Day 2: Events: The Law

Tape 1 to 2A

Federal District Court Judge Constance Baker Motley explores the legal framework of the civil rights movement from the Declaration of Independence through Reconstruction to the legal battles of the 1950's and 60's.  She explores the terrible impact of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) in the North as well as the South.

As a young lawyer for the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP, Motley wrote the original complaint in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Until Brown, the legal strategy in most civil rights cases was not to challenge segregation per se but rather the constitutionality of unequal facilities. Even after Brown, the Legal Defense Fund chose to concentrate on states that bordered the deep South.  But Brown became a watershed that brought people into the movement and challenges mounted rapidly. The movement represented a reclamation of what the Reconstruction congress had imagined.

Judge Motley answers about NAACP/Legal Defense Fund strategy of pursuing public institutions of learning instead of public accomodations.

Tape 2A & B

Professor Linda Greene of Georgetown University  begins with a 1964 Gallup Poll reflecting the difference of opinion on civil rights 10 years after Brown - 34 percent of national respondents thought that President Johnson was pushing to hard on civil rights as compared to 67 percent of southern whites.

Professor Greene believes that Brown did not amount to a fait accompli for integration.  It was only 14 pages long, limited in wording and lightly footnoted.  It took no stand on remedies and states could offer reasons for delay.

Professor Greene points to two conflicts that characterized much of the debate after Brown: the balance of power between states and federal authority and the distinction between private action and public discrimination.  According to Green, the sit-ins illuminated the role of the state in maintaining private discrimination.

Former Attorney-General Ramsey Clark looks at the civil rights movement from the perspective of the Justice Department during the Kennedy and Johnson Adminstrations. He observes that much of the resistance to the civil rights movement came from entrenched elements of the law enforcement community, including the federal branch, who liked things just the way they were.

Tape 3

Clark is questioned about the relationship between Martin Luther King and the Kennedy brothers.  He is also questioned about Attorney-General Robert Kennedy's authorization of two wire taps on King in October 1963.

Further Q&A with Motley, Greene and Clark.

Introduction of Julius Chambers.

Tape 4 ( Side A only)

Julius Chambers speaks about the role of the Legal Defense Fund.  He is questioned about the lives of those individuals who won their place in historically segregated high schools and colleges after the furor died down.