Prosser Gifford: Good afternoon. If you could find your seats I think we probably should begin. I'm Prosser Gifford, Director of Scholarly Programs here at the Library and it's my great personal pleasure as well as institutional pleasure to introduce the honorable Robert L. Carter, District Judge in the Southern District of New York. Let me just interrupt one second and say this program is being filmed and it will be on the Library's Web site. So when we get to the question period, if for some reason you don't want to be on the Web site, don't ask a question, because you'll be filmed and we don't have permission slips for everybody, so... Judge Carter will discuss his book, A Matter of Law, available outside, which I had the pleasure of reading in a pre-publication copy. At least some of the book was written here in Kluge Center next door, because as most of you in the audience probably know, the Library holds the NAACP papers and that's what he was here using at the Library. The book, in my view, is an honest and straightforward account of an extraordinary career that used the law and a legal strategy over many years to change many aspects of racial discrimination in this country, first in the south and then in the north. And as Judge Carter emphasizes in the book and I'm sure will emphasize again today, this struggle is still going on. From 1945 to 1956, he served as Assistant Special Counsel for the NAACP and then from 1956 to 1956 as General Counsel. And his career did not end with his departure from the NAACP. His post-NAACP career has enabled him to participate in and reflect upon racial justice from a variety of viewpoints, most especially of course from that of a Federal District Judge in New York City. He received his education first at Lincoln University and then at Howard University School of Law, and then a graduate degree from Columbia School of Law, before he was inducted into the Army and then when he came out of the Army he joined the NAACP. The facts of his life are clearly and concisely and I think movingly told in the book, much more carefully than I can do, so I'm going to get out of the way and let him speak about his book and speak for himself. So please welcome Judge Carter. [applause] Judge Robert Carter: I always clap after, not before. [laughter] Because you don't know what you're going to get. I started working on this book of my professional and personal life not in this part of the Library but one of the other areas, in 2002. I came here to write my memoirs, and Dr. Billington, the Librarian of Congress, and Prosser Gifford, Director of Scholarly Programs, were generous enough to grant me a John Kluge Fellowship to enable me to come here and used these facilities to research and write my memoir. So I started doing this, I think it was July 7, which was the Monday after the 4th of July in 2002. I know nothing about how to get people, but I was very fortunate to -- I had all this material -- the day I came in -- I worked for the NAACP from 1944 to '68 and a trove [unintelligible] added to the Library's NAACP collection was delivered virtually as I came in to start working, and the period was 1944 to 1966, all but two years of the time I was there. So, here I had extraordinary luck. Then, to help me mine this material and get it in some form, I was able to get two people. I don't [unintelligible] but fortunately two brilliant scholars, Phyllis McClure and Marissa Smith, and they helped me during the period mine this material of the NAACP collection. I worked on it I think until sometime in September and I had to go back to New York, but in that period of time I had finished at least half of this book. If I'd been able to stay down here until December I might have finished it then. But I didn't, I had to go back to New York. From then on I worked on it in New York. I had responsibilities, and after a while I got bored and put it aside. Then I started working on it again with some renewed interest and I think my publisher tricked me because they said, "If you finish this in August of 2004, we'll publish it in September." They had no intention of doing that, but I did finish it. [laughter] As a matter of fact I'm sort of happy. Fifty years after Brown was 2004 and there was a flurry of books then, so I suppose it was a good thing it wasn't published. If it came out then it would have a little more competition. There are fewer civil rights books out on a career like this in 2005, so maybe I'll get some more sales. What I have attempted to do in my book is to set forth the pertinent parts of my profession and personal life. It's not an objective book; it can't be. But I hope it's honest. That's all I can do. The first 12 years of my life I lived in poverty. We had no indoor bath, heating. Heat was fire, wood-burning stove. Everybody was around it. We had a bath about once a week, but I do not remember during that period of time being hungry or cold at night. Then when I was about 12 years old my sister made an advantageous marriage. She married a man who owned a bar and grill and she insisted that we all live together. She didn't go out and work for herself. And with the combined income -- well, I should tell you my father died when I was a year old and my mother was for that time of the first group of blacks born free, and for that period of time she had a reasonable education. She could read, write. And until she died at 96, she kept up with world affairs, read the newspapers, and so forth. She had no marketable skills and was prepared to be a housewife -- when I was a year old my father died suddenly. And she had to find a way to take care of her children. There were eight of us, but five were adolescents and so forth on. The three youngest of us she had to care of. So the only thing she could do was laundry. She was an indifferent cook and so she -- that was not a skill for her. So she had to do people's washing and so she did. And then when I was 12 or so our lifestyle changed. We began to have a middle-class lifestyle. We moved to a place where there was indoor heating, indoor bath. I had my first bath [unintelligible] luxury. And I suppose the fact that I was going to be a lawyer came about early on when I was in my last year in high school and I was about 16. They push you out at that period of time. If they thought you had some intellectual gifts they skip you grades and so forth, so -- I don't think they do that anymore. But in any event, I don't know now, there's some question about how intellectually gifted I was at the time because I was great at taking tests, but they discount that now. I could take tests over. I made good grades on the tests, so at that period of time they said that showed intellectual promise, but they are questioning that now. But anyway it didn't bother me [unintelligible]. So what I'm about to tell you when I was about 16, in my last year of high school, the New Jersey Supreme Court [unintelligible] entered a ruling that all the facilities that were available to white children had to be available to black children. So, we had in gym classes. This was in East Orange, this was a very rigidly discriminatory era. They didn't want blacks there. They wanted a high school, so they had to have you. They had us sit together, they discounted you. It was a very southern at that period of time era for me. And we had this been gym class and East Orange High School had one of the best swimming teams in the country. They would enter in national competitions and so forth in swimming. And you would do some calisthenics upstairs and then the white kids would go down to the swimming pool to take their lessons on their swimming skills. The black kids were not able to use the pool. We used the pool after the school closed. By alternate gender we were able to use the pool then. Then the pool was cleaned after we used the pool and refilled for the white kids to use the pool the following Monday. So, I read this thing and when the white kids started down to the pool I went with them, so the teacher said, "What are you doing? You know you're not allowed?" "I said the Supreme Court says I can use this [unintelligible]." He said, "You know you can't do this you'll be put out. I'll put you out." I said, "No, you're not going to put me out, I'm going down." I couldn't swim -- [laughter]. I could not swim. So, down to the pool I went. He threatened me, then he pleaded with me about his job. Sorry, I'm down in the pool. So, I go down to this pool and I couldn't get any of the black kids to join me, so I'm in this pool clinging on the short end of the water, clinging for dear life for an hour, for gym period. And I did that of course for every gym period until the end of the school term. I was there by myself. When it was clear I was going to be there the white kids deserted the pool and no black kids would join me. So at the end of that school year East Orange High School closed the pool permanently. I always thought that sometimes discrimination hurts white people So I've had -- my life has been a lot of confrontations. When I graduated from -- I went to Lincoln and then I went to Columbia and got a degree, I really had a sense or a feeling or hope, I suppose, that discrimination didn't matter. I was on this lofty -- I was doing a dissertation on the First Amendment and I wanted to find out the whole purpose was how important was free speech and freedom of assembly to the preservation of democracy. My thesis was half-finished, which enabled me to get a Master's in Law, because it was accepted and then I would have time to complete it for a Doctorate. This was in 1941 and I was drafted in the Army and all visions of academia vanished. Surprising, because the Army now, of all the institutions in this country, it is the closest to being free of discrimination. Now. But then I was Army Air Corp and the discrimination was unrelenting. I was in the Air Corp as an enlisted man and as an officer, both times unrelenting. You were treated as if you were nothing. That was because the Southerners had a hold on the armed forces and their view was that the only virtue for blacks was being servants to white officers. They had no potential for real service as real soldiers in fighting. They had nothing of that. That was their view. So the whole process of having black soldiers was that they weren't fighting material. Of course, what had been forgotten was that 180,000 black slaves and free blacks had fought on the side of the Union in the Civil War with valor. They forgot that. When I got out of -- as I think I told you, I became a second lieutenant and so forth and I had all these confrontations about discrimination and everything and I was not a good soldier. [laughter] I think I could have been better if there had been less viciousness and the attempt When I got out of the Army, all the interest in academia and joining the academy vanished. I felt that what I had to do was fight to discrimination. You know, I was a country boy from East Orange, New Jersey. I'd never heard of the NAACP, never heard of Thurgood Marshall, whom I became assistant to when I decided I was going to fight discrimination, but they found me. I joined the staff of the NAACP in 1944 I had some significant successes in cases, including Brown v. Board of Education, several of us. I think the score is, of 22 Supreme Court appearances, I won 21. I don't remember the names of those cases. One is Brown, I know, a few others I know, but I can't remember the others, but the one I lost I can. I know that one. That was tough. These were soldiers who were on Guam charged with raping and killing a white woman, and as a black man, you probably may or may not know, those stories are so commonplace that we are discounted, never believed [unintelligible] for the most part, very skeptical about that. These three soldiers I thought were innocent and I worked for about four years to try to save their lives, but I lost. That was tough. The book discusses that and discusses other things in my personal life and it is accessible. There's not a lot of legalese in it, although it does discuss some cases in it, and I invite you to buy it and enjoy it. [applause] Prosser Gifford: Judge Carter kindly agreed to answer questions and then he will, after we stop, probably around 1, he will sign books if you wish. So who wants to ask the first question? You're going to have to use the portable mike. Don't be bashful. Barbara Moreland: Judge Carter, my name is Barbara Moreland [spelled phonetically] and I support reparations for African-Americans, and when I see the efforts that are being made via Congress, via organizations, it seems difficult to get a foothold in our society to get people to seriously study this question, and just most recently the Supreme Court has refused to review the Tulsa case. Do you have recommendations for how we get the dialogue at a more meaningful level in the American society? Judge Robert Carter: Retribution? Is that what you're doing? Well I think the first thing you have to do is just try to reduce what you're talking about to size. When you're talking about retribution for all the slavery and all that sort of business, you're bankrupting the country and nobody's going to listen to that. But if you're talking, if you reduce it to some point where you're talking about making some attempt to reduce the poverty to allow people, black people who are poor and do not have access to facilities, to get education and so forth, if you're talking about that then I think it's something that's doable. If you're talking also about the fact that [unintelligible] our schools in the central city are disasters. Black people are -- black poor kids are in garbage pails, because they're not really getting any decent education to allow them to compete. Try something like that in terms of retribution. Raise the school level so black kids, poor blacks can compete. Do something that's concrete like that. That's what the retribution may be able to come by. If you're talking about retribution now with all the slavery and so forth and that, nobody's going to listen to it. I don't think -- I doubt that many black people are going to listen to that, because they're going -- this is going to mean their country's going to go. This country can't pay back all retribution, all that the slaves lost and put into building this country what it is. Prosser Gifford: While people are thinking, let me ask you a question. I think it's fair to say that Brown is sort of a hinge in the book. That is, it's obviously a central part in your career, but when you talk about taking the fight north, even with the legal strategy, which has been carefully worked out, it seems to have been much less successful in the -- in northern educational settings, post-Brown, than it was in getting up to and succeeding with the Brown case. What do you think were the main impediments to pursuing the kind of successful strategy that you'd done earlier? Judge Robert Carter: I'd better stand up. I think -- I think there are -- I think there's several things, North and South. The southern whites knew about slavery and so forth and when slaves were freed what they normally tried to do was to keep them enslaved and so they knew they were doing that. And the South -- I mean the North was very good at fighting that battle. But northerners don't want to face the fact that there is segregation here, there is discrimination here. "There's no law," they say. And if black kids are not doing well in school, that's because they have no talent. They don't have the [unintelligible], which of course is a general view of whites in this society. This society is based upon white supremacy and most whites are ready to believe, even though they, many of them say they don't feel that way, and I'm sure most of you here will object to being blind to the fact that you feel that whites are superior to blacks in some way. But this society is so invidious in its view about white dominance that it's difficult for anybody, really anybody in this society to not be caught up in that in some way, that somehow the white skin provides superior brain level, whatever, and that the black skin provides[unintelligible]. "You're not," you know, "you're good with your hands, but your brain is not as good as mine." And whites have the [unintelligible]. And I have run into so many white people in my lifetime, say, "Well you know, I'm not prejudiced. There are no blacks in my -- from where I come from, so I can't be prejudiced." But those people are probably the most prejudiced there are, because they've never had to deal with black people. They haven't seen them and know them, and their views are based upon a view that they -- stereotype. So, to be free of racial discrimination one way or the other in this system is tough. And it's something that you have to work at day and night and in your sleep to really figure yourself out. [applause] Only a few of you -- by that, only a few of you realize that. Prosser Gifford: Okay. Yes, over here? Carolyn. Carolyn Brown: A more, I guess recent, this may be the last 10 years, a way of talking -- Judge Robert Carter: You have to start again. Carolyn Brown: Over the last 10 years, I think, approximately, one way of talking about these issues has been discrimination and prejudice is one thing in its own category, but there's been much discussion now about white privilege and the kinds of automatic issues of status and prospective that people in this society receive just because of the context with which we're in. And I've sometimes thought that for certain kinds of groups, perhaps the group that we're in at the moment, to begin talking about white privilege rather than prejudice, discrimination is more useful. Just an example of -- I remember from my childhood, watching the -- on television watching the Clairol ads with the women tossing their hair, and you know, bouncing around and my looking at it and saying, "Wow, my hair would never do that." But a whole set of assumptions about what's beautiful -- for me as a girl -- what's beautiful, what's -- what one is supposed to look like. I'm not very articulate about -- it has -- what appropriate roles are. What surprises you when you walk down the street, what doesn't surprise you. There are all sorts of very deeply unconscious issues of privilege and non-privilege. And I just wanted to get your notions of that gloss on some of the issues we deal with. Judge Robert Carter: I don't -- fact that you call it something -- what difference does it make? The name privilege is, white privilege, and white supremacy, what difference does it make? Doesn't change anything by just changing the name. Same to me. Maybe I've -- maybe I missed something, but you call wolf a lamb, he's still a wolf. [unintelligible] I don't know what -- Carolyn Brown: I think the difference may be in the capacity of other people to hear what you're saying. Judge Robert Carter: Well then, you -- then if you have the answer to the question, then you don't need me to talk. I don't agree with that. I just -- I think that if you -- by calling something another name, it doesn't change anything. Prosser Gifford: I think there -- more questions here? Female Speaker: Could you talk about the Brown case that you were the lead attorney in? Judge Robert Carter: Can I talk about it? Female Speaker: Yeah. [laughter] Judge Robert Carter: Or would I talk about it -- is that what you want me to talk about, Brown? Female Speaker: [inaudible] Judge Robert Carter: Oh I suppose that it's true to regard Brown, one, on the decision of the merits, there were two. One on the merits, and one on remedy. The one on the merits was a great decision. The one on remedy was a disaster. The one on remedy was a racist decision. The one on the merits was an attempt to really reach out for equality in this country and it was a great decision. But -- well, that's all. I think -- there's nothing more to say. [unintelligible]. Prosser Gifford: To be fair, the judge has misspoken. Last year the 50th anniversary of Brown and I think he's spoken at, I don't know how many occasions, celebrating that decision and the legal strategy that led up to it. It's very well articulated in the book. Yes? Female Speaker: Judge Carter, while I was researching for you in the -- over there in the Madison building almost three summers ago, there was one thing that I was really thunderstruck by, and I want to raise it again. I ran across memos written by Roy Wilkins. It was in the spring of 1954 and you were all anticipating a court decision and you were anticipating you were going to win, and Roy Wilkins wrote you a memo and it was reflected in other writings, in which he said, "Well, the southerners will recognize that it's too expensive to run two school systems, so they'll just capitulate. We will have won, and we can go on to other things." In your book you reflect some of that same thinking, that "Once we've won this decision the issue will be over and I," meaning you, "can go on and I can deal with the First Amendment," or "I can go north," or "I can do something else." I mean, in my own reading I've broadened the -- and understood how deeply embedded racism was. I couldn't believe how you guys could have believed what you believed at the time that it was going to be so easy after you won Brown. Judge Robert Carter: Oh. The truth -- I can't, I really can't -- I'm trying to look back on that period, because everybody around me, as I recall, thought the fight was over. [Unintelligible], who was one of my idols, Thurgood, everyone. Almost every one of us in the Civil Rights Movement -- but maybe in order to save myself, I can't remember how I felt through that period of time. I've tried to recall, I've really tried to recall it, but I can't remember. I do know why it was felt that way. During the period of time when segregation was legal in parts of the country, we were told by liberal whites in the North and of course, it was enforced in the South, that "it's the law." It's the law. And so, you have to obey the law. And many black people felt that when Brown came down, it was the law, that white people would obey the law. And that was really the feeling there. What was not recognized was that the law succumbs to politics and power. And so that's why the feeling was [unintelligible]. And as I say, I -- maybe it's to save myself, but I really can't honestly tell you how I felt then. And actually it was shortly -- the gap between feeling it was over and joining in the fight again was so -- was such a small -- the gap was so small that I don't think I had time to -- I'm kind of slow to reach conclusions anyhow, so I don't know I had time to reach conclusions about it one way or another. Prosser Gifford: Yes, over here? Female Speaker: Good afternoon. My question is, with respect to the 2000 election, if you were one of the attorneys for the Democrats, how would you have argued that case before the Supreme Court? [laughter] Judge Robert Carter: No, I'm not going down that road. [laughs]. No, I'm not going down there. [laughter] I do -- the purpose of the question was, "Do you feel that the decision stole the election," but I'm not going down that way. [laughs] That's something -- we have to move on. Can't redo that one. Male Speaker: I have a question about your childhood. You conveyed a story about the swimming pool in East Orange? You can't hear me? You conveyed a story earlier about the swimming pool in East Orange when you were a 16-year-old? That you went into the swimming pool Male Speaker: ...talking about the swimming pool story. Judge Robert Carter: What about the -- Male Speaker: I was wondering what do you attribute, where'd you get your courage to do something like that? You had nobody, no white person or no black person would go with you, where'd you find that kind of personal courage, if you could kind of talk about that. Judge Robert Carter: [inaudible] Male Speaker: Did you understand? Judge Robert Carter: No. Prosser Gifford: He said, "How did you -- because you were all alone in the pool, how did you find the personal courage?" You didn't have any black students with you and you -- where did the inner strength come from? Judge Robert Carter: How would I know? [laughter] How do we know? It was just there. I just was not going to allow it. I wasn't going to succumb, that's all. [laughter] Female Speaker: Judge Carter, could you say something about your relationship with Kenneth Clark? And the work you did together, both around Brown and in taking the campaign north on school segregation? Judge Robert Carter: Well, as you -- well let me see. Kenneth Clark and his wife had developed a -- they had these -- showing how discrimination affected children at an early age. They had these dolls, so, black doll and white doll. And at that time -- I hope this doesn't happen now, it probably doesn't. It's not as consistent now, but at that time they would show the black child and the doll. What's the pretty doll? White doll. What's the bad doll? Black doll. All the negatives were on the black doll. All the positives, the white doll. But [unintelligible] show the confusion, what is the doll most like you? White doll. And this was about the first time that it had been shown how prejudice in this country affected children, these were kids about six years, six years or so old. It wasn't known that prejudice really hit people that early in life. So, when I was sort of trying to architect the argument and the brief and so forth of Brown, building up the Brown v. Board of Education, I read an article by Otto Kleinberg, who was a Head of Psychology Department at Columbia University at the time, and what he had shown was that as the black children moved from the segregated schools in the South into Philadelphia, we [unintelligible] Philadelphia, the longer they stayed in the Philadelphia schools, which were un-segregated, the higher they scored in IQ and intelligence tests. And we were about to try our first case in South Carolina attacking segregation in schools, which later became one of the cases that was decided on the rubric of Brown v. Board of Education, so I went to Otto and asked him, told him what we were doing, and asked him whether or not he'd be willing to be one of our experts. It was in Clarendon County, South Carolina. And he said no. But he told me about Kenneth Clark and his wife and the dolls. And that's how I got exposed to, through Kenneth and Mamie, and the dolls and asked Kenneth to help out and he became a sort of -- well, not a sort of, a companion for us and one of our experts. And he had enough knowledge of people and psychology and sociology all over the country so that he got us those people in the various cases that we had to testify, so we didn't have to have any one or two professional witnesses. And Kenneth was invaluable help to us. And he's -- he's gone now. Prosser Gifford: We can take one more question here. Where's that mic -- Male Speaker: Judge Carter? Judge Carter? I wanted to find out on your perspective how do you think the change in the Supreme Court either benefited or hurt your case at the time. The change in the Supreme Court at that time, that Brown v. Board of Education, helped or hurt your case at the time. Judge Robert Carter: [inaudible] Prosser Gifford: He was asking whether the change in the personnel of the court was a key factor in the Brown decision, in your view. Judge Robert Carter: Brown was a unanimous decision. Oh I see, [unintelligible]. Yes, I suspect that's right. You mean that the Chief Justice was replaced by Warren. I forgot what the old Chief Justice's name was. It would be very unlikely that if he had remained that Brown would have been a unanimous decision. Very unlikely. We might have won, but it would've been a divided court. I'm only -- this is a projection. The poor man's dead now, so he can't speak for himself, but -- [laughter] -- in any event, that's how I would feel about it. What was his name, Bill? Male Speaker: It's Fred Vinson. Female Speaker: Fred Vinson. Male Speaker: Fred Vinson. Judge Robert Carter: Yeah, I didn't get Vinson. I got the Fred, but not the Vinson [unintelligible]. I'm sorry, I -- [unintelligible]. Male Speaker: [inaudible] Male Speaker: I think it's on. Speak into it. Male Speaker: Can you hear me? Okay. Hi, Judge Carter. My name is Clifton Knight. I'm an employee here at the Library of Congress. And it's a pleasure to meet you today. I wanted to ask what your viewpoint is on the issue of affirmative action in our country today. Do you feel that there is currently a need to abolish affirmative action? Because it seems like, at this particular point in time, in our history, in this country, there's a consensus or a large movement that it be abolished, and I don't necessarily agree with that. And on the same hand, what do you think about the idea of reverse discrimination in that same context? Judge Robert Carter: Well there's no -- affirmative action is -- I feel affirmative action is very necessary. Black people have lagged behind. They were slaves and there's been several generations that -- we've been -- 1865, and so a hundred and some years. But blacks have not caught up with white people in terms of wealth and all, any of the facilities. They still lag behind. And there's a need for poor blacks to be pushed and put into some -- to be pushed, to be able to be convinced that they can do work, that they can succeed in this world. They're in bad schools for the most part and many of them -- the commonplace view is that many, particularly the black young men, hide their fear of competing with white men by trashing education and so forth, saying, "[unintelligible] white man, and blah blah blah." But what they're doing is that they're afraid. They don't want -- they're just afraid to compete. They've been in this area and they don't know how to compete and so they're afraid. And somehow that has to be broken. I have a crazy idea, feeling, that what I ought to do, I -- my life I've started out very poor -- being poor then is not like being poor now, but you don't have to make a [unintelligible] about being poor and being poverty. And managed to get into the mainstream and succeed. And it seems to me that that ought to be some kind of model for these black kids who feel, are afraid of competing and so forth. And I didn't compete or go into, you know, some esoteric -- I was fighting against discrimination. Some movement that's constant at that level. So it seems to me that maybe that model might help. Of course, I'm trying to sell my book now. [laughs] [laughter] But maybe that's the model that might help. I'm quite serious, to sort of break that cycle. Prosser Gifford: I think maybe that's a -- his being a model is perhaps a good place to end this session. And the gentleman who asked about the swimming pool, you're absolutely right, because if you read this book there are a number of other instances where he showed exactly that same determination, without any, you know, large structural support. It's a tremendous inner strength and conviction and also a belief in the law. So it is indeed a matter of law. Thank you all for coming and thank Judge Carter.