The Courts : correlations and contradictions

This discussion of the jurisprudential history of civil rights will attempt to review the legal origins and the changing legal concepts of the subject of civil rights. That review will in turn disclose some of the correlations and contradictions and the resulting dilemmas that have arisen during the legal development of the subject of civil rights. The keystone of our concept of civil rights is Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which reads quote no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws and quote the fourteenth amendment was proposed by Congress and June 13th 1866 and ratification appears to have been completed on July 9th 1868. The amendment adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War was designed and intended to grant broad protection to all persons in the United States especially the negro. However that lofty purpose has been frustrated for almost 100 years and the bitter fruits of the frustration are being harvested Now during the 1960s.

It took only 15 years after the adoption of the 14th Amendment for the first contradiction to occur and the actor strangely enough was the Supreme Court in 1883. The court announced in the so-called civil rights cases. That the 14th Amendment is limited to prevent only state action of discrimination that is discriminatory state laws and discriminatory act done under state authority. The court said that the amendment was not applicable in any respect to discriminatory actions on the part of private individuals. The decision invalidated the Civil Rights Act of March 8 1875 which provided that any person who denied any other person the full and equal enjoyment of public accommodations on the grounds of race or color was to forfeit and pay the sum of $500 to the person aggrieved and would be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor. Upon conviction the defendant would be fined not less than $500 or more than a thousand dollars or would be imprisoned not less than 30 days no more than one year.

Now it's interesting to note that though the civil rights cases arose for the most part from the denial of access to accommodations in the south one of the denials involved the refusal of a seat to a colored person in the dress circle of McGuire's Theater in San Francisco California. Although the majority decision in the civil rights cases went down in history as the foundation of the limitation upon the constitutional power of government to prohibit discrimination in this country the case is equally well-known for a stirring in a sensitive dissent by the then Justice Harlan. Mr. Justice Harlan's stated that the substance and spirit of the 14th Amendment had been sacrificed by what he called the court's quote subtle and ingenious verbal criticism unquote. His dissent included a detailed historical analysis of the problems faced by our country which gave rise to the adoption of the 14th amendment including the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which was placed at the disposal of the master seeking to recover his fugitive slave substantially the whole

power of our nation including the power to call up citizens posses to assist in the recovery of any runaway slave. Mr. Harland ashamedly pointed out that the Supreme Court in the case of Ableman versus booth judge of the Fugitive Slave Act to be in all of its provisions fully authorized by the Constitution of the United States. The Harlan dissent also referred to the Dred Scott case the object of which was to assert the title of a slave to freedom. The defendant claimed that Dred Scott being of African descent whose ancestors were of pure African blood and were brought into this country and sold as slaves was not a citizen in the sense in which the word citizen is used in the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court agreed explaining that since at the time the Constitution was drafted negroes were considered a subordinate and inferior class of beings they had none of the rights or privileges set forth in the Constitution. Mr. Justice Harlan attempted to point out that the

14th Amendment was designed to put an end to public and private discrimination. However whether he intended it or not his lengthy dissent merely pointed up the long history of support by the Supreme Court of our mistreatment of the negro. Having limited the power of the courts to prohibit only discrimination by the states or by instruments or agents of the states. The Supreme Court 13 years after the civil rights cases cut the heart out of even that limited hope of equality for minorities in 1896 in Plessy vs. Ferguson. The court set forth the famous separate but equal doctrine Homer Plessy one eighth Negro and 73 White was arrested in Louisiana when he refused to ride in the colored section of a railroad train as was required by Louisiana statutes. He claimed that the Jim Crow statutes violated the 14th Amendment as well as the 13th Amendment and he named as defendant. Judge Ferguson of Louisiana who was assigned to conduct his criminal trial.

Plus he lost in the Louisiana Courts and the Supreme Court affirmed those rulings. Plus he had argued that state enforced segregation stamped negroes with a badge of inferiority. The Supreme Court disagreed stating in a language that we still here in the land that quote we consider the underlying fallacy of the plaintiff's argument to be in the assumption that the enforced separation of the two races stamps the colored race with a badge of inferiority. The argument also assumes that social prejudices may be overcome by legislation and that equal rights cannot be secured except by the forced co-mingling of the two races. We cannot accept this proposition. If the two races are to meet upon terms of social equality it must be the result of natural affinities of mutual appreciation of each other's merits and a voluntary consent of individuals. Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial instincts or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences and the attempt to do so can only result in

accentuating the difficulties of the present situation. If one race be inferior to the other socially the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plain close quote. The court then continued and it put its blessing upon all state maintained programs of segregation of facilities provided that the state made equal those separate facilities available to negroes. Now the Plessy case did not involve education facilities but it made it clear that the Supreme Court would not attack state maintained segregated school systems for over 50 years as a result of the Dred Scott case. The Ableman case the civil rights cases and Plessy versus Ferguson. The South and in some cases in the north found support in the highest court of our land for a pervasive program of degradation of the Negro he was denied equality in jobs in public accommodations in housing in schools in voting and serving on juries in the conduct of his trials

and in police treatment discrimination was sanctioned by some courts which honestly followed the lead of the Supreme Court and it was fostered by corrupt acts of public officials whose misconduct was beyond the interest of many dishonest courts. For example shortly after the Civil War and the departure of federal troops from the south the Southerners discovered an institution even more peculiar than slavery. The convict lease system a legal perpetuation of slavery in which the state leased its convicts to sawmills and plantations not only that this system save states the expense of prison maintenance but it turned a tidy profit for their treasuries and it made several enterprising operators millionaires as Harry Golden States in his book. Mr. Kennedy and the negroes the states could assure a never ending supply of illegal slave labor for it was easy to arrest and convict helpless illiterate negroes and give them long sentences. The convict lease system was one of the more obvious reasons Goldens says why negroes never

demonstrated in the years before the turn of the century assured of support in the courts. Southern politicians on the steps of every Southern state capital for almost 70 years continued to promise that segregation in their school systems were persevered. They promised such devices as private schools subsidized by state money state tuition grants to white parents discriminatory people assignment acts complicated legal requirements for Negro parents such as multiple and complicated forms to fill out for transfer by Negroes to all white schools and frequent redistricting. Golden State's that in be in Bill Parish in Louisiana. If a negro filled out an application for voting registration in fine handwriting and Tsering every question he was failed on his answer to the question quote My color is blank. Close quote in hundreds of applications of rejected negroes the answer was dark or brown or colored or Negro. All of which were

wrong. The correct answer was black. And if indeed a negro wrote Black the registrar turned him down for not knowing the answer to the next question. The name of the sheriff in an adjoining county. The courts not only failed to protect negroes from corrupt officials often they participated directly in the oppression. After a mass arrest in Mississippi when a group of negroes seeking an audience with the sheriff refused to disperse as ordered 44 defendants were tried and sentenced to six months to a year in the county farm. The trials lasted a total of one hour and 10 minutes. If speedy justice was the goal of the courts they were at least half successful. The speed was there if the justice wasn't in Danville Virginia a magistrate transfer the cases of dozens of Negro Street demonstrators to far off Norfolk. He knew very well that a Negro student who didn't have his own car fare would find it somewhat difficult to transport his witnesses three hundred fifty miles across the state so that he could properly defend

himself. It's somewhat ironic that the South when threatened by progress for the Civil Rights Movement saw the defense in the courts and initially the pattern was set by Senator Byrd of Virginia who called for massive resistance to the school segregation case of 1954 about which we will talk later. Senator Byrd's weapon was known as in her position. The idea itself had been uncovered by an elderly country lawyer named William olds and involve the doctrine that a state has a right to interpose its sovereignty between the federal government and the citizens of the state. The purported constitutional basis for the Doctrine lies in the 10th Amendment which states that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the States respectively or to the people. The essential fact of course which the South refuses to recognize is that the states by adopting the 14th Amendment delegated considerable power to the federal government to stop discrimination

in her positions. First important champion was James Kilpatrick Jr. the young editor of The Richmond news leader. Mr Kilpatrick seized upon the concept of into position and through a series of powerfully written editorials sold in her position to the south the doctrine was used and was raised for some time with vigor but without success. The South was reminded by the courts that every state surrendered some of its sovereignty when it joined the union. Another of the legal devices which was used by the South was the right of every defendant to appeal adverse decisions. The South also took advantage of the reticence of the federal courts to throw out a state law or a city ordinance and to wait for the law or the ordinance to be interpreted in the cognizant state courts before deciding whether as so interpreted it violates the federal Constitution. The effective utilisation by segregationists of such safeguards has been stultifying. For example in Goldman's book he points out that on July 31 one hundred fifty six long before

John F. Kennedy was president a federal court ruled racial discrimination in the schools in Arlington County Virginia to be unlawful. The court called for desegregation on the Monday before President Kennedy's assassination. Seven and one half years later the schools in Arlington were still segregated after numerous injunctions appeals and writs of search Ferrari denials of Reid's assertion R.A. and other steps in the legal processes of the federal courts. Prince Edward County Virginia one of the defendants in the original Brown case which we will discuss later has not yet provided to segregated school facilities having closed its doors in 1959 following five years of delaying tactics in the courts. The South also has taken great advantage of the technical limited effect of a court decision since technically one decision affects only the parties to the action. It might take millions of years before every person engaging in discriminatory action is enjoined.

In answer to a claim that the Supreme Court decision is the law of the land the south answers it is only the law of one case. We will discuss this subject in these topics later on. As with the Jewish people in the hands of the Nazis people have frequently asked why for so many years the negro made little protest or little effort to improve his lot. Many psychological and sociological reasons can be offered. However since our orientation here is legal the most important reason was that for many years the negro had virtually no legal remedy available to him as a result of the adverse court decisions which we've spoken of and he had no means to change those court decisions. In fact the courtroom career of the civil rights controversy took its turn toward enlightenment only in the 1980s when law schools began graduating Negro students who were versed in the constitutional guarantees. Those Negro lawyers were the vanguard who pioneered the legal study and interpretation of civil rights

in the 1930s the end of the ACP kept track of every negro law student in the country laying the groundwork for what was to be one of the most remarkable reversals of legal concepts in the history of our country. So the negro did not make his move earlier because he chose to wait to train a body of professionals dedicated and able to alleviate the plight of all negroes. That choice is a fact about which we can be both proud and thankful. During all the previous years of oppression and degradation the negroes first search for equality and freedom was not through Anneke which offered speed but through the utilization of the very institutions of the society which had oppressed him namely the courts the great mass of the American Negroes never rejected the existing social order. On the contrary they sought only to share fully in the benefits of that order. Well having finally equipped themselves with intellectual power to seek equality the Negro community turned the other cheek and sought help from the very agency which was responsible for much of its plight namely

the Supreme Court. The court responded in a series of cases starting in the 30s in which it reversed its previous narrow view of the Constitution and slowly dragged the Negro into the mainstream of American life. This reversal was both a correlation and a contradiction depending upon whether you view it from Jackson Mississippi or Jackson Michigan in 1934 the NWA CPA determined to bring its guns to bear first upon the segregated schools of the South and upon the graduate schools since they felt was paid really easy to prove any quality of graduate education using separate facilities. One of the first of the president making decisions was the case of Missouri x rail against versus Canada. Gaines was a Negro law student whose education was financed by Missouri and was conducted out of state. He argued that the Missouri practice denied him equal protection. The Supreme Court agreed requiring Mississippi thereafter to furnish gains within its

borders with facilities for illegal education substantially equal to those which the state had provided there before to white students. The petitioner insisted that for one intending to practice law in Missouri there were substantial advantages in attending the state law school both in relation to the special study of Missouri law and for the observation of the local courts. And also in view of the prestige of the Missouri law school among the citizens of the state. But Missouri did not admit gains to its law school. Instead it interpreted the ruling of the case to allow it to build a separate law school for Negroes in the state. The rule of the game's case was the beginning of the end of the separate but equal doctrine of the Plessy case separate remained a concept approved by the court but it became very clear that the court would examine the equality of the separate facilities closely. More cases followed. Moving ever farther from the blanket Plessy doctrine to a factual evaluation of the situations before the court. For example in 1950 in sweat versus painter

the Supreme Court ruled that a separate makeshift law school for Negroes would not suffice. It ordered the University of Texas to admit a negro student to its law school. The Supreme Court upheld Mr Sweat's refusal to attend a separate law school in Houston ruling that he had to be admitted to the Maine Law School at Austin. Chief Justice Vinson not Earl Warren read the majority opinion and noted the factors that make for the greatness of a law school quote reputation of the faculty experience in the administration position and influence of the alumni standing in the community tradition and prestige in the same year in McLaurin versus Oklahoma the Supreme Court held that a specially devised system of segregation interfered with the education of a colored graduate student. The all white University of Oklahoma. Mr McClaren fought segregation rules forcing him and 23 Negroes to sit in different rows while attending classes with whites at the university holding a master's

degree. He saw one as a doctor of education and I originally had been denied admission on racial grounds but the Oklahoma legislature amended the state laws to allow him admission. But on a segregated basis Mr. McLaurin was required first to sit in an adjoining room away from the class at a special desk on the mezzanine floor of the library. And he was required to eat at a different time than other students in the cafeteria. Later on the situation was improved and the graduate student was seated in a place railed off below a sign reading reserved for colored such restrictions just as Vincent said. Viewing the facts of education quote set McLaurin apart from other students and handicap his graduate instruction impairing and inhibiting his ability to study to engage in discussions and exchange views with other students and in general to learn his profession. Close quote the chief justice trod all over the language of the Plessy case and observed that removing these restrictions would not necessarily abate individual and group predilections prejudices and

choices. But he added the state would not be depriving Mr McLaurin of the chance to secure acceptance by his fellow students on his own merits. The handwriting was on the wall. It became clear that the Supreme Court was taking a new look at our country. While the ruling the Supreme Court handed down in 1054 in Brown vs. the Board of Education outlawing public school segregation was momentous it was not surprising in light of the several preceding cases. The court heard the argument of Brown vs. Board of Education. It was made up of Chief Justice Earl Warren Felix Frankfurter Hugo Black Stanley Reed William O Douglas Tom Clarke Robert H Jackson Harold Burton and Sherman Minton the principal spokesman for the South was John W. Davis the Democratic nominee for president in one thousand twenty four and veteran of more Supreme Court battles than any other lawyer in American history Thurgood Marshall's chief counsel of the end of the ACP

a key figure in a quarter of a century of legal combat on behalf of the negro pleaded the cause of desegregation. Another able lawyer Assistant Attorney General Jay Rankin spoke for the United States as friend of the court. The case is described eloquently by Mr. Goldman his book Mr Kennedy the negroes he states that Associate Justice Robert Jackson convalescing from a heart attack had left his hospital bed only that morning so that all nine justices could be together when the decision was read. His being there Golden says was the clue to the great event. But no one could be sure because the court had not given newsman their usual advance printed copies of the opinion. So at twelve fifty two p.m. on May 17th 154 some three hundred thirty five years after the first Negro slaves arrived in America and 91 years after the Emancipation Proclamation Earl Warren chief justice of the United States began reading the Supreme Court opinion in Brown vs. the Board of Education.

Your opinion states that segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the same ssion of the law. For the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group a sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn segregation with the sanctions of law therefore has a tendency to retard the educational and mental development of Negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system. Whatever may have been the extent of psychological knowledge at the time of Plessy versus Ferguson the court said this finding is amply supported by modern authority. Any language in Plessy vs. Ferguson contrary to this finding is rejected. The court concluded that in the field of public education the doctrine of separate but equal has no place separate educational facilities are inherently

unequal. The vote was unanimous all the justices said the same thing. Republican or Democrat Jew or Gentile Catholic or Protestant Northern or Southern or liberal or conservative. There was no minority opinion. Only two of the justices were Republicans. Warren Burton Wow three of the seven Democrats were from the south. Black of Alabama. Clark of Texas and Reid of Kentucky. You know what is another contradiction in our story reactions in the south immediately following the Supreme Court's decision in Brown were favorable or at least they were not unfavorable. Most of us have forgotten this. The governor of Arkansas said Arkansas will obey the law. Governor McCallum of Maryland stated our citizens and our officials will accept readily. The United States Supreme Court's interpretation of our fundamental law James Murray of Oklahoma stated Oklahoma has always followed the law. Whatever it is Lawrence Weatherby of Kentucky said his state would comply with the law. Frank Clement of Tennessee

said the court was supreme in interpret the law of the land. Even the governor of Virginia until he changed his mind six weeks later promised that he would call a meeting of local and state officials to work toward a plan which would be acceptable to our citizens and in keeping with the edict of the court. After the governor of Arkansas stated that Arkansas would obey the law to school systems Charleston and Fayetteville voluntarily to segregated the segregation spread to several other communities without incident. However statesmanship was short lived in the south. Whatever the reason whether it be President Eisenhower's lack of moral and political leadership whether it be a failure of the North to indicate anything other than indifference to the problem whether it be the political opportunism of men such as Governor Faubus and Senator Eastland of Mississippi. Whatever the reason the back of the south soon stiffened. Now as we discussed earlier the Brown decision and the decisions which have followed it have been fought by the South tooth and nail and with every

legal procedural device available to it. The use of these devices in the south has presented a liberal with a real dilemma. Should the segregationists be permitted to utilize every right of appeal and every delaying tactic in their fight against integration. Should the South be able to treat every case as having a limited effect requiring a negro by negro county by county city by city program of desegregation actions. Should a segregationist defendant in a discrimination action or in a contempt of court action be entitled to a jury trial when it is virtually certain that the jurors also segregationists will acquit the defendant. The devices have existed for hundreds of years and are safeguards against the abuse of power by any one person or any one segment of the country. Yet ironically they have been and are being used by segregationists in furtherance of their abuse of power. Well my belief is that those safeguards are vital and must be retained and must be available to all. In the

words of one commentator deliberating as to the propriety of the utilisation by the south of the safeguards as stalling devices quote We cannot demand a fast freight when it suits our purposes and the slow freight when it does not. Everyone gets the same ride. I think it would be a hollow victory for civil rights if civil liberties were trampled into the dirt to achieve that victory. Moreover an argument can be made that the South had just cause for relying for almost 50 years on the Plessy decision and that the apparent shift in philosophy of the Supreme Court should be subjected to the most exhaustive review and challenge possible before it can truly be said to be the law of the land. At any rate we know that the South chose to fight on against desegregation. We also know that the civil rights movement and the Justice Department accepted the challenge of the South and have fought negro by Negro school board by school board voting registrar by voting registrar in the words of Harry Goldman. The fight expanded from lawyers in mourning coats arguing

before the Supreme Court to lawyers with rumpled clothes and dusty shoes traveling throughout the South gathering volume upon volume of evidence to try case after case the civil rights division of the Justice Department was made up of five lawyers at the end of the Eisenhower administration. Today the division has almost 30 lawyers. Further countless other attorneys in the Justice Department are active in litigating against segregation and the role of the U.S. marshals in the fight is well known. In addition many volunteer lawyers have entered the battle swelling the ranks beyond those of the in the ACP. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 will further the battle against discrimination in voting. Employment education and public accommodations. Interestingly in the 64 act Congress has sought once again as in 1875 to prohibit discrimination in public accommodations. However in light of the civil rights cases Congress tied the legislation to its

jurisdiction over interstate commerce rather than to the 14th Amendment. Although Congress has power over interstate commerce was in doubt during the 30s in the 40s. The Supreme Court has indicated its support of broad congressional power over interstate commerce in the past two decades. Thus far most of our discussion has centered on the iniquitous record of the South. This is not to suggest that the North can be exceptionally proud of its treatment of the negro or of its other minorities such as the Japanese exclusion cases treatment the Irish of the Jews in ghettos. The essential difference between the north and the south is that southern discrimination was sanctioned and supported by governmental institutions whereas in the north for the most part the discrimination that has existed has been contrary to state law and policy. For example California has had anti discrimination legislation on its books since the turn of the century. For years northern state legislatures sought to balance the interests of the minority with that of the

majority by prohibiting private discrimination. But relegating the injured party through an action in the courts where the respondent would have available to him on necessary safeguards. However in some states pressures were brought to bear as liberals claimed that poverty and lack of familiarity with legal proceedings prevented negroes from protecting their interests in court as a result administrative agency enforcement of anti discrimination policies became the order of the day. There are some who have questioned this turn of events claiming that no fair appraisal ever was made of the efficacy of the court litigation system but that it was scuttled from the very beginning by those advocating commission enforcement. Well be that as it may the progressive northern states and the northern power in Congress have been quick to respond to the requests and pressures of the minorities to broaden their freedom of participation in society by enacting extensive legislation. And that fact brings us to the most current contradiction and dilemma facing the northern

community and its legal institutions to Stated simply the increased efforts and success of lawyers courts and legislatures on behalf of the negroes has not satisfy them. As Louis Lomax says in his book The negro revolt as a negro looked around him and it became more clear to him that he could not trust the white man respect him or love him. There was a concomitant loss of respect for law as an effective means of social change. Thus the law which for so many years had been the white man's law. Even in the north although to a lesser extent suffer the loss of the negroes respect further with the negroes deepening disillusionment there came widespread doubts about goals which hitherto had been unquestioned as ultimate. For example assuming school integration had proceeded as expected there was much doubt as to how this would have affected the current lives of the negro masses. As Lomax says the school desegregation decision said nothing about the right of a negro laborer to become plant foreman if he had

the ability to do so. Negro homes in the South were still searched without warrants and they often suffered physical violence and their jobs were threatened if they protested in the north the daily humiliation of the negro was affected little by much of the litigation and legislation. LOMAX remember standing in the back yard of a Tennessee washerwoman discussing the progress in integration which was made during the preceding 20 years. Lord honey she said I sure wish some of these drops of integration would who's down on me. In other words the slow plodding legal process of writing the white communities wrongs has come to be viewed by the Negroes as reflecting class concerns rather than mass concerns. Well the Negro is particularly frustrated by the necessity of having to prove every allegation of discrimination in court. Such an obligation on a claimant commonplace to lawyers is scoffed at by most Negroes who feel that in 1964 the negro shouldn't have to prove that discrimination is widely practiced

by the white community. He suggests that a mirror glance at racial imbalance in the workforce isn't in schools or a ride through negro ghettos is proof enough that private discrimination exists and has existed for years. The negro says the proof method is not only unrealistic but is just too darn time consuming. As a result the negro militant no longer looks to the courts or the legislature for help. Instead he has decided to shift into high gear and use civil disobedience. The originator of civil disobedience in the civil rights struggle in this country as Dr. Martin Luther King credits Gandhi and admits that the tactic is not new and historically the tactic has been utilized by those protesting in unjust law or an unjust government in the south. The law and the government were the very institutions which the Negro had to attack first. Accordingly he felt justified in demonstrating and in forcing mass arrests in order to overtax the law givers and law enforcers. The

device also had some impact on private discriminators since the apparent breakdown in law and order has had a marked effect on such commercial activities as tourism and retail shopping. Well the apparent success of civil disobedience in the south has been noticed but perhaps not fully understood. In my opinion by the militants in the civil rights movement in the north the militants have advocated the extension of direct action here beyond the bounds of peaceful and lawful protest and they appear determined to take on our police in our courts deliberately rather than to rely upon them for assistance. Many sincere liberals in good faith have challenged the wisdom and rationale of the use of civil disobedience by the negro in the north. It has been suggested that the weapon is the wrong one to use here since the real target here is private discrimination rather than governmental discrimination and it is both self-defeating and just unfair to do battle with police and the courts. When the real fight is with an employer a housing developer.

The negro militant in the north replies that his critics are self-righteous and unrealistic in their belief in our governmental institutions. They charge that police brutality and bigoted judges exist here as in the south and. In response to the suggestion by the moderates that the militants are using the wrong weapon they say it isn't we who are using the wrong weapon but those of you who urged the use of the crossbow in the jet age they claim the Negro will no longer tolerate the time consuming niceties of legal combat or the hypocritical practicalities of legislative gamesmanship which frequently have been the devices used on his behalf appear in the past they have worn the white liberal that the train is moving and he can stay aboard or get off. It appears that the militant is premature in his judgement. In the south the Negro is forced to violate laws to gain his freedom. However the militant has not yet proven that in the north mass direct action within the bounds of law

cannot have a serious impact upon private discrimination. Thus mass picketing shopping boycotts and other devices which do not include unlawful entry trespass or property damage have not yet been shown to be unsuccessful in a rousing the attention and opposition of the community to discriminatory practices by private parties. To be sure there may be instances in which the police and the courts go beyond their power and responsibilities and unlawfully impair the lawful and peaceful activities of the civil rights movement. However in that event there are still speedy legal remedies available to the movement and such actions provide little excuse for intentional violation of the law. But dialogue is not yet over and it is getting more and more heated. As a result the role of the Northern liberal lawyer in the civil rights battle has become a frustrating and difficult one. Generally doing that which he knows best. He has drafted legislation offered

conciliation and mediation and when called upon he has provided legal assistance in the courts. However the train ride is getting a little bumpy now as his sense of justice and logic and his respect for law are strained to the breaking point. As a result we see the final contradiction of our discussion. The liberal lawyer who has contributed so much to the civil rights movement in the past is now emotionally ethically and professionally unable to participate in what may have become now the mainstream of the civil rights movement. He is close to having to get off the train possibly with his departure the train will appear to go faster for a while but eventually it probably will lose both speed and direction. In conclusion we have seen some of the many contradictions in the legal history of civil rights in our country. Initially the courts served to support and foster public and private discrimination either looking away from abuses or

participating in them themselves. Then those same courts reversed field and began to offer the negro the progress and the protection which at that time he saw in the courtroom rather than in the streets. And finally just when the courts and the legislatures have begun to make progress and to see the light and to further the efforts of the negro toward achieving equality they appear to have been abandoned by the negro for militant direct action both within and without the law. The final irony perhaps is that the white community once more is now seeking refuge in the law and he picketing injunctions are sought and are often granted property rights which for years have been subject to countless restrictions raining from zoning regulations to condemnation are now being characterized as inviolate and in one of the most progressive states in the nation. We may see the California Constitution amended to give a carte blanche to the white community to continue its discrimination in housing.

It may be pessimistic but it appears that we are now full circle. Thank you.