Now on booktv from the 13th annual National Book festival on the National Mall in washington, d. C. , Harvard University law professor kenneth mack presents his book representing the race the creation of the civil rightsr lawyer. Kennet thank you. Thank you to the library of congress for inviting me. And thank you to all of you for coming. What i would like to do today is talk a little bit about the bitt book, lived about how i came to little bit write it and ill be just ae to little bit also. And then we will tak e questions. Will take questions. So the book, the book is a biographical account of men and women to change america, men and women who helped transform america from a country that denied basic Citizenship Rights to a portion of its citizens based on race to the country we know today that embraces racial equality as one of its core principles. Is a collective biography of africanamericans who practiced law during the era of jim crow. Lawyers like Thurgood Marshall and lesser known figures like los angeles lawyer lloyd miller, paul e. Murray spent a career in washington d. C. Alexander in philadelphia and a host of others who are not that well known. This is a story we think we know but we do not. And brown vs. Board of education, some of us read a biography of Thurgood Marshall but one that i tried to show in the book, it is very familiar but we dont know much about it. Start digging around in the library of congress and lots of other places reconstruct a defeat contextualized story about the men and women who snatched jim crow and the way americans think about famous figures like Thurgood Marshall and introduce previously unknown characters to the civil rights narrative. It is a familiar story told in an unfamiliar way. It is a story of africanamericans, africanamericans who crossed the color line. To cross the color line meant in fact at the time these were called representative negros, this is what africanamericans called themselves who did this, they cross the color line, did something people were not supposed to do, africanamerican lawyers came to court in an era where there are no black judges, and it your job is to convince a group of white americans in the year of jim crow to decide in favor of your clients, when the entire court room is a deeply prejudiced institution, these are americans who crossed the color line to speak to white people, and at the same time people thought that they were supposed to be representative negros which meant they were supposed to be white like the rest of africanamericans. The book is about the demand, of black people who break through a barrier that hasnt been broken through in it be like the larger society, and the rest of the race. And they represent the rest of the race at the same time and i talk about how these lawyers struggled with this as an issue through their whole career. In fact the book was very much written in the present. I am a Firm Believer that we all write history in the presence. We right questions we want to hear. We want to answer. What is the present racial politics . We have a confused racial politics, racial identity itself seems more complicated each year. And of president born in hawaii who is heir to all of the africanamerican traditions and what i really want to do in the book is shows that even in the era of jim crow in which race was supposed to be fixed, we knew who was black and who was white and which boxes they all went to, which schools they were supposed to go to, even in that era race was fluid and lots of people stepped across the color line, confounding the expectations of blacks and whites and among the people who did this were africanamerican civil rights lawyers. Let me do one more thing, let me tell you how i came to write it because this is a festival that is all about riding, people who love books and i love books and i loved writing this book. Let me tell you how i came to write it and i will read just a little bit and we will take questions. As some of you know i am a lawyer, a law professor at harvard. I went to law school and graduated 20 years ago and i went to law school with a number of people doing interesting things in life like barack obama. And like most of my classmates i spend the next couple decades working to get something accomplished, and i dont know, round 2006 i was a tenured professor at harvard and i had this book, trying to write a book about civil rights lawyers and what i did was something that people at my stage in their career dont usually do. I sat down and i thought for a while, about a year, thinking how did i want to write the book . I began to think who was i writing it for . Who was my audience . Who did i admire . Whose riding styles really, really and for all of me . One that i admired was the person youre heard just now, taylor branch. What were my objectives for the boat . I paused from this tread mills but i was on and i began to ask all of these questions you are not supposed to ask of yourself at this stage in your career but this is one of the things tenure is for. Allows you to ask questions without thinking youre going to get fired the next year. I did this and i came up with a book. It is a very different book than the one i set out to right at the beginning, writing is a journey, very different book from the one i set out to right at the beginning. I began to see things, practice laws during jim crow and most people havent seen before. I began to see these stories i wanted to tell. Let me do one more thing before we do questions. Let me read a little bit because i thought a lot about how i wanted to tell the story. How i wanted to relate it, how i wanted to draw the reader in and who exactly i wanted the book to appeals to. Let me read about a couple lawyers who are in the book and then we will talk. Let me start with a lawyer named john mercer langston. He was the first dean of Howard Law School. He was also the most prominent africanamerican lawyer in the Nineteenth Century and he had a very unusual career so let me read a little bit. John langston is only faintly remembered today although some have tried to claim him as a model for the first africanamerican president. In the Nineteenth Century it was a different matter. Langston was famous. Langston was one of the leading public figures of his day. He rivaled Frederick Douglass for prominence in black politics and earned the trust of whites that would seem notable in almost any era of american history. Who was langston . Langston was born in 1829 in virginia and raised in ohio and graduated from Oberlin College in an era when most americans didnt think plaques had basic Citizenship Rights. Langston was also the son of all white slave owner and africanamerican woman who sent his sons to a high to get an education because they were not going to be educated in virginia. He was biracial but he was also in our language and africanamerican. Though langston went to ohio, went to Oberlin College, became a lawyer and somehow persuaded a steady stream of whites to beat a path to his door and hire him as a lawyer in ohio when ohio didnt even allow africanamericans to vote. He then rose through black and white politics until he had his career by becoming the dean of Howard Law School and the United States minister to haiti. Links and as i argue in the book was the quintessential Nineteenth Century representative black man, established abolitionist minded white, a person in whom they could see a darker reflection of themselves. For them langstons seemed to personify everything the colored race might be, through office tackles of slaveryslavery and became bold citizens. Is improbable journey, this journey that would see him get white clients, become dean of Howard Law School and u. S. Minister to haiti, his improbable journey began with the decision to become a lawyer. That was key for langston, gave him the confidence to speak in public life, and allowed him to earn the trust of whites in a way he would later put to good use bet to become a lawyer, the person who believed he could represent black people had to first prove that he was a white man because africanamericans were not allowed to become lawyers in ohio. John mercer langston, who was later than i was but not looking white, was admitted to the bar as a white man. He went before a panel of judges because this is how you got admitted to the bar back then, they examine you, assessed your fitness to become a lawyer, you are learning in law and he was very fit, he learned a lot but there was one problem, he was black. The lawyer who proposed him caught up and he proposed a solution and the chief judge asked where is mr. Langston and langston stood up in the courtroom, looked what he looked like and promptly swarmed in as a white lawyer. This was a sign of how langston would rise in the world. He rose in the world by convincing whites that he was one of them. At the same time, he was the most prominent black lawyer in america. He earned the trust of whites and represented blacks. This was the kind of story i wanted to tell in the book. I tell us similar story about Thurgood Marshall. Thurgood Marshall Rose to prominence in maryland because when Thurgood Marshall would show up in that town that nobody had ever seen a black lawyer before, nobody knew how to treat him. The solution was to treat him like a white man. Not completely like a white man, it wasnt like that. But the solution was to think about marshall the way marshall could convince white lawyers and judges to do what he wanted, to convince them that he was a representative negro as it was called. At the same time Thurgood Marshall was supposed to represent black people and the key to marshalls career, the key that would see him rise to the Supreme Court first as a litigant arguing brown vs. Board of education and later as Supreme Court justice, was that whites could see him as somebody like them but at the same time they could see him as africanamerican. The book is about the stories of men and women who all have unusual, and expected, surprising stories, people like loren miller, a lawyer who practiced in los angeles, he was one of the leading lawyers who had a racially restrictive covenant cases the challenge restrictions that kept houses from being sold to black people. But loren miller was a black lawyer, also by racial and his mother was white, his father was black, he grew up in an indian reservation in kansas and found himself in los angeles where he was that neighborhood that was half africanamerican and half japanese and loren miller was trying to sort this out. What did it mean to be africanamerican in that kind of sort of stew of race and ethnicity. And the two of them traveled to the soviet union and learned about race in the soviet union and came back to the United States thinking he was a marxist and that he was opposed to people like Thurgood Marshall and charles houston and spent five years writing, writing about lawyers like Thurgood Marshall were selling out africanamericans accusing them of being not representative and one thing i try to do in the book is life is complicated and millers life got more complicated. He was 33 years old and by this time he was married and had a law degree and wasnt making any money and his wife and other people said you ought to practice law and miller was this person who always thought practicing law was exactly the wrong thing to do because mother was a marxist. He thought law was just this superstructure and the real struggle was the workers and as they went to practice law and by golly likes it and he is helping people and there are all these black people about to be thrown out of their homes in los angeles and miller is the only person who conceive them from being evicted. Within six months of practicing law he changes his mind. He writes a letter to charles houston, Thurgood Marshalls mentor disavowing everything he had been saying for the last five years and led the old ten years later he and marshall and houston are arguing along side one another in the Supreme Court in the racially restricted covenant cases so these other kinds of stories i try to tell in the book. At deeply complicated lives of africanamerican lawyers. Today. As i said i write history in the press and. I think about questions that we would want to have answers to. So let me read just a little bit more. I read about a lawyer named pauli murray. Who is pauli murray . Polly murray was the person, the one person who more than anyone i would say is responsible for sexist termination being against the law. Because pauli murray was a lawyer. She was a 1944 graduate of Howard Law School, and by thendo time she graduated she came up with this idea she called jane crow. The time s gradu well, jane crow sounds very she call familiar. Its like jim crow. That was herm idea. Calmed jim jim called jim crow which lots of people was trying to show was contrary to law. There was something called jane crow sex segregation and she argued it was more or less the same thing. It was a radical thing to say in 1944. Let me just read a little bit how Pauley Murray came to have this radical idea that effects all of us today. In the fall of 1941, she arrived in washington, d. C. , for her first year of study at Howard Law School. Wanting nothing more than to represent her race and struggles with segregation. She described her civil righted a vote ed a vote she was egger to demonstrate it. On the path to law was a simple trip south the Previous Year to see a relative which lead to her arrest aboarded a segregated but in virginia. After her arrest, the ncaap lawyers came to defend per. She loved what she saw. She loved seeing lawyer like Thurgood Marshall and she decided she wanted to be one of them. The following year she became her study at Howard Law School and earned top honor. She was the number one student in the 1944 graduating school. She joined the lawyers. It was a tradition at howard number one graduate would go one way or another work for the ncaap. Murray was, at best, a representative woman, not a representative man. And the civil rights courtroom was off limits to women. There were no women civil rights lawyers. In fact, murray was a poor choice even as a representative woman of her race. She arrived at howard in the middle of a personal crisis. Behind the confident assad was a middle in a middle of crisis identity. In a world in which people had to identify as black or white, murray thoughtsha she was a little bit different. She came from this family where she said it was a united nations. Every color was represented. She had a lot of family members who could pass for white. She was one of the darker members of her family subpoena she struggled with where she fit. She was born in north carolina. She struggled with racial lines. More importantly, in a world in which people had to identify as men or women, she felt as though she was something else. She felt as if she were a man trapped in a womans body. Many people today call this transgender, she didnt have that kind of language. But she was a civil rights lawyer, and she tried to use civil rights law to describe her own struggle with identity. She was a woman who wanted do the things that men did. Including become a civil rights lawyer. She never went work for the naacp. She was disappointed in that, but what she came up with was the idea that the barriers that kept her out of the civil rights courtroom were just like the barriers that kept africanamericans out of thing places reserved for whites. At first, almost no one believed her. 1944, even her professor at howard didnt really believe her. Sex discrimination wasnt a word then; right . Jay crow, people couldnt figure it out. She kept pushing, and pushing, and pushing. Twenty years later people dwan to believe her including a lawyer named Ruth Bader Ginsburg who cited her as one of the principle influences on her when she finally convinced the u. S. Supreme court to recognize sex discrimination as a constitutional claim. In 1944, almost no one believed murray when she said jane crow was like jim crow. The years passed more and more people did. Okay. So these are the kinds of stories i tell in the book. Storieses of a complicated lives of africanamerican lawyer under jim crow. Stories of men and women who changed the world around them. Stories of men and women who struggled with their own particular crises, problems of identity. Stories men and women struggle with the question what it meant to represent a race. I troy to tell them as stories, as wonderful, human stories. I spent a lot of time thinking about and i hope youll read about them. Thank. [applause] so now i think were supposed to have questions, comments, and am i should i moderate . Sure. Do we have a mirk phone we have two microphones. We will alternate. Ill start with the gentleman in the dark blue. Hi. First, congratulations on this book. I think so you done this country a favor with your [inaudible] thank you. Im wondering, well, two questions. First, could you talk a little bit about the political affiliation and affiliations and identities that some of these lawyers, like, who were liberals, socialists, communists, republicans like bill coleman. Also, im wondering in addition to muir i are if there were any of the lawyers whom you wrote about who were lesbian or transgender or gay, and if that inflected their work in any way . Okay. Good questions. One, politics. So, you know, civil rights you know, by the 1960s, the middle of 1960s, you know, the civil rights became very identified with the democratic party, but as the questioner remarkinged, you know, these lawyer ran the gamete from theres a lawyer named Benjamin Davis in the book. She was a he was a Harvard Law School got beat up in the first civil rights trial in georgia and. He joined the he was alienated. They went from him all the lawyers very, very conservative. Theres bill coleman, who is actually quite old now. Published his autobiography a couple of years ago but secretary of transportation for ford. They ran the gamete. Second question is about sexual identity. You know, it is hard to know. I wondered a lot about muir i murray. I have two pictures in the book, i use them theres a picture of her graduating from high school. She a 1920s woman with that kind of outfit. Theres a picture of her five years later she looks like a boy. She has short hair. Shes really thin, and i always wondered. But the reason i know is because she kept a diary, and she wrote it down. She also went to see a bunch of doctors. She didnt have the language to describe what she was. She went to a doctor, she wrote down what the doctors told her. With her, you know, youve got it. But with those people, you dont. So there are deep and complicated stories i think her story is more complicated than most people. There are deep and complicated story out there that we just dont know because people didnt write it down. And if she hadnt written it down in a diary, i would look at the pictures pictures with, think about, but never know. The gentleman in the yellow. During the 2008 election, some comments were i dont think they were meant for public, but they kind of got out to the press, majority leader reid and i think then senator id biden said some comments like, oh, senator obama, hes okay. Hes clean cut, and in effect hes not al sharpton. [laughter] and so when i was listening to you talk about the representative, africanamerican lawyers, i started to think this sound pretty similar, and that the president is in some ways still having to live in multiple world. How do you do you see any similarities in term of the president and the people that you write about . Very good question. And, you know, i write history in the present. You look at the past through the lens of the present. Im writing about the past trying to take people seriously in their own con technical. Clearly you are inspired by things in the present. I was not inspired by barack obama, he did we did go to school together. I think i was inspired by a larger set of questions that have a lot to do with the world were in. Color line are being broken. We not only have an africanamerican president , but we have africanamericans as heads of major corporation. You know, during the financial crisis, one of the people who was heads of one of the wall street banks almost went over was a guy named stanley oneal. We live in a world which racial barriers are falling, and i think its always been true that breakthrough africanamericans are always negotiating all of these demands, you know. Are you, like, are you represented of the institution . The presidency, or investment bank, the larger world, or are you, quote, unquote, representative of africanamerican. Are you more authentically black. The question about obama. Is he authentically black . I think its a wrong question. Its a question asked about africanamericans breakthrough africanamerican like Thurgood Marshall. Going all the way back. Clearly im inspired by thing like that. Not directly by obama, but, you know, in the book i do mention obama at the end. I mention Clarence Thomas at the end. I think they are in the middle in which theyre in a world where africanamericans are not expected to go, and at the same time, theyre in a world in which people demand they be authentic, and they are struggling with that. And one of the things i try to show in the book that kind of struggle isnt new. It goes back to the Civil Rights Era before. Go ahead. I read that you were an electrical engineer with bill an integrated circuit design. Yes. What made you change your career so dramatically . Yeah. I started my career as an electrical engineer. I was an electrical engineer because, i guess, i was good in math and science and, you know, particularly if youre a minority youre good in math and science. Everybody says you should be a engineer. My father is actually an engineer. It was the biggest influence on my entire life, and i majored in the wrong thing in college. Thats really the real lesson. I majored in engineer, i worked as an engineer. It wasnt for me. I didnt love it. In my job what i do today, i get up every day, and i love what i do. I wish everybody could feel that way about work. But i didnt love it, and i went to law school just because i wanted to do something different. So, you know, as said, i think, you know, i like the way things have turned out. I like my career, and its all the product of a mistake. Thats how life is, sometimes. Yes. A couple of weeks ago we were here celebrating the march on washington, and we are remieshed there had would not have been a president obama without a dr. King. And im convince there had wouldnt have been a dr. King without began i did. Im wondering for the people you studied have selfconscious they were being part of a longterm Movement Development of nonviolate civil resistance as an instrument for social change. This is very interesting. The question about nonviolation and began i ghandi ideas were circulating in the united by the late 30s. Some of the lawyers in the book were deeply influenced by them. In particular murray. When murray she became a lawyer after she got arrested on this bus in virginia in 1940, and she was arrested on the bus because she thought she was practices began ghandi sis obedience. She was in a circle reading about ghandi and thinking about how to put in practice in united. She went to virginia and thought, you know, she would do this on the bus. Not only did she did it on the bus, she came to court and testified she thought she was practicing ghandi and nonviolence. She became really, really enthralled with the courtroom, and yes, so she was very influenced by. It some people werent. But even lawyers who arent so much in the book, harris crawford, the administration briefly senator from pennsylvania. Was also . B he went to Howard Law School. Hes the white man went to Howard Law School. Howard had white students all the way back. And she he was very influenced by ghandi nonviolence. After getting out of law School Writing a memo to Thurgood Marshall saying you thought do it. Marshall twhawnt sympathetic. So lots of people in the book were influenced. Some people in the book were influenced by began i ghandi and ideas and others were not. Who is next . Hell hello what are the current civil rights issues facing africanamericans today . I think civil rights i actually have a new book about this its called the new black; what is changing what is not, race of america. In the book i and a bunch of other people argue the civil rights issue of today are not the civil rights ideas of a generation excuse me the civil rights issues are not the civil rights issues are those of generation ago. In some ways they are, some ways they are not. I would think the biggest civil rights issue right now is the fact that an entire generation of africanamerican men are essentially being sent to prison and no one seems to care. [applause] it isnt a civil rights issue like a generation ago. Theres no not outright discrimination. In fact, theres lots of stuff that looks a little bit like discrimination that helped it to happen. We have basically very little Public Policy trying to address this. Every now and then; right, so its not an accident, you know. Erick holder is the first africanamerican attorney general. Its not an accident holder has been, you know, he announced the policy not long ago, you know, essentially that this part of justice is going to not try to put as many people in jail even when the law seems to require they send someone to jail. There are people that worry about it. There are people trying to get with it. Were in a huge debate about pots education right now. Its about how to improve schools, and i think if you could do two things, if you could get black men to graduate from high school and go college, you dramatically decrease the likelihood of winding up in the criminal justice system. If you do thing two things, improve the quality of education, and prevent some people from going to jail you get something you get an incredible okay. Ill say one last thing. In my other book, theres one statistic in the book between about 19 lets say 1975 and 1995. In 1995, if youre a black man with some degree of college education, you are less likely to go to prison than you were in 1975. In 1995, if youre a black man without a high school diploma, Something Like, i dont know, im going get it wrong. Its Something Like four times as likely to go to prison as you were in 1975. Thats with a weve done. Thats what we did in twenty years, and the number one civil rights issue today is undo that. Thank you. [applause] excellent presentation, by the way. What take away or lessons do you think modern Public Interest lawyers, which is the new term of civil rights lawyer, can take from the figure you wrote about . Do you think the economic crisis, the lack of funding for Public Interest organizations, and the high student loan rates is lowering the number of people that go in to civil rights law as a practice . Okay. , you know, lessons for present civil rights lawyer. One of the thing i try talk about in the book is that all of the way back, civil rights lawyers be question that marshall spoke with his enthat marshall spoke with his entire career how to be representative, and what i do in the book is i make representation to a question. He struggled with, am i representing the larger group . What is my relationship to the larger group . To some extent, being a lawyer meant that he was different. His key to the system was being different from the africanamerican. Thats why white lawyers and judges could accept him in court. Thats why he could win. And i think this is something that, you know, Public Interest lawyers struggle with today; right . Youre representing a group, sometimes a member of the group. Sometimes not a member of the group, but what is that relationship between the lawyer, the advocate, the person who has greater access to the legal system representing all of these people who dont . Theres not a right answer to that, but its just always have a question you have to keep asking youre. Okay. Second half of the question was the sorry. Give me the second half of the question. The second half was asking whether or not you think there are going to be fewer people entering to the civil rights field. Two things, right. Were in the middle of madness right now. I should say this. The federal government is going to shut down on october 1st, maybe. Probably, i think. And if it doesnt shut down on october 1st. On october 15th, the federal government will lose its ability to borrow. And theres a bill in congress cut, you know, millions of dollars from food stamps. And those kinds of Public Policies disportion nately impact the ability to offer Legal Services to people who cant afford them. The ability to offer health care, the ability to offer a variety of social services to a wide group of americans when we are struggling to get out of a recession. So the short an to the question is, yeah, i mean, resources for Public Interest advocacy of any kind have been dwindling over the past generation, public resources. Were in the middle of something that is crazy. Its not too strong of a word for it. The craziness [applause] the craziness disportion nately affect those who are in most need of those services. And its not just racial minorities. Lots of people in america will be affected by the mad thank were in. And i im not going say anything more poignant that that. Were in the a nonpat dan gathering. You speak very eloquently in regard to the civil rights movement, thank you for that. My question is this; have you ever done any research about those people who have advocated throughout the judicial process. Advocating for civil rights who are not lawyers . Im sorry. Not lawyers . Yes. Yes. Okay. The prosay civil litigant on behalf of the Public Interest . I i havent done a lot of research on prosay litigants. I havent done a lot of research on people who are not lawyers. Social movements. Lot of people doing that kind of work. Its very needed, you know, you can only do so much in one book. I kind of do something in one book. I agree 100 with the rest of the question. Its something that we im a historian. We struggle with it because the people easy to write about, easiest to write about are the people who are the most education, the people who leave paper behind, the people who leave some mark of their presence. And very hard to write about other folks. But we have to. I think we are at time . So thank you for a wonderful set of question. [applause] [applause] this event was part of the 2013 National Book festival in washington, d. C. For more information visit loc. Gov bookfest. Every weekend since 1998, cspan2s booktv is shown over 40,000 hours of programming with top nonfiction authors including edie myers. I thought thats the answer. If there were more women in politics, the more women in power around the world things would change. I called my editor and said im going to write about and she said okay. All of us in the workingclass are subjected to punitive taxes, being ignored either elite media, not getting any kind of special interest help in washington like the fat cats get. We are all in the same boat no matter what color we are and thats the real problem. Where the only National Television network devoted exclusively to nonfiction books. Throughout the fall we are marking 15 years of booktv on cspan2. Heres a look at some of whats ahead this morning on cspan2. During her 12 years in the white house, Eleanor Roosevelt traveled constantly, speaking on behalf of the president s new deal policies and pursuing causes important to her; education, a