

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