Bill Robinson Interview Transcript

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Oral History Interview with Bill Robinson, Interview by Susie Penman, Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project. Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute.

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Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project

Bill Robinson

Interviewed by Susie Penman

October 27, 2023

Washington D.C

Length: 02:41:49

Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program at University of North Carolina

at Chapel Hill

LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.

This transcript has been reviewed by Bill Robinson, the Southern Oral History Program, and LDF. It

has been lightly edited, in consultation with Bill Robinson, for readability and clarity. Additions and

corrections appear in both brackets and footnotes. If viewing corresponding video footage, please

refer to this transcript for corrected information.

[START OF INTERVIEW]

Susie Penman: This is Susie Penman from the Southern Oral History Program at the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It’s October 27th, 2023, at about 11:45 in the morning.

And I’m here in Washington, D.C., with Mr. Bill Robinson in his home to conduct an interview for

the LDF Oral History Project. Thank you very much for being here and sharing your story.

Bill Robinson: Well, Susie, thank you for including me.

SP: To begin with, can you just introduce yourself, tell us who you are?

BR: Yeah. I’m Bill Robinson. I worked at LDF during the late [19]60s, early [19]70s. It was,

in many respects, the pinnacle of my career. I enjoyed it immensely. And frankly, I think during my

time I accomplished a little good, that again, I’m enormously proud of.

SP: And we’ll start at the beginning. You grew up in Oberlin.

BR: Oberlin, Ohio. Yes.

SP: Can you talk a little bit about the Oberlin of your boyhood?

BR: Yeah. Where to start? Oberlin is a small college town. The town and the college were

established and formed at the same time by the same people, a group of highly progressive

Episcopalians who were moving West to set up a community and a college and exactly where they

were going to locate it, it was up in the air. They needed a sign. They needed a sign. And they were

camped out in Oberlin at what wound up being the town square. And that evening, a bear passed by

the campsite, and they took that as the sign. [00:01:59] They were camping beneath what became the

historic Elm, and Oberlin was born, back in 1833. They were visionaries. They set up a college that

from the outset they intended to admit both women, revolutionary at the time, and African-

Americans. And to do both was truly revolutionary. It was the first college in the country then to

admit both African-Americans and women. And that progressive beginning is an important part of

the DNA, if you will, of Oberlin, the town and the college. It quickly became a hotbed of abolitionist

sentiment. A spot on the Underground Railroad. And that spirit of progressivism has permeated the

town from its beginning right straight down to now, where if you went out to Oberlin now and

visited the corner of the town square, which is right there at the heart of the town, you’d probably see

some people marching in favor of peace and against Jim Jordan, who, strangely enough [laughs],

after redistricting became the congressman representing Oberlin. Although historically, traditionally

over the last 50 years, they usually have had, until the Republicans gerrymandered and redistricted,

they had a usually, a progressive congressman. So anyhow, if you grew up in that town, you were

perforce imbued with a sense of progressivism. And for example, I did not realize it at the time. That

only became clear to me, the influence that my environment was having on me, later, as I began to

piece it together. [00:04:21] Oh, you know, “Gee, where did you get that from?” So, growing up in

that town was an important part of who I came to be. Now, also, it was growing up in that town

during those times. You know, I’m a pretty old guy at this point, as I’m wont to tell my children, old

but not decrepit. So, some of my formative years were in the [19]40s and Oberlin, like the United

States in the [19]40s, America was a pretty socially, culturally, politically rigid place. White people,

Black people, they had their place. Right straight through into the, in the late [19]40s, into the early

[19]50s, McCarthy and McCarthyism held sway in the country. And, again, I wasn’t aware of it at

the time. But I do recall in the, through the [19]40s we only had radio at my house and we had dinner

together as a family. Every night after dinner, Dad would turn on the radio and we would listen to

old time radio shows like The Shadow, Just Plain Bill, and so forth. In the early [19]50s, we finally

got — well, nobody had TV in the [19]40s. In the [19]50s, by about 1953, we finally got a television.

And we were one of the early families to get a television. And I recall my mom being very excited

about watching the McCarthy hearings in 1953. And just being enormously pleased. She didn’t

watch TV, right? [00:06:34] I mean, she was busy around the house and regarded it as the boob tube,

the idiot box. The rest of us couldn’t get enough of it, but she generally didn’t watch TV. That she

watched. Again, it didn’t have any great significance to me at the time. But I realize now that that

was a turning point in the country and in the tone in our family. And I was affected by it. Didn’t

know it at the time. Only later did I realize that I was being impacted by views of my mom and dad.

And my mom celebrating the demise of McCarthy. All right. Things begin to change with

Eisenhower, both in the country, the country began to be more prosperous. Again, we didn’t know at

the time that the changes in the country in the early [19]50s were creating a hotbed that was going to

explode in the late [19]50s and early [19]60s with a demand for wider education. Throughout the

[19]40s and early [19]50s, for example, very few, generally higher education was not available,

generally. But particularly not to African-Americans. So, there were only about a handful of African-

Americans in town who had higher education, including my mom.

SP: Even though Oberlin was there.

BR: Oberlin was there. And a lot of African-Americans gravitated toward Oberlin because of

its liberal tradition and the total absence of segregation of any kind, with one, a couple of very minor

exceptions, that stood out because they were exceptions.

SP: So, you were talking about the McCarthy hearings. And even though you didn’t

understand at the time, seeing this version of the rest of the country and what was happening in it,

how did you reconcile that with what with your lived reality in Oberlin?

BR: Well, at the time, I didn’t recognize, reconcile it with my lived reality in Oberlin so

much. There was a sense that there was Oberlin, our town, and the rest of the world. So, all that

racial segregation was in the rest of the world, particularly in the Deep South, which we were aware

of. My dad and his family migrated to Oberlin in the 1910s. So, they were early. And my father

refused to take us back to Alabama to visit his family because he said, “There’s nothing good down

there. It’s just evil white people who attack Black people and lynch them. And there’s nothing down

there for us, and I won’t take you down here.” [00:10:01] That was his view of it. So, there was us in

our, as you suggest, bubble, in Oberlin, shielded from the rest of the world, feeling like we lived in

an idyllic place. And then the rest of the world. And it wasn’t just McCarthy. And again, I wasn’t

aware of that, but I was aware of current events. My dad was the only member of his family to

graduate high school. And back then, graduating high school made you an educated man.

Newspaper, every day we got the newspaper and he read it cover to cover. And we talked about

current events, among other things, at dinner. So, our dinner table conversation was an important part

of, I didn’t again realize it at the time, my folks’ parenting, them imbuing us with a sense of

ambition. Most importantly, a commitment to education and higher education. It was in the 1940s

that my dad pronounced, and he told the world, “Oh, my kids are going to college.” Well, that was a

ridiculous thing to say in in the [19]40s, for a Black man in Oberlin or anywhere, to be talking about

all of his four kids going to college. It of course came to pass that not only did we all go to college,

we all had some degree of higher, of postgraduate education. My younger sister, I mentioned to you

a minute ago, was an artist. Well, she was a Ph.D. artist. Both a professor and arts administrator, as

well as a creator. And of course, I went to law school and the other two, my brother graduated

Oberlin as well, and my other sister graduated Bennett College, and got two master’s degrees and so

forth. [00:12:18] But it was ridiculous for him to make that proclamation at the time he made it.

SP: Can you tell me a little bit about that proclamation?

BR: Well, it was, he was a talker. And if you were within earshot, you heard.

SP: So, he really did proclaim to the world. [laughs]

BR: Proclaim to the world. [laughs]

SP: When you grew up in that, when he said that, when you grew up in that, were you like,

“Okay, I guess”?

BR: No, I didn’t find out that he had made that proclamation until later, when other people

said, “You sure did make your dad’s statement come true. Nobody believed it at the time, we thought

he was just being Rip Robinson, talking, talking a lot.” But within the house, my folks had an

enormous commitment to education. Particularly my father. My mother was well-educated, and so

was her family. I mean, her mother and father and her maternal grandfather, all were college

graduates. Again, for that period of time, very unusual.

SP: And where were they from, were they from the South as well?

BR: They were from North Carolina and Virginia. As a rising senior at Bennett College, she

visited Oberlin during the summer, met my father and did not return to college. It was kind of love at

first sight. [00:14:02] They got married. And again, I was blissfully unaware of the relationship, the

kind of love bond between my mom and dad, or the extent to which they talked to each other about

their relationship, their parenting of their children, until after my mom died. My mom died and my

younger sister discovered the letters that they had written in 1949. My mom hadn’t finished college.

Well, my dad told her, “You got to go back to school.” So, they got married in what, 1939? In 1949,

he sent her back to North Carolina to finish with her four children in tow, and they wrote letters back

and forth. My younger sister found these letters and found diaries of my mom. And she wrote. She

never finished it because she developed Alzheimer’s as she was finishing it and couldn’t finish. I

began to read it in and discovered, wow [laughs], I never knew these things about our folks, or what

I just took for granted as how we were growing up. But so, anyhow. Now, where was I?

SP: It’s just a remarkable story. Just, I love it. You had this, what sounds like an exceptional

childhood and adolescence, not just because of where you were, which is its own exceptional sort of

variable, but because of who your parents were. And it sounds like they were two very strong-willed

individuals.

BR: Strong willed, and especially my father, who was a construction worker, he worked with

his hands. [00:16:04] He was again, not a college graduate. Those opportunities were not available to

him. And at times he lamented that. I think in our prep I mentioned he lamented that and he made the

statement, I remember we were riding in the car, driving in the car, and he made the comment that he

hadn’t gone to college, but if he had gone to college, he would have wanted to go to law school. And

he said, “And I would be awfully proud if at least one of my sons would grow up and go to law

school.” And I immediately responded, “Yes, dad, I’ll do it. I’ll go to law school.” I think I was in

second grade at the time. Of course, you don’t make a decision about what you’re going to do in life

when you’re in second grade. But I pronounced it and I continued to repeat it straight through high

school and off to college. And you know, again. “Yeah, okay, I’m going to go to law school.” And

then you get to be a senior in college, and you’ve really got to decide what are you going to do with

your life. And I had to make that decision all over again, and the reaffirmation of the decision to go

to law school was probably the point in time when I really made the decision, “Yes, I’m going to go

to law school. I’m going to become a lawyer.” At the time, I didn’t know what kind of lawyer. I was

not going to law school to become a civil rights lawyer. I was going to law school as a part of a

general plan to better myself in life. And again, the commitment to civil rights. [00:18:00] Once

again, I didn’t realize that that was something that was in formation from an earlier point in life.

While it was happening, I thought of — my admiration for Thurgood Marshall was similar to when I

was a young kid, you know, Joe Louis. “Did he, who won, did Joe win, mom? “Yeah, yeah, he

knocked him out, Billy.” “Oh, great.” Or when Jackie Robinson, for us in northern Ohio, we

celebrated Larry Doby as much or more than the rest of the country celebrated Jackie Robinson. You

perhaps know that Larry Doby went into the American League about two months after Jackie

Robinson went into the National League. Larry rode the bench the first year. Jackie played, and the

public abuse that he took was well known, well chronicled. The racism that Larry Doby experienced

sitting on the bench was less well chronicled. But Larry Doby was our hero out in the middle of Ohio

— oh, we celebrated Jackie too, but Larry Doby was our guy. I thought my admiration for Thurgood

Marshall was of the same kin, as you will. So, once a week, the Jet magazine would be published,

and I’d get a copy of the Jet.

SP: Did y’all have a subscription?

BR: No, we didn’t have a subscription. [00:20:00] But one of the little local stores would get

a batch of them. And I would get a bunch of them and walk around the neighborhood and sell them

for $0.25 a pop. I think I got a nickel or something for every one I sold, and I would get to read it

free. And the back page was always something written by Thurgood Marshall, describing the most

recent case he was handling or something by Simeon Booker. And as often as not Simeon Booker

would write about the exploits of Thurgood Marshall. And again, I’d say — but we all, it wasn’t just

me. I mean, Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer for Black people in America, and we celebrated his

victories. I don’t remember specifics at that time. I just remember he was my hero. I didn’t know any

lawyers. I didn’t have anybody to pattern myself after. I didn’t know really the details of what do

lawyers do. I didn’t have any sense of that. I just knew I was going to become a lawyer. And that

was pretty much true even when I got ready to go off to law school.

SP: So, you talked about sort of saying from the age of when you were in the second grade,

“I want to be a lawyer,” and then reckoning with the reality of what that would look like. Can you

talk about gradually realizing what it was a lawyer did, especially a Black lawyer in that time?

BR: Well, that was really, again, something that happened slowly and over time. As a senior

in college, I really had to decide, well, what are you going to do? The opportunity, the employment

opportunities for African Americans in 1963 were still limited. [00:22:02] Remember, the great

explosion of employment opportunities had not occurred. There was no Civil Rights Act for

employment or desegregation or anything else. Right. So it was, become a schoolteacher. Nah.

Become a social worker. Nuh-uh. Law school began to look all the more viable as something to do.

But in terms of what I was going to do as a lawyer, was again, very much unclear. There was one

African American lawyer in town, Phil Thomas. I went and met with him and talked to him. And he

had a pretty standard practice. My mom by then was in the workforce, and one of the women she

taught with, her husband was a lawyer. And I met with him, and he primarily did real estate law and

he shared with me a little bit about his practice. Again, I had no real appreciation for what they did or

how I might put together a practice. But I was committed. I was going to go to law school and figure

it out. And so, it was off to Columbia Law School.

SP: Can you talk about the application process and deciding on Columbia?

BR: Yeah, again, it’s a question of being in the right place at the right time. And I’ve got a

knack for that, apparently. [laughs] You know, I was graduating from college penniless. But Ohio

State only cost $100 a term. Three hundred dollars a year to attend Ohio State Law School. And if

you had a B average and scored, I’ve forgotten what, on the LSAT, you were guaranteed admission.

If you were an Ohio resident and you got at a B average and I don’t know, 500 on the LSAT. Well,

of course I had that. So, I was guaranteed admission. I applied and I got admitted and I was prepared

to go off to Ohio State, which by the way, is a pretty good law school. My major advisor, John

Donnell Lewis, J.D. Lewis, called me in. I didn’t realize that J.D. Lewis remembered who I was. I

met him when I first enrolled at Oberlin. We spent 15, 20 minutes together. [00:24:58] He told me he

was my advisor, and I took a course from him. I saw him in class. Otherwise, I didn’t know he

remembered who I was. Well, it was the week before graduate classes were over. A week before we

marched. He called me in. And he said, “Bill, I understand you’re going off to law school.” I guess

some of the other professors who had written for me had told him. But anyhow, he said, “I

understand you’re going off to law school. You’re going to Ohio State?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said,

“Well, I think we can do a little better for you than that.” I said, “Okay.” He said, “I’m aware of

some scholarships that just becoming available at Columbia University.” I said, “Professor, I don’t

have the money for applications.” He said, “You just fill out the form and give it to me.” I filled it

out, gave it to him, and the next thing I know, I’ve got a rather fulsome scholarship to go to

Columbia. And so off I went. And, you know, it was really amazing. [00:26:13] I get to Columbia, I

get on the bus. 42nd Street. I get off the bus, I put my foot lockers into a locker, and I go into the

subway, underground. And take the subway up to Morningside Heights to Columbia. So, I’m

underground and up to Columbia. And from Midtown to Morningside Heights, it’s kind of, you

know, dramatically different. But even at Morningside Heights, there were more people on the city

block next to Columbia than lived in my hometown. [laughs]

SP: Had you been to New York before?

BR: I had not. The only major city I had been to was Cleveland, which is just 35 miles away.

Very few occasions outside of Ohio. And then Detroit. Maybe once. Dad took us up to a Tigers game

once or twice, but that was about it. And then occasional trips to Greensboro for my mother’s family,

usually when somebody died. But other than that, no. And we didn’t have money for formal

vacations. Dad worked as a construction worker. You don’t work, you don’t get paid. We lived from

payday to payday. That meant he basically, he didn’t take vacations because he couldn’t afford to.

So, anyhow, New York was big. [00:28:09] Once again, I wasn’t aware of how much, how

overwhelming it was or how radically different and overwhelming Columbia was from Oberlin.

Oberlin was a coeducational liberal arts college where the free flow of ideas and debate and

discussion was, you know, free flowing. Columbia Law School was a cutthroat, competitive,

situation where we, our initial assignment was to write a legal memorandum. The guys who got the

book first, found the case, the seminal case, first, hid the book. [laughs] So now, fortunately, the

professors knew about all that, and they kept one copy of it on reserve. So, you did get access to it,

but, you know, I’d kind of lived that. I didn’t really appreciate those differences or the stress that I

was going through until later I stopped and I reflected on it. I mean, I guess as I go through life, I live

it and then later on, stop and reflect on it and think about it and try to put it into some kind of

perspective.

SP: Now you’re at Columbia, at really the height of the Civil Rights Movement. You were

there when the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed. Do you, can you talk about

what the environment was like amongst law students? [00:30:02]

BR: Well, look. Columbia Law School was not a hotbed of civil rights. Best way I can

explain it to you. I mean, Colombia educated, for the most part, students who were going to go off to

Wall Street and represent rich people. I’ll never forget, in Trust and Estates, one of our professors,

actually, a really good guy, a liberal guy named Louis Lusky, taught Trusts and Estates. And he

began by telling us, “In this course, we’re going to study trusts and estates for people who have an

estate valued at $40,000 or more, roughly.” He said, “People who have less than that, they have

estate problems, but they’re taken care of by the New York law of decedent estates. And so, we’ll

cover them in passing.” Columbia was educating lawyers to represent corporations and rich people.

And they, it’s not just that they were unabashed about it. That’s just kind of the way it was. It was

received wisdom. There was nothing to be proud of or embarrassed about that. That’s just what

Columbia was there for. Now, underneath all that, there was a lot of liberal pro-civil rights sentiment

on the faculty at Columbia. [00:32:00] Bob Carter, general counsel for NAACP, had gotten his

master’s there. Thurgood was very, very close to members of the faculty who consulted with him on

cases at LDF. Jack Greenberg, Connie Motley, finished Columbia. But they had classmates who

were of like minds with them, who were also very proud Columbia people. But that just, that was all

an undercurrent. That wasn’t what Columbia was about. So, in my first year, [19]63, [19]64, a

couple of guys convened, called for a meeting. They said they were putting together an organization

called the Law Students Civil Rights Research Council [LSCRRC]. Howie Slater and Richard

Granat. Howie had been one of a handful of Ivy League lawyers who the summer before, included

Eleanor Norton, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Howie Slater. They were in touch with Marian Wright

Edelman. Had gone South and concluded that the civil rights activists, mainly SNCC and CORE,

needed legal support and that there was a role for law students to play. So, they were organizing and

said, “Look, there are some civil rights lawyers, they’re doing work, they need research assistance.

We’re putting together this organization. During the year, you can write legal memoranda, you can

do research for these lawyers.” And he included people like Bill Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy and a

few others. [00:34:07] I can’t call the role so I’m not going to try to. And it sounded exciting. So, I

stuck my hand up and volunteered. I don’t think the work I did was of any real value, but they

humored me. I can’t remember the guy. I’ll think of it in a second, his name. Reviewed my first

memorandum and kind of, you know, assured me that it was useful. [laughs] I don’t think it was.

SP: But this is a memo you wrote for LSCRRC?

BR: Yes, for LSCRRC that year. And then at the, toward the end of the year, Granat called in

to me and he said, “Look, we’ve raised some money from foundations and there’s going to be a lot

of civil rights activity in Mississippi. Students are, undergraduate students are organizing for

Freedom Summer. Lawyers and lawyer groups are organizing and they’re going to be there, and they

need student research assistance. We’ve raised some money. You can go and be one of these

research assistants and you get paid $50 a month or $50,” yes, I think it was $50 a month or $50 a

week or whatever. But you were going to get experience as a first-year law student, getting a job

where you got a chance to do legal work. Well, I didn’t have any other opportunities. And it sounded

interesting to me. But look, I was not yet a real civil rights activist or, I was not, had not made a

commitment to be a civil rights lawyer. This was part of the process of that in becoming. And I went

and it was an incredibly emotional experience, that summer in Mississippi.

SP: I want to ask some really specific questions, if you remember — [pause as microphone is

adjusted] [00:36:20] Do you remember first arriving in Mississippi? Do you remember, and your

conceptions of what, I mean, this is Mississippi in 1964. How did you feel about going back,

especially with your dad saying —

BR: My dad was cringing. He thought I was crazy. My mother was supportive. That’s, you

know, mothers are. She was worried as all get out, but she was supportive and she thought that doing

civil rights work was a noble calling. So, she was proud of me. Well, she was proud of her children,

whatever they did. It was, you know, we were all a bit, at least apprehensive. Fearful. As we were,

we rode down in a car. A group of us, an integrated group. And as we drove through Alabama,

people would look and see white people and Black people in the same car. Wow. And they, I

remember we stopped for gas. And the white guys went to a restaurant. Got some food, and they

brought some out for us and we ate it in a park. And when we got back, we drove for a little while

and then the car wouldn’t go. Some locals apparently had seen us as an integrated group and poured

sugar in the gas station, in the gas tank. And that was one of the first introductions to the Deep South

and how Black and white people together were not going to be well received. [00:38:13] Then once

we got to Mississippi, you know. We were generally not on the front line as law students. So, we had

to be careful because the violence was all around. Only one guy got physically attacked, Dan

Perlman, outside the COFO offices. Was walking towards to one of the cars and kind of let his guard

down a minute, and some white guy hopped out of a car and kind of smashed him in the head and

lacerated his skull. So, there was blood, but no serious injury.

SP: You said COFO offices?

BR: Yeah, the Mississippi Freedom Summer was a coalition effort between Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, CORE, Congress on Racial Equality, the NAACP,

Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and that coalition was called COFO. Something of

federated organizations. But all of it was under the leadership of Bob Moses. Martin King came

through and patted us on the back once. But basically, it was Bob Moses who was the leader of the

effort. [00:40:00] And you’re probably familiar at least with the broad outlines of Freedom Summer.

It included Freedom Schools, Freedom Houses. But the main focus was political organizing,

registering to vote, and creating a slate of African-Americans who had at least attempted to register

to vote. When refused, then claiming that they were the real Mississippi Democratic Party and went

to the convention and claimed they should be seated, not the regular Democratic Party. And that was

an important part of Moses’s overall political strategy. But it was, it mainly revolved around voter

registration and political organizing. But it was Freedom Summer. And there were hundreds of

volunteer students. Early in the summer, the three civil rights workers, Schwerner, Chaney, and

Goodman, came up missing. Ultimately, of course, they were murdered. When they came up

missing, the Freedom Summer then dominated the six o’clock news. Every day, the six o’clock and

eleven o’clock news every day all across the country. And it’s important to remember, this was a

different, this was a different era. All of America got their news from Main Street news media,

namely the six o’clock news. And if Walter Cronkite said it, well, clearly it was the truth. Or Huntley

Brinkley. And they reported it straight up. And look, the brutal denial of the basic right to vote, the

basic right to move freely in society and so forth was put on display on the six o’clock news every

night. [00:42:25] The news of the missing civil rights workers ultimately, obviously killed because

they were they were promoting such basic democratic principles as the right to vote. Well,

Americans were shocked. So anyhow, that basically should give you some idea of the tenor of the

experience in Mississippi Freedom Summer. It was an incredibly, incredibly emotional experience.

When we went back to law school, all of us, and there were students from law schools all across the

country. Mainly the elite law schools, the Ivy League law schools, the University of Michigan, Boalt

Hall. The non-elite law schools, you know, many fine law schools, and they produced many fine

lawyers, but they just weren’t involved in civil rights efforts in Mississippi in 1964.

SP: Were you based in Jackson?

BR: I was based in Jackson and stayed in Jackson at the COFO headquarters, except for one

long weekend when my friend Bob Watkins and I were tasked with traveling up to Northern

Mississippi, Batesville, to do a canvassing for voter registration and we did that all around those

dusty roads. [00:44:17] And interacted with a couple of incredibly impressive and incredibly brave

local Mississippians who again, it was an emotional and deep experience for me. But Bob Miles was

one of them. And his bravery was, I’ll never get over it. And another guy named Reverend

Middleton, who was still registered to vote. He was registered to vote because he was an older

African-American. He was registered to vote as a Republican and he was registered to vote as a

Republican because he had been allowed to register before Mississippi shut it all down. And they

never took away his registration.

SP: Lincoln’s party.

BR: [laughs] Lincoln’s party, yeah. I remember he drove us around in his Jeep. His Jeep.

Somebody had an abandoned old World War II Jeep. Left it on the dump. He went, retrieved it, fixed

it so that it ran. And that became his vehicle. And he drove me and Bob around as we did our

canvassing.

SP: So, you said it was emotional for you. Can you talk about some of those emotions and

how it moved you to sort of change direction when you came back to law school?

BR: Well, it did. But again, I didn’t realize it at the time. [00:46:00] I mean, who I was

becoming, I was being changed. But while I was being changed, I wasn’t aware of it. I was having a

really incredible deep experience, intellectual, emotional, in terms of friendships, camaraderie. All of

that was combining to move me, mold me, if you will, but I wasn’t aware of it until much later when

I reflected back on it. So again, I didn’t have some grand plan and I wasn’t aware necessarily of all

the changes that were occurring in me while they were happening. Again, law school is an incredibly

intense, demanding experience and ultimately, I did all right, but it didn’t come easy for me. I mean,

I really had to work at it, and it required my full attention. So, I continued to do civil rights with Law

Students Civil Rights Research Council, including going back to — well, the second semester,

second summer, I worked directly for LSCRRC in New York heading up their summer project, and I

recruited the students to go to Mississippi and place them in Mississippi and so forth. And again, that

was moving me closer to becoming a civil rights lawyer. But once again, it was a natural, for me, it

was a natural outgrowth of my involvement with the organization, participating in their regional and

other meetings, being elected to an office, just because I was active. And so, it seemed the natural

thing to do. And so, I was moving along, being moved along. But again, I didn’t have some grand

plan. [00:48:15]

SP: At that point, how much did you know about LDF?

BR: Well, I knew LDF was the preeminent civil rights legal organization and that it hired

superstars like Julius Chambers and Marian Wright Edelman and John Walker out of Little Rock.

And there were articles in the media. There was a Time magazine article that featured them and LDF

and talked about how LDF recruited nothing but the cream of the crop. And of course, I didn’t think

I fit in that. So, it was the preeminent civil rights organization. There were several. LDF stood at the

top. I knew who Greenberg was. I didn’t know him. I was just a little law student. And I didn’t really

have any expectation of going to work at LDF. And so, I graduated and at the national meeting, I

mean, I didn’t have a job and I was thinking that I was going to get drafted right away. They asked

me to serve as executive director of LSCRRC. [00:50:00] It was a job, consistent with what I’d been

doing. It was a good opportunity. And so that’s what I was doing. And it was very much an interim

thing. And I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was worried about getting drafted. And if I

didn’t, if I managed to avoid the draft, I was thinking I probably would apply at a U.S. attorney’s

office or something to try to get some basic experience before becoming a practicing lawyer. And

anyhow, I got a draft notice. I knew, or the scuttlebutt was, LDF represented its folk, and they were

able to avoid the draft. So, I asked Jack Greenberg, would he meet with me, and he said yes.

SP: I have a question. When you say you asked Jack Greenberg, does that mean you walked

to the office and said — ?

BR: No, I called him up and he answered the phone. I told him I’d like to sit down and talk to

him. And I told him why. And he said, “Well, come on over.” And I went over, and I told him what

my dilemma was. I’d been called for the draft and knew that he’d had success. And he said, “Yes, we

have.” He said, “And we’ve never lost a man.” He said, “Unfortunately, Bill, we can’t represent you

because you don’t work for us.” He said, “But of course, if you come and work for us, then we will

represent you. So, how about it? Do you want to come work at LDF?” And of course, I was a little

stunned. He wanted me to start right away. And I said, “Well, Jack, I can’t do that. I can’t walk out

on these people, LSCRRC. I’ve made a year commitment to them. And if I walked out on them, they

wouldn’t have leadership and that just wouldn’t be the right thing to do.” He said, “All right, well,

then when are you going to finish up? When can you come to work for us?” [00:52:13] And I gave

him a date, which was roughly at the end of a year. And he said, “Okay, fine.” Well. So, [laughs]

now I’ve got a job with LDF. And it turns out, I appeal the reclassification to 1A, and the basis of my

appeal was that as Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, under law, I was

working in the national interest because civil rights was very important to the country, and they

should give me an occupational deferment. And I went out and met with my local draft board in

Lorain, Ohio. The draft board in Elyria. And the secretary was this little old white woman with blue

hair, very formal, who had me sit down and wait my turn, then took me into the meeting. It was a

bunch of older white men. Listened to me, thoughtfully, didn’t say much. Told me to go back out

and have a seat. They would deliberate. I said, “Oh, well. I guess that’s that.” [laughs] The chairman

of the meeting came back out. And in a very formal way, said, “Well, Mr. Robinson, we’ve very

carefully considered your application and we’ve decided that yes, we will grant you an occupational

deferment because we agree with you that your work is in the national interest.” [00:54:15] And I

said, “Thank you, sir.” And he said, “Now that that’s over, how’s your mom?” [laughs] I was

stunned. He said, “Of course, this had nothing to do with our deliberation. But your mom taught my

grandchildren in elementary school. And she was just the most wonderful teacher. How is she?”

[laughs] You know, well, the local draft board was supposed to be sensitive to local needs and local

community, right? But who’d a thunk it? I mean, that it really worked that way? [laughs] Well, it

did.

SP: And just like that, your future opens up.

BR: Opens up because by the time my one-year deferment would expire, I would turn 25 and

they didn’t draft people over 25. So, they didn’t just give me a deferment for a year. They gave me

an exemption. [laughs] And off I went to work for LDF and now became a civil rights lawyer.

SP: So, I have a couple of questions and I want to go back to that, you swearing to your dad

that you would be a lawyer. You were a lawyer. And you were a civil rights lawyer. What was his

reaction to that?

BR: Dad was enormously proud of me and my becoming a lawyer. And it’s really funny

because of how he expressed that on one particular occasion. I took the bar while I was at LSCRRC

and I passed the bar and we were sworn in, a whole bunch of us in the banquet room of the Manger

Hotel in downtown Cleveland, which was set up to be a luncheon event. [00:56:29] And it’s funny.

Dad, I mean, I had never paid for anything with my father. Time to gas up the car? He paid. Time for

parking? He paid. Time for a meal? He paid. He was dad, you know? All right, well, we get in the

car. We drive up to the hotel, I said, “Oh, dad, let me at least take care of the parking.” He looked at

me. He said, “Okay, you can pay for parking.” We get in, we have the ceremony. I stand up, raise my

hand, I get admitted. They come by. Said, “Well, would you like to have a drink? I said, “Oh, dad,

let me at least pay for the drink.” “You want to have a drink, dad, to celebrate this?” He said,

“Okay.” My uncle was with us as well. My namesake. He looked at me and said, “Okay.” So, I paid

the waiter for the drink. And we finish and he goes, “Well, where is the bill?” Waiter looked at him

and said, “Oh, sir. Your son paid for that when he made the reservation.” [laughs] It was so funny to

see the look on his face when he finally recognized, realized, hey, your oldest son is now a man and

he’s a lawyer and he’s a member of the bar. And he just broke out in the biggest smile and embraced

me. And my mom was just, I mean, she was almost cracking up. It was so funny because she knew

exactly what was going on. And she saw his reaction and the sense of recognition and pride. And it

was just a good moment. It was just a good moment. And then we stopped, and they took a picture of

me and my dad and my uncle with the little certificate and the American flag on the side. And mom

kept that picture for a long time. [00:58:49]

SP: I love that. I think it’s so moving. You’re a working professional, you could pay the bill.

I’m thinking about, I want to hear more, too, about this really fateful meeting you had with Jack

Greenberg that you initiated. Had you been inside LDF’s offices before because I’m thinking about,

you know, Thurgood Marshall is your hero, you’re entering this space.

BR: I don’t believe I had ever been inside their offices, there at [10] Columbus Circle. Maybe

because, I’m just not sure. They had a law library, and I may have gone over and used their library to

do research once. I know after he hired me, but before I came on board, I did use the library to do

some research, at least once or twice. But as a practical matter, no. I mean, it was, if not the first

time, one of the very first times that I’d ever been to their offices.

SP: What were they like? [00:59:57]

BR: They were good, solid offices. But Jack didn’t spend a lot of money on, and he didn’t,

that was not the kind of atmosphere he wanted to create. So, there were Steelcase desks, Steelcase

chairs for everybody, except the office, occupied by Jim Nabrit, who inherited the office from

Connie Motley. When Jack was setting up the office and outfitting it in that spartan way, Connie

Motley said, “Not me. I’m going to have a proper lawyer’s office.” And she had a wooden desk and

carpet on the floor and a nice, well-appointed office. But Jack wanted to create an office that had an

environment that was, I won’t say pedestrian, but it was a work office. It was a work environment.

And that did not at all detract from the overall sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps that I think

was a holdover from the days when Thurgood Marshall, who was — Thurgood had a personality that

was bigger than life. And the working relationship between him and that coterie of lawyers that,

including Jack, that were responsible for Brown v. Board of Education was a close knit, mutually

supportive, mutually respectful group that just, I mean, there was a sense of fellowship and

camaraderie, that spirit that continued to permeate LDF, frankly, from that day to this, that’s never

been broken. That sense of mission that is deeply inculcated in everybody who works at LDF. It’s

been true from then to now. In part, it comes from, came from Thurgood and his being an

inspirational leader. It also had a lot to do with our relationship to the clients. You could not help but

be impressed and have a sense of purpose when you represented some of the people that we

represented. I know it came to a head for me in my representation of clients in Roberts against, I’ve

forgotten whether it was Saint Regis Paper Company. And Mr. Roberts had been president of the

segregated local Papermakers union. [01:03:24] He organized the Black workers. They had filed a

charge. It was one of those original charges that I’ll get to in a minute when we talk about the

employment campaign. They went to Earl Johnson for representation. I wound up handling the case

with Earl. But Mr. Roberts, he was one of those classic African-American leaders. Salt of the earth

kind of people, who was going to oppose racial segregation and subjugation and be noble about

doing it. [01:04:12] And he was the kind of leader that infuriated the redneck whites. I’ll never

forget, during one of the depositions, one of the white employees made a threatening kind of

comment about Mr. Roberts during the deposition. He wasn’t being deposed, but he made that, he

was sitting to the side. He was one of the white union officials. And Betty Southard Murphy, who

represented the white union. Subsequently a very, very good friend of mine, a really good woman

who ultimately became a member of the National Labor Relations Board, among other things. But

anyhow, Betty turned to him and said, “You know, you just absolutely guaranteed Mr. Roberts’s

safety, because if anything happens to him, I’ll make sure that the FBI and others are at your front

door.” And I said, “Well, thank you, Betty.” I didn’t have to say a word. [laughs] But, it was Mr.

Roberts and the opportunity to represent him that was just so special. And others like him. When you

talk to U.W. Clemon and Barry Goldstein, you’ll get a better flavor for that because their clients in

Stockham Valves and in the steel cases organized themselves into, as class representatives, the

leaders organized the class and they would have class meetings. [01:06:07] They would bring the

workers up to date. They would set up class meetings so that when the lawyers came to town, they

could meet with all the class and keep them. And these guys, they had been subjected to such

incredible abuse and discrimination. Given the dirtiest, hottest, least desirable jobs, that took a toll on

you, and still maintained their dignity. It was just such a privilege to represent them. And of course,

that was part and parcel of why we had such a sense of mission and how we could maintain our

sense of camaraderie and esprit de corps. And that was not just a product of my era. That went all the

way back to Thurgood and his representation of Black people in the Deep South concerned about

segregated schools or segregation in in the military and the abuse that Black servicemen were

experiencing. Representing those clients was just something special. And that continues to be the

case right up to today. Again, if you talk to, when you talk to some of the current litigators at LDF,

you’ll find, I’m sure that same thing is true.

SP: And we’ll get to your, you know, we’ll talk a lot about your labor, the litigation work.

But your early work at LDF was of a different nature. Can you describe your early work? You did

some more law school desegregation — and you were in Florida a lot, because the St. Regis case

was in Florida, wasn’t it? [01:07:52]

BR: It was indeed. Yeah. When I went to work at LDF, getting on board was, it turns out,

awfully special as well. Starting with the ride up on the elevator. I get there that morning. I forgot the

exact date. But as we enter the lobby, I bump into Haywood Burns. Another one of LDF’s illustrious

alums. And I had known Haywood from our work as civil rights lawyers and as members of

LSCRRC. Now neither Haywood nor I can remember. One of us held the elevator door for the other.

We get to the front door and one of us holds the front door for the other and one goes in first. We

don’t remember who was first. But that became significant when, for example, we were the two low

on the totem pole, and there was a conference and only so many people got to go and “Okay, only

you, Bill, or Haywood can go. Who is senior? Senior person gets to go. Junior doesn’t.” Well, who’s

first? Who walked in the door first? We don’t remember. So, flipped a coin. I won the coin flip. I

was going to go to Tahoe for the conference, but the date for the conference comes up. One of my

judges sets a hearing. I don’t go, Haywood goes. [laughs] But anyhow, Haywood and I, of course,

became very, very good friends and colleagues long after we both left LDF. So, he was Dean at

CUNY [City University of New York Law School] when I became dean at the D.C. School of Law.

And one of the first people I called to, “Hey, give me the ABCs of how do you be a dean of a law

school, Haywood?” And, of course, he sits me down and we talk. But that incident, that first day on

the job with me and Haywood became a source of conversation and camaraderie between the two of

us.

SP: First day for both of you? [01:10:25]

BR: First day for both of us. Yes. And I get on board and you get your first assignments. My

supervisor, well, I was split between two supervisors, Leroy Clark and Mike Meltsner, and Leroy

gives me what everybody, an assignment that everybody wanted to avoid. But Leroy tells me, “Take

it.” It was to do the docket. Review all the cases and update the entry, so the current description of

the status of the case is listed on the docket, so that if the lawyer handling the case, and there were

lots of cases that you needed to go and review the file and prepare that update. It was, everybody

thought it was a dreary, mundane assignment. Leroy said, “Do it.” I did it. And of course, as a result,

I learned a little bit about all the cases that were in the office. Later on, when it came time to get

further assignments of cases, I knew what were the good cases, and what were not the good cases

and what ones you really wanted, if you could. And one of the things that that meant I had a chance

to put dibs on was the Florida school cases, which were good cases. And the group of cooperating

attorneys in Florida were guys I really wanted to get a chance to work with. [01:12:13] So that

assignment that Leroy gave me was one of the two assignments he gave me that really stood me in

good stead. And he knew what he was doing at the time. The other one, LDF had handled during the

sit-ins and afterward, a large number of cases that went up on appeal. And LDF, lots and lots of

cases. LDF had never bothered to collect the costs of printing the record, of filing fees, so forth, and

so on. And I even discovered that you’re entitled to a thing called an attorney’s docketing fee.

Anyhow, Leroy said, “Look, you did the docket. Now go back in and identify all the cases wherein

we are entitled to costs. Then prepare a bill of costs and collect that money.” Okay. I dug in and I

found a couple of dozen cases where we were entitled to costs. And I prepared the bill of costs. Well,

I wasn’t counsel of record in those cases. Leroy, as first assistant counsel, was counsel of record in a

number of them. But some of them, the only guy who was counsel was Greenberg. I prepared the bill

of costs. When it was just Greenberg, I could give it to Leroy and he either would sign it or get

Greenberg to sign it. Anyhow, about six to eight weeks later, all these checks started coming in and

they were going to Greenberg’s, because the checks were made out to LDF and they’d come in and

the check’d go to Greenberg. [01:14:16] He says, “Where the hell are all of these checks coming

from?” [laughs] And it was funny because Jack came in and talked to me about recovering these and

it just became an occasion where I got to know Jack a little better. Jack got to know me a little better.

And he stopped being, well, not right away, but he ceased to be this forbidding, intimidating, bigger

than life figure, and became Jack. The other part of it was, I need to get into the office early and get

the day off to a good start. If I get in early and have a coffee and get the jitters out and get started, I’ll

have a good day. If I kind of don’t get in early and half the day is gone and I still haven’t gotten off, I

don’t have a good day. So, I would get in early. Well, Jack would get in early, and Jack would walk

around the office. And a lot of times it would just be me and him. And he would come, and he’d sit

down in front of me and, “What are you working on?” And at first, I was wondering, what is this guy

doing? Why is he checking up on me? Well, it turned out, no. Jack was generally interested in

knowing what his lawyers were working on and chatting about it. And if you told him and he had

some ideas, he would share his ideas with you. And then he’d go on back to his office and take care

— well again, it was the beginning of the establishment of a working relationship between me and

Jack that later on blossomed. [01:16:09] Again, I didn’t know it was happening at the time, that I was

developing a close working relationship with Jack Greenberg. But later on, when I was first assistant

counsel, there was a basis. We had talked a lot about informal, inconsequential, little things, so that

when it came time to talk about big things, it was easier for us to do so. And again, I didn’t plan it

that way. It just kind of happened.

SP: It sounds like an unusual relationship with him, because I’ve gotten the impression that

he was pretty buttoned up. You know, he was —

BR: He was buttoned up, and a lot of people took that to be intimidating or standoffish. It

wasn’t. Jack was shy. Jack was actually shy. The ice was broken with us. It also was broken with a

number of other people, particularly our Title VII team. I mean, he had a great relationship with all

the guys and gals on the Title VII team, and he really opened up a good deal. It didn’t hurt that that

Debbie, his wife, was a member of the team. [laughs] And that, too, was funny. I mean, Jack and I by

then, by the time she came to be a member of the team, Debbie was volunteering, not getting a salary

because they were married. And Jack came to me. He said, “Look, Bill. I’m going to assign Debbie

to work with you, teach her how to be a good lawyer.” Okay, well, Debbie, you didn’t need to teach

Debbie how to be a good lawyer. I mean, she was so smart that that was almost instantaneous. But

anyhow, she became a member of the team. [01:18:13] And it was so funny because I kind of treated

her like just another member of the team, right? She got assignments. And sometimes her

assignments meant that she had to work into the evening. Jack was done. And it was so funny to see

him sitting there in his office kind of waiting for her to finish up [laughs] and then go home. And

again, that produced some really funny occasions. One evening we were there, and we finally

finished up and Debbie said, “Well, come on, Bill. Go home with us. We’ll get Jack to cook us

dinner.” I said, “Huh?” She said, “Yeah. He’s a great cook.” [laughs] And of course, he was. He and

Jim Vorenberg, by the way, wrote a cookbook together. Vorenberg was a law professor at Harvard,

and I think was Dean there for a period of time. Anyhow, he and Jack were great friends, and they

were both gourmet cooks and wrote this cookbook together. So, they were living on Park Avenue at

the time. And ride up to their elevator. And there were just two apartments on that floor. Theirs and

another. We ride up and we get off the elevator and Debbie says [sniffs], “Jack, you forgot to take

out the garbage again today.” I said, “Oh, shit.” And he says, “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry, I’ll do it right

now.” I said, “Oh, you mean, he has to take the garbage out just like the rest of us?” [laughs] It was

so funny that his wife talked to him just like our wives talk to us. He had to take the garbage out, just

like we had to take the garbage out. Again, that helped in cracking the ice between me and Jack. And

that, you know, the working relationship that we had will always be a hallmark of my life and my

career. He was my mentor. He gave me, I mean, it was he who decided that I was ready to argue

Phillips v. Martin Marietta in the Supreme Court. I didn’t know I was ready. And he sat right next to

me and made sure that I couldn’t stumble because Jack Greenberg was right there to back me up.

[01:20:45] And again, we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. I like to share some of the

funny stories about that day.

SP: Do you remember what he cooked?

BR: He cooked Chinese food that night. She specifically said, “We‘ll get him to make

Chinese food.” And he did. And it was great. [laughs]

SP: Of all the stories I’ve read about him, I didn’t realize he was an accomplished cook.

BR: Yeah. So.

SP: So, can you talk about some of those early cases that were, before you got on the

litigation team? So, just give us an example of some of those cases.

BR: The school desegregation cases. The Florida cases were great. It was in 1968, we wrote a

motion for further relief and reopened all of the cases because until [19]68, there really hadn’t been

any progress in terms of desegregation. And after Green v. New Kent County, where the Supreme

Court said, essentially, the time for all deliberate speed is over, it’s time to integrate now and do so

root and branch. [01:22:07] And armed with that decision, we filed motions for further relief in all

the cases and reopened them. And I then filed those motions in all the Florida cases. I’ve forgotten

now how many of them, at least a half a dozen. Working with Earl, Earl had most of the cases. Ted

Bowers, Earl Johnson. Earl Johnson had most of the cases. Ted Bowers had the Panama City case

and the Pensacola case.

SP: Jim Sanderlin?

BR: Jim Sanderlin had the Tampa case and the St. Petersburg case. Alcee Hastings had the

Miami case. With all the guys except Alcee, basically, I wrote all the motions and memoranda of law

and so forth. And when we got to the hearings, they would take the lead on interrogating the

witnesses because they were experienced trial lawyers. They did it all day, every day. I didn’t. And

so, they were much more accomplished at taking testimony than I was. I did get some experience

taking testimony, and they helped guide me and teach me how to elicit testimony out of a witness.

And Earl particularly gave me the ABCs of how to cross-examine a witness. And again, it was just

an incredibly important learning experience for me. But those guys, working with them was, again, a

joy. They were really pillars of their community. The guys who did the school desegregation cases

were the Black lawyers for their community, not just the school lawyer. [01:23:58] Whenever the

Black community had an issue, we took it to them. Whether it paid or not. They represented their

community. Anyhow, I wrote the pleadings for everybody except Alcee. Alcee always wrote his own

stuff, and frankly, he wrote better than I did. Which it was funny because when he later had his

difficulties, and he explained that he had prepared some documents and one of the senators said,

“You mean, you wrote this and there are no scratch outs and it’s just absolutely perfectly written?

Are we to believe that?” And I said to myself, yeah, that’s the way he writes. But of course, that was

deemed not credible. But it was true. I mean, he was an incredibly good writer. Didn’t really have

much contact with him until later, much later, after he was a member of Congress and active in

international human rights. And there was a trip to Europe with the Organization for Cooperation

and Security of Europe. And I was a delegate representing somebody. And he represented the

Congress at that. And we had a chance to get to know each other better and chat. But other than that,

he handled everything. But all the other guys. I had a nice, warm, wonderful relationship with them.

First me, and then when I got moved over to employment, I had to give up the Florida cases. And

Drew Days took them over. And Drew had the same relationship with them that I had, and it was

something that Drew and I then shared in terms of our working relationship with those Florida

lawyers, which was pretty special. [01:26:10]

SP: And as you said, these are Black lawyers in these communities who were doing work

oftentimes pro-bono.

BR: Right. All the school cases, they didn’t get paid for the school cases. They did a lot of

work, but they didn’t get paid for the school cases. Much, much later, after I was gone, motions were

filed in at least some of the cases to recoup fees because there was a fee shifting provision that

kicked in later. But all the years that I was handling cases, Drew was handling cases, they didn’t get

paid a penny.

SP: And of course, they’re coming at it from a totally different perspective because they lived

in these communities, too. Can you talk about a sense you got of the risks they faced working in

these areas?

BR: It varied. By and large, the lawyers were not the subject of threats because they did the

school cases. They had to be careful. So, among other things, when we traveled, I traveled down to

Florida in the more rural areas, didn’t stay at Holiday Inns outside town, near the airport or whatnot.

Stayed at the downtown hotel in the middle of town, rather than a motel on the outskirts of town, that

kind of thing. But as long as you were reasonably careful, I didn’t sense that there was any, any real

physical threat for me or for them. That was not true for Julius Chambers, who, I mean Julius, he

handled so many cases of such a wide variety and he was so relentless and so successful at

transforming North Carolina that he was viewed as a threat, and they firebombed his office. But that

was unusual. [01:28:22]

SP: And his car.

BR: I didn’t recall about the car, but yeah, he was viewed as a threat for a number of years.

Later viewed as the hero of North Carolina. But during the late [19]60s, he was viewed as a threat.

SP: And your shift from these earlier cases, the Florida docket, to the litigation work that you

did, which had been done by Robert Belton and Gabrielle Kirk McDonald.

BR: Right.

SP: Can you talk about that shift, how you found out that you were going to start looking into

the cases, and the changing nature of that work?

BR: Yeah. First, the employment discrimination campaign, and it really was a campaign.

And I want to spend a minute or two talking about it as a campaign. But it had been started and

headed up Bob and Gaby. Bob was head of it, but Gaby and he were really co-equals in terms of the

work that they did. Gaby got married and moved off to Houston. Bob had for years planned to

relocate to Charlotte, North Carolina, and become partners with Julius Chambers in North Carolina

and take a number, or certainly all the North Carolina cases with him. And Gaby took the Texas

cases with her and filed additional cases in Texas. I think she also, I’m not sure we had, she took at

least one of the Louisiana cases with her as well. And so that left the employment area without staff.

And we were at a point where Jack wasn’t hiring new staff at the time. So, he just came to me, and

told me, “Bill, I would like you to take over the employment area and phase out your work in

schools.” And Norm Chachkin was heading up schools, and he and Drew agreed that Drew would

take over the school cases. The Florida cases. I had also one case and I said, every self-respecting

civil rights lawyer has got to have at least one school desegregation case. So, I’ll keep the Fort Worth

case. So, I kept the Fort Worth case. And indeed, tried that case an additional three times while I

continued to do the employment stuff. But the transition was Jack came to me and said, “I want you

to take over this,” and I did. [01:31:22] And the first year or year and a half, I was kind of by myself

and on my own in the New York office and it was a lot of long weeks and weekends because of the

stage in the proceedings that we were. Now let me back up. The employment program at LDF was

very much a litigation campaign, and that was fairly typical of how Jack and LDF approached civil

rights litigation. [01:32:13] He didn’t, following in the path of Thurgood and Thurgood’s colleagues

at the NAACP, Bob Carter, even after they split, they didn’t just look at a lawsuit as an independent,

freestanding one case. They sought to look at how that instance of discrimination fit into the overall

structure of racism and discrimination in America. And how litigating that case and obtaining relief

in that case could help take a bite out of racism and discrimination more generally. And so, Jack, in

looking at the area, at the 1964 Civil Rights Act, that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, looked

at it as something — we were to enforce a statute, not simply represent individuals in a bunch of

individual cases. Again, let me digress for a moment. Historically, the approach had always been, the

approach toward civil rights change had involved a formula of agitation. And the civil rights leaders,

particularly Roy Wilkins, were really militant in using agitation and as one means of drawing

attention to racism and discrimination. [01:34:23] So, it’s agitation. Legislation. So, the NAACP’s

work in Congress, asking for legislation, including the anti-lynching act and so forth, was very much

a part of the formula to demand relief from discrimination. So, it’s agitation, legislation, and

litigation was the formula. And none of them were to stand in splendid isolation of the other. In

lobbying for the passage of a jobs act, I’m blanking on some names now. Joe Rao and Clarence

Mitchell were the principal lobbyists, very much keeping Jack informed, Jack and Roy and others

informed. But they did the lobbying and they made decisions that nobody questioned. They wanted a

Title VII that included cease and desist for EEOC. They didn’t get it. Jack testified and his testimony

was rejected, in terms of asking for cease and desist. [01:36:12] Jack was stung by that. Jack then

looked at the statue. It was past July 2nd, 1964, to become effective July 2nd, 1965. Jack said,

“We’ve got to use that year to get ready. We want to do two things. First, we want to have, I want

1,000 complaints.” And he hired law students, including law students from the Law Student Civil

Rights Research Council, to travel around the South, visit the companies who had segregated

workforces or were known in the community to be racially discriminatory and so forth. Get them to

prepare complaints, ready for filing, with the EEOC, or filed with the EEOC, and a copy to us. In the

file room there were a bunch of file drawers with 1,000, and I’m sorry, we didn’t get 1,000. We only

got 800 and some. And so, he didn’t quite get his goal, but he had, ready to go, 1,000 complaints,

really good cases. The other thing he said, “All right, we want to find out, if we’re going to litigate

this thing, what do people in the Black community really want most? Where are they getting hurt the

worst?” [01:38:04] I learned something from Jack. You don’t just litigate aimlessly. You’ve got to

attack where your people are getting hurt the worst. That’s what being a good civil rights lawyer is

all about. It stood me in good stead later when I headed up the Lawyers’ Committee and when I went

to EEOC and headed up litigation there. And the way you find out is you ask your people. So, they

did a survey, sent it around to Black ministers, all around. The heads of Black local unions and so

forth. And the answer came back overwhelmingly, “You’ve got to do something about those tests.

White guys didn’t have to pass those tests. Those tests don’t have anything to do with the job. But

we can’t pass them. As long as they’ve got those tests, we’re not going to get those jobs.” The other

was seniority. “They got all these seniority systems. We’re locked out. If you don’t do something

about seniority.” And of course, one of the compromises in Congress had been to make seniority

sacrosanct. But those were the two. There was a third that I’ve, I’m slipping my mind. But those

were the things then that Jack said, “Okay. All right, how do we attack those?” And he put together

then teams of law professors, economists, industrial relations specialists, to study and come up with

approaches toward going after seniority and testing. And what are going to be our theories? How do

we go after these built-in institutionalized devices? And that yielded the theories that first Bob and

then Gaby laid out for challenging testing. [01:40:21] Disparate impact and seniority. Present effects

of past discrimination. I added the claim for individual cases. That really wasn’t on the horizon. But I

looked at it and I said, after I took over and I’d been there for a while, I said, “Wait a minute. I’ve

got these fancy theories, but look. If we’re successful, and it looks like we’re going to be successful

at getting all kinds of individuals to file charges. And all kinds of lawyers. We’re not going to be

able to control this thing going forward the way we can now in the early years. We need to have an

approach to proving discrimination that doesn’t require an expert, that doesn’t require a seasoned

civil rights lawyer, that your everyday, ordinary person can go in and present their case. And so, we

need an approach to basic disparate treatment.” So, but anyhow, when I took over employment

discrimination, Bob and Gaby had those two basic theories well underway with some considerable

success, especially on the seniority claim. Present effects of past discrimination.

SP: And that was with Quarles, right?

BR: That was — the Quarles case, Quarles v. Philip Morris was the first case that was a

district court case by a, I’m blanking on the name of the very renowned district court judge who

wrote the opinion, that laid out the case for seniority reform, because to preserve seniority systems

intact would perpetuate into the present the effects of past discrimination. And it’s not the past

discrimination. [01:42:32] It’s the present effects that are unlawful under the act. And, of course, we

won those cases. We won that theory in at least eight, I’d say, nine of the circuits when the Supreme

Court in the trucking case reached out. It wasn’t part of the question presented, but they reached out

and grabbed it and overturned that theory. And so, we lost it ultimately in the Supreme Court, to my

great chagrin.

SP: How many years after the original Quarles decision, how many years did the present

effects of past discrimination?

BR: See, Quarles would have been decided in like 1969, and Teamsters v. United States

would have been decided in about 1980. I may be a little off on those dates. Blessedly, during that

period of time, we were able to get seniority relief in many of the basic industries where seniority

had been such a roadblock for Black workers. Steel industry had been reformed. The trucking

industry had been reformed. [01:44:20] The aluminum industry had been reformed, the paper

industry had been reformed. A whole host of smaller corporations, not industry wide, but smaller

corporations that relied on industry, looking at the handwriting on the wall, had made changes, so

that Teamsters v. United States did not have the devastating impact that it otherwise would have had.

But I always felt like, gee, the reason why you grant cert is because there’s a conflict of circuits.

There was no conflict of the circuits. Or there’s a national question of law that needs resolution. If

there was a national question, by golly, with eight circuits answering all the same way, there was a

national answer. Don’t get me started. I will always feel a good deal of angst, because the Supreme

Court reached out and took that issue and overturned that theory, that the present effects of past

discrimination is unlawful. And you see because, quite apart from the seniority cases, the idea of

present effects of past discrimination as resulting in unlawful discrimination could have every bit as

much impact as the disparate impact theory of discrimination, had it been allowed to remain a viable

claim. So again, in part it’s my personal angst, but it’s also, I think, true that an important and

potentially very effective remedy was taken away from us, I think inappropriately so. Backing up

and going back, [01:46:18] Jack also thought, look, this statute is a shambles. What we’re going to

do is we’re going to go in and we’re going to litigate a whole lot of cases, because if you looked at

Title VII, it required filing of a charge, EEOC investigation, EEOC finding reasonable cause, EEOC

conciliating, EEOC failing conciliation, EEOC issuing a notice of right to sue letter. Question: if any

one of those things fails to happen, can you still go to court?

SP: You’ve described this as the underbrush.

BR: Yes, that was the underbrush of the statute. Many early decisions held that any one,

failure to complete any one of those steps meant that the individual aggrieved person, the Black

worker claiming discrimination, couldn’t go to court. And Jack said, “What we’re going to do is

litigate those cases and we are either going to reform the statute or we’re going to prove that it’s

unworkable and go back and get the statute we didn’t get in the first place. And this time, by golly,

we’re going to get cease and desist.” Well, of course, we didn’t get cease and desist, instead —

SP: Can you describe, just so I can understand better, what you mean by cease and desist in

regards to the EEOC?

BR: Yes. The EEOC wouldn’t simply find probable cause. EEOC would have the authority.

You didn’t, you wouldn’t have to go to court. If EEOC found probable cause, EEOC would issue an

immediate order saying the company had to cease and desist from its discrimination. And so there

would be an administrative remedy, a much more favorable forum, presumably, and a much more

streamlined process for getting at discrimination. [01:48:22] And Jack and Clarence particularly

wanted that. That had been in some of the old FEP administrative proceedings in a couple of states. I

think they had that, maybe Wisconsin. Or certainly that was a model that was known about. Jack and

Clarence, particularly Clarence Mitchell, particularly wanted it. They didn’t get it. As we litigated

those cases, we won. I did a number of the cases on appeal, but I really have to give Bob Belton

credit. Bob led the way. And Bob and I worked together on a number of those cases ultimately. And

it was one of the holdings in Green v. McDonnell Douglas. “No,” the court said. “Your right to

proceed in court is not defeated. If the EEOC fails to find reasonable cause, fails to investigate, fails

to find reasonable cause, fails to conciliate, fails to issue. All you’ve got to do is file a timely charge

with the EEOC. And get a notice of right to sue from EEOC. And file a timely lawsuit that is within

first 120, later 180 days, if you file a timely charge of discrimination within 180 days of the act of

discrimination. [01:50:12] And you file a timely lawsuit within 180 days of the issuance of your right

to sue that you have a right to be in court.” And that, of course, cleared out all that underbrush,

streamlined the process and made the statute infinitely more workable. So, Jack was not able to

prove the statute completely unworkable and therefore get a new act.

SP: And the EEOC was a relatively young — and I read a wonderful interview you did with

David Cashdan. And talking about it, you know, reading what you all said, got the impression that it

was almost sort of scrappy in its early days.

BR: Oh, you betcha. You remember in its earliest days, EEOC didn’t have the right to go to

court. And so, its lawyers would file amicus curiae briefs. And many of the cases were our cases at

LDF. Or if not our cases at LDF, cases brought by our cooperating attorneys. And as soon as those

cases went up on appeal, they would immediately — or more often than not, they would call us in

New York and say, “Hey, Bill, can you give me a hand here?” Look, they were in court every day,

taking the time out to write a brief. Many of them could and did. But often they would say, “Hey,

look, can you give me a hand here?” And of course we did. And it doesn’t take, you don’t have to be

a rocket scientist to know that having the government there with you is a big help. That was brought

home to me, actually, when I was arguing a school desegregation case. And I was arguing back to

back. And Gary Greenberg represented Department of Justice and he stepped to the lectern, and he

said to the Fifth Circuit, “On behalf of the United States of America, may it please the court.” I said,

[laughs] [to myself] “Oh, my God.” [01:52:42] And then he said, “It’s the position of the government

that this case should be, not the case should be reversed — that the case should be remanded to the

lower court. Forget all the argument about why I’m right. This case should be remanded with the

following instructions.” And I said [to myself], “Whoa.” He’s getting away with all of that because

he’s the United States of America. He is the government. Well, he was right. He had Tuttle and

Wisdom on his panel. And he didn’t need to be bothered with arguing why the lower court was

wrong because it was some district judge that always ruled against civil rights. And he immediately

cut right to the chase and talked about how they ought to give him instructions on remand. But the

way he put it. “On behalf of the United States of America.” Well, we know EEOC is not the

Department of Justice. They don’t go in saying “on behalf of the United States of America.” But you

get the point. Having the government on your side is a huge advantage. And with them filing amicus

curiae briefs in all of those cases, cutting away at the underbrush. Remember, they are the agency

responsible for administering that statute. [01:54:10] And they were joining us in saying that their

statutes should not be construed in a way to defeat the right of the individual Black claimant to get

relief in court. When that agency was agreeing with you, that was a big help. And they stood

shoulder to shoulder with us in those early years. And it was just a great boon. And they had real

good appellate lawyers. And I know Bob and Gaby and I will be forever grateful to them for the help

that they gave us.

SP: A lot of young lawyers, too, it seems like sort of a sibling organization to LDF in some

regards.

BR: They were young lawyers. It was a new agency, and they were hiring afresh and so they

hired a lot of people. Most of the people they were hiring were either right out of law school or

recently out of law school. So, yes.

SP: There are things that we take for granted now that you and other lawyers on these cases

had to sort of convincingly argue. Like you were saying, the theory of discrimination, present effects

of past discrimination, that sort of thing. Can you talk about formulating those arguments, which

worked with what seemed like such obvious disparities, but you had to be so careful with the

language that you used to talk about them in court?

BR: Yeah. I — remember I’m old. I can’t remember all of the details. I remember that the

testing cases culminating in Griggs v. Duke Power were the cases where we first at trial had to be

most careful at developing a record, through expert testimony, about the statistical evidence that

proved there was discrimination to a mathematical certainty. [01:56:35] And by the way, that was

one of the big concerns that we had with Griggs. And a reason why our dear colleague George

Cooper initially thought we should not take it to the Supreme Court. He wrote this long memo and

sent it to Jack saying we shouldn’t take the case to the Supreme Court. He used that as a basis for

teaching his employment discrimination class that semester. And the reason was, in the record in

Griggs, we hadn’t proved disparate impact. And that was a big hole in the record in Griggs. Not in

some of the other cases where we had put on that detailed, careful, statistical evidence, but it wasn’t

there in Griggs. I said to Jack, “Look, this is our horse. We’ve got to ride it.” Jack, it took him five

minutes. “Yeah, we’re going.” George changed his mind, and he wrote brilliantly. So, the testing

section of our brief in Griggs — remember, in Griggs, it involved more than just testing and more

than just disparate impact. We got relief in Griggs for immediately with, more for the — it involved

tests and high school diploma. We got relief in Griggs [01:58:25] without the disparate impact

theory, for all those African American workers who didn’t have a high school diploma, who were

hired at the time whites without a diploma were hired. The Supreme Court gave us that. So, we

would have kept that even if we hadn’t won the disparate impact theory. But it was the disparate

impact theory, of course, that we wanted, that paved the way for all subsequent cases to make use of

the argument based on statistics that had to be carefully presented with all the expert testimony. And

we did that, for example, in Albemarle, the record was very carefully prepared. You know, you could

have argued that we should have waited for Albemarle. We didn’t. And I think we were right. And of

course, we got victories out of both Griggs and Albemarle. The argument in Griggs, I think, was one

of Jack’s best. And I sat second chair to him in there, in that case, and we had prepared for every

conceivable question. And Jack was ready. And he laid out his argument. He marched right through

it in 13 minutes and didn’t get a single solitary question. [02:00:07]

SP: 13.

BR: 12, 13. He had 18 minutes left after his argument in chief. And he hadn’t gotten a single

solitary question. And I said [to myself], “Oh, my God.” Jack just calmly said, “I reserve the balance

of my time for rebuttal.” Turned out just brilliant. The lawyer representing the company then stood

up. He gave a meandering argument that left Jack with a great big hole. Essentially, he said that it

was convenient for the company to use these tests. And used his full 30 minutes. And when he

finished, there were two minutes before lunch. If the normal thing had happened, the break would

have occurred and he would have had time at lunch to fix his argument up and be counseled, “Don’t

waste all your time just arguing, presenting facts. They’ve read the facts. Get to it.” Well, but [Chief]

Justice Warren Burger said, “Well, it’s almost lunch time. We’ll take our break now.” And we went

down, and Bob Belton joined me and Jack. And we sat there, and Jack restructured his argument. He

was ready for rebuttal. And now he’s got 18 minutes. That’s a huge amount of time. He stood up and

bam, every question we had prepared for, bam, and he knocked every one of them right out of the

park. Bam, bam, bam. And after he finished, I said [to myself], “Oh, my goodness, we’re going to

win this case.” [02:02:02] Of course, not only did we win it, but Burger wrote the opinion, and I

think it was one of the best opinions he’s written, at least one of the best opinions he ever wrote in

support of civil rights.

SP: And it was unanimous.

BR: It was unanimous. And of course, that established the disparate impact theory of

discrimination that benefits not only employment cases, but fair housing cases. And just generally

became a theory of proof that is accepted in all forms of discrimination law and elsewhere, a

wonderful, wonderful precedent that continues to this day. Now, McDonnell Douglas was the other

big impact case that was decided during the period of time I was heading up employment at LDF. I

mentioned, you know, we had these theories of discrimination, but what we didn’t have is an

approach to discrimination that was going to benefit an individual claimant. And we were looking

around and trying to formulate an approach. Al Rosenthal, who was a professor up at Columbia,

worked with me and Barry and Mike. We came up with a theory of discrimination patterned after

tort law. And that was our argument in Green v. McDonnell Douglas. Now, once again, Lou Gilden,

I had worked with Lou on some other cases, and Lou was one of my cooperating attorneys. Lou was

a guy who, even if LDF wasn’t in the case, he might very well call me. “Hey, Bill, look, I got this.

What do you think?” Or “Can you give me a memo?” Or this, that, or the other. And of course, I

always said yes, because among other things, he represented Percy Green, who was really, really

special. [02:04:24] And anyhow, he called and said, “Look. I got this case, going up to the Eighth

Circuit. Can you help?” I said, “Yeah.” So, we helped write the brief to the Eighth Circuit, got EEOC

to write a brief. Got somebody else to write an amicus brief. We did okay in the Eighth Circuit.

Would have preferred Judge Lay’s dissent or concurring opinion, as opposed to the majority’s, but in

any event, it went up to the Supreme Court. And Lou once again came and said, “Okay, Bill, it’s

going to the Supreme Court.” Okay. This is the horse we’ve got, we got to ride it. We wanted,

frankly, a more streamlined approach. But the one we got, the disparate impact formulation in Green

v. McDonnell Douglas served us well for a long time. I’ve forgotten the litany of, I should know it

by heart and do, but can’t call it up to you right this minute. And anyhow, it gave us what I was

looking for, a formula that said, “Here’s how an individual, a lawyer who doesn’t handle these cases

day in, day out, can use this approach to presenting a case of discrimination and make out a prima

facie showing of discrimination.” [02:06:12] And so we had our disparate treatment, disparate

impact, present effects of past discrimination theories. And those are the high water marks of the

employment case now. McDonnell Douglas was again a case where our cooperating attorney, Reese

Marshall, a partner of Earl Johnson, he had the case. And he had the case, you know, Ida Mae

Phillips had knocked on lots of doors and nobody would take her case.

SP: This is Phillips —

BR: Phillips v. Martin Marietta. And she knocked on Johnson and Marshall and met with

Reese. She said, “They wouldn’t hire me because I had preschool aged children.” He said, “That’s

wrong.” So, he took the case. Lost in the district court and lost in the Court of Appeals. Well.

SP: What, is that the Fifth Circuit?

BR: Fifth Circuit. Saying that essentially it was not sex discrimination to discriminate against

a woman because she had preschool age children. Of course, it almost seems ludicrous on the face of

it, but there you have it. And Reese gave me a call. He said, “We’ve got this decision. I can’t, I don’t

know, I’m not a Supreme Court lawyer, Bill, can you help me?” I said, “Of course.” So, we filed a

petition and cert was granted, now all of a sudden everybody wants the case. [02:08:09] And it

turned out Reese had left private practice in the interim and gone to become a public defender for

Jacksonville, city of Jacksonville. And so, it’s now LDF’s and Earl’s case, but Earl had never had

anything to do with the case. It was just in his office. And we wrote the brief, and it was time to

decide who was going to argue. Jack called me into his office. Well, at this point, that was not an

unusual occurrence, for Jack to call me down to his office. And it could be about any number of

things. He said, “We’ve got Phillips going to Supreme Court, Bill, I want you to argue it.” [laughs]

Of course, I was delighted. And he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be right there with you.” And of course, I

was, and we were lucky enough to win. And during the course of the argument, it seemed like we

had the court on our side, so it seemed like we were going to get a favorable ruling. So, we were all

pretty happy. I was kind of taken aback between argument in chief and rebuttal. The marshal comes

over and gives me a note, saying, “See the clerk after the argument.” What’s going on? I go to the

clerk’s office after the argument and say, “I got this note from the —” He said, “Yes, your wife’s in

the hospital. You’re having, your baby is being delivered.” [laughs] So, I come back out, and I say,

“Hey, look, Arlene, you know, she was supposed to wait until I got back.” [02:10:07] But Debbie,

Debbie Greenberg says, “Get in the taxi. I’ll pack, I’ll check you out of the hotel and pack your bags,

you just go.” Jack escorts me to the plane. Puts me, says, “Look, you need a drink, I’m buying you

one.” [laughs] I rush in. I get there. I’m, you know, “Am I in time?” “No, no. Mr. Robinson. You’re

the father of a baby girl.” So, I go up, I view, and there’s our little daughter. And so, I go back in and

visit with Arlene. And she said, “You’ve seen the baby?” I said, “You haven’t?” She said, “No. I’m

just recovering—” Ask the nurse, “Can we see our baby?” “Yes, of course you can see your baby,”

and she went and got Anne and brought her in. First Arlene holds the baby. Then I hold the baby.

And I said, “Look, Arlene, Arlene, she’s smiling at me.” She says, “Bill, that’s gas.” I said, “No, no,

she’s smiling, look.” And at that point, my legs starts getting warm. [laughs] And I often tell Anne,

“It’s been like that, baby girl, from then till now.” [laughs]

SP: Big day for you.

BR: Big day, big day, wonderful day.

SP: I’ve listened, you can listen to those arguments still, and I have a few questions about it. I

mean, it’s not everyone who gets to argue in the Supreme Court. You know, how did you feel? You

were excited when you found out. You must have been terrified too.

BR: I was. I was. You know, Thurgood Marshall established the protocol. If you were

making an argument on behalf of LDF, you do a moot court. [02:12:13] I had been moot courted

four or five times, including at the office, including at Jack Greenberg’s class at Columbia. I’d been

mooted, there was no question they could ask that I had not been mooted on. And so, yes, I was

apprehensive. Those nine people up high and you’re down below and they are august people. So,

there was some apprehension. But I knew I was well prepared, and I knew I had Jack right beside

me. So, I wasn’t really afraid. I wasn’t super confident. As I got the questions, I was comfortable

with my answers. Comfortable enough to know that some answers I didn’t want to take on head on,

so the question Burger asked, if you listened, you know, he said. “Well, we all know that women are

good at some things, like they have superior digital dexterity.” Well, the real answer to that question

was that’s exactly the kind of stereotyped view that the statute is designed to prevent. I had to be

more gentle because he had stuck himself out there with that. But the answer was no. And in fact, he

may have said something about typing. [02:14:08] Many of the most esteemed law firms have only

male secretaries, and they type very well. Annually the person who wins the speed typing contest is a

male secretary, usually an army sergeant. So, no, it’s simply not true. It’s received wisdom, but not

true that women have greater digital dexterity. That’s the real answer. But I didn’t want to challenge

him because I had the court going my way. If you listen to the argument, very clearly, if I didn’t

upset the apple cart, I was looking at a victory. And later on, Burger, it’s reported in other articles

that Burger reported back, made the comment, “Well, I did the best I could, but I just couldn’t pull

the court my way.” And I think I was correct then in not challenging and taking him on, but kind of

deflecting him. But I had an answer for every question they conceivably could have asked, just as

Jack did for Griggs. And it all flows back to how Thurgood set up lawyering at LDF, continued by

Jack and I know continued right straight through to the present by Julius and Elaine and others, right

down to the present.

SP: I was struck listening to it, by the amount of laughter. Chief Justice Burger made a

couple of jokes. Do you recall?

BR: I don’t recall the jokes.

SP: They were remarks along the lines of, you know, “There are some things women can do

that men can’t,” you know, things. And there was laughter. [02:16:04] And, you know, when you

respond, you sort of laugh but it’s like you’re ready to get on with it, you know, the clock is ticking.

It seemed, though, like it, even if the jokes were misplaced, the atmosphere felt more relaxed. I don’t

know if you felt that way.

BR: I felt that the tone of the argument was going my way, but I also felt that I needed to be

very careful with that and not overplay my hand. Sometimes you get set up. And I wanted to be

careful with that. I have the sense that Thurgood thought I was being a little too careful with it. And I

have the sense that he thought I should have been a little more trenchant with my argument. But I

didn’t think that was the right way to handle this one.

SP: Did you ever talk to him about it?

BR: No. And that would have been inappropriate for me to do if I’d had the opportunity, but

no. During my time, I, there was only one occasion Thurgood came back to visit at LDF while he

was still on the Second Circuit, before he got elevated to the Supreme Court. Other than that, I really

didn’t have any face-to-face contact with him. And it was funny because he came to the office. And

we all gathered in the library and there was a ladder that you used to reach the books on the higher

shelves. And he sat on the edge of that ladder. [02:18:00] And he told one funny story and one joke

after another. And he was so relaxed and fun and funny. And I understand that he often would tell

jokes, and he never told the same one twice. And he had great timing. And later, Jim Nabrit said to

me, “Well, you know what?” He said, “Cissy was calling around. Finally, she got a hold of me.” He

said, “Thurgood was playing hooky.” Thurgood was supposed to go to the dentist, and Thurgood

was afraid of the dentist. He didn’t want to go to the dentist. So, what he did was he came over to

LDF to pal around with his old buddies instead of going to the dentist. Cissy was trying to find him

and get him into the dentist chair. [laughs] But that was the only time I really had any exposure and

interaction with Thurgood. Of course, I was just a junior lawyer and sat in the back and listened and

enjoyed him being a raconteur.

SP: Going back to you being in the Supreme Court, there is a moment at the very end, it’s

after your initial summary. You summarize basically what you’re trying to do in this case in regards

to Title VII. And one of the justices, it’s not clear who in the transcript, I guess the mic isn’t loud

enough so it’s not clear who, says, “It does away with the age of chivalry.”

BR: I don’t recall that, and I don’t recall who said it. Yeah. [laughs]

SP: Broadly speaking, you know, there’s that case. But broadly speaking, in those years, how

did you feel like the Supreme Court handled LDF’s litigation?

BR: I thought the court and all of the justices had enormous respect for LDF’s lawyers and

lawyering [02:20:14] and the cases that LDF brought to the court. I don’t know whether that

continues to be the case. I’m just not close enough to it. But I think that was appropriate. LDF had

more cases before the court than anybody other than the solicitor’s office. And our cases presented

the court with, well, more — arguably the ACLU had a lot of cases also. But our cases presented the

court with an opportunity to rule on the basic areas of injustice that affected American life. Moreso

than any other organization, perhaps even including the Department of Justice, because often Justice

was in on our cases. And the court, even the conservative justices took very seriously the

responsibility of the court to rule on those kinds of issues. And even where I thought they were too

persnickety, they tried to be very careful of when they and how they weighed in. So, if you look at

other areas, for example, the political questions doctrine. You know, they initially stayed out of that

whole area in Colegrove v. Green, which was then later overruled. [02:22:21] What was it, [Baker v.

Carr]? But only once — it was one of the several instances where Congress couldn’t reform itself.

There’s no way you could get a constitutional amendment through. The rotten boroughs, the

fundamental flaw of our democracy would be perpetuated indefinitely unless the court stepped in

and took action. Monumental. Took them a while to come to it, but they did. Racial segregation

divided our country. Could, can you imagine a Major League Baseball team or a Major League

Football team in Atlanta, Georgia if we were still racist, segregated? I can’t. Our country would be

fundamentally different. And the court had created the legal doctrine, and it couldn’t be undone

unless the court came in and they were very mindful and stopped and look at how they dealt with

Brown. I mean, Brown was argued initially, what, in [19]52? They set it back down for re-argument

in [19]53. They waited a year before finally deciding Brown v. Board in [19]54. The Court — and

the Court had additions and so forth that affected how it ultimately came to that conclusion.

[02:24:28] But I still say — all the members of the court are very mindful of the Court’s

responsibility. This current court, I think, is not sufficiently mindful with the possible exception, I

mean, Roberts is concerned. I think Kavanaugh is concerned. But by and large, the right wingers are

not, I think, sufficiently concerned about the role and responsibility of the Court. But overall, the

Court has been very concerned and mindful of its responsibility for ruling on the fundamental issues

that affect the operation of our society. A lot of LDF’s cases brought that to the fore and LDF

brought those cases in, I would argue, a very thoughtful, responsible way that reflected how LDF

sees its responsibility for handling cases, not just an individual case, but an individual case that fits

into the fabric of society and how society is structured and how segregation is a societal problem,

and how then getting relief in this case will affect that social fabric in a positive way. And although

perhaps my formulation is unique to me, I think that lots of LDFers and lots of thoughtful justices,

judges, and indeed lawyers on the other side think about these issues. And in that regard, let me say,

school desegregation cases, the lawyers on the other side were political. [02:26:24] And they handled

the cases in a political way. And it was more than just lawyers on the other side. Lawyers in the

employment area, that’s not true. They were representing corporations. They were making arguments

for their company. A lot of times we were able to sit down with them and persuade them to counsel

their clients. “Look, it’s not just the law. This is the right thing to do. This is the right way to

structure your company as it fits into the larger society.” You couldn’t have gotten a school

desegregation lawyer to look at things that way, but I know a number of employment lawyers did

look at things that way because I’ve shared conversations with some of them.

SP: That’s such an interesting point, because I think about these lawyers, you know, many of

these cases were rooted in these small towns. And you think about lawyers who are representing a lot

of time white, blue collar workers, you know, in these industries and protecting the white power

structure.

BR: Well, if you were looking at just a local lawyer, a lot of times they would feel that way.

But remember, the companies, particularly the larger companies, were often represented by major

law firms from New York or Chicago or Washington. D.C. or Los Angeles or San Francisco, who

had a more cosmopolitan perspective and who were not wrapped up in the local, social political

infrastructure.

SP: You’ve mentioned this before, that, you know, a lot of the work that you did lives on and

has spread beyond the workplace that you mentioned, disparate impact in housing. What is it like for

you to see these things that you’ve worked on enter so many different aspects of American life and

law? [02:28:47]

BR: Well, you know, it’s gratifying, but you can’t get too full of yourself. And look. The

world has moved on, blessedly so. And LDF has moved on. I mean, Sherrilyn and Janai provide

leadership of a different LDF. I earlier mentioned that historically the framework for civil rights

change involved agitation, litigation, legislation. And that has served us well. But I think Sherrilyn

has done a brilliant job of leading LDF beyond that. If we’re to have real movement in terms of the

basic change in the fabric of our society, how we interact with each other, how opportunities are

genuinely available to African-Americans fulsomely, then it involves making the case more broadly.

[02:30:10] So she has taken LDF beyond just agitation, litigation, legislation. She continues to have

very effective approaches in all of those areas, but she now has a very effective, broader campaign to

take the message beyond the courts and into the media, including the mainstream media, the social

media and not just the historic, social organizations that LDF has been successful with, the sororities

and fraternities and the Masons and so forth, but more broadly into the African-American

community and beyond. And I just think that that’s brilliant and called for. And we have to move

forward with additional broader ways to communicate our message and be persuasive beyond just

the courts and the halls of Congress and so forth. And Sherrilyn and Janai are providing brilliant

leadership in that regard. And when I was heading up the Lawyers’ Committee, I didn’t see all that. I

was still basically, you know, agitation, litigation, legislation, how do we put it together? And that

was okay. That was fine for the times, but they’ve moved beyond that now. And they’ve moved

beyond me. [laughs] Like I said, again, from time to time, they’ll trot me out, give me a lifetime

achievement award, some stuff like that, or humor me by saying, “Oh Bill, can we have lunch?” or

whatnot. [02:32:11]

SP: So, can you talk and, and we’ve been talking for over an hour and a half now, so thank

you. I know we’ve taken a lot of your time today, but I just have a few more questions.

BR: Sure.

SP: Talk about leaving LDF and going to EEOC and that being, in a way, a continuation of

your work. But I’d be interested to hear how it did differ.

BR: Well, yeah, it was a continuation. Look, I thought we were really accomplishing some

great things at LDF, and I boldly thought that if I had all those lawyers at EEOC ready, that I could

lead, that the amount of change and good things we could do would dwarf what we were

accomplishing at LDF. And boy, was I ever wrong. It’s different. LDF is nimble and quick, and

we’re bringing cases that, we were highly selective in terms of the cases we took, and the cases we

took up on appeal. The EEOC is a bureaucracy. It has to hold itself open to all claimants and process

their charges with all with due process. And it is a bureaucracy. And bureaucracies function

differently and slower. And LDF, I don’t want to put the EEOC lawyers down. They’re good, solid

lawyers. LDF was getting really a special breed of lawyer. A lot of really super lawyers at EEOC and

other government agencies, but the uniformity of super talent at LDF was not replicated with a

uniformity of super talent at the bureaucracy. [02:34:28] And of course, when you’re leading, you’ve

got to lead all your lawyers, not just your elite lawyers, not just your superstar lawyers. You’ve got

to provide opportunities and supervision and guidance to all of them. And that means that you’ve got

to modify your approach in ways that were a learning experience for me. I think I did a pretty good

job of it, particularly in our pattern and practice cases. And a few specific cases. But by and large, at

the end of the day, at the end of a number of years, I came to the conclusion that I’d be better served

moving back into an organization like LDF. I didn’t want to go back to LDF. And I had the

opportunity to become a director of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. And did that. I

must say, one of my most satisfying personal cases was at EEOC, where I represented the agency in

the nationwide negotiations with the steel industry. It culminated in that nationwide settlement. And

in terms of providing relief to large numbers of people, that case probably brought relief to a larger

number of African American workers than any other case that I ever had anything to do with, at least

as a single case. [02:36:10] And it was really funny because — my mother and I share the same

birthday. And it’s always been a special occasion for me to get together with her on her birthday.

Turns out she was living in Lorain, Ohio, and they’ve got a steel mill. One of the local steelworkers

also has a birthday on July 15th. And he would recognize my mom and give her a bouquet of flowers

once a year. And I was there, and I met him and he said, “Oh, yeah. I know who you are.” I said,

“Yeah?” He said, “Yeah, you signed the decree, the steel decree.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “That’s

how I got to be an electrician, because I got to move up because I got to take advantage of the relief

under the decree. Thank you so much.” Who knew? [laughs] So it was personally gratifying to meet

that guy who was so kind to my mom and, you know, in Lorain, Ohio. I didn’t expect that. But that

was nice. At Lawyers’ Committee, you know, when you’re Executive Director, you don’t really get

to do a lot of cases yourself. Jack was unusual in that regard. I spent most of my time fundraising,

mapping out programs, stuff like that. There was only one personal representation that I’m proud of.

I argued a couple of cases, but the only one I’m really proud of was the one involving the King

Holiday. The Jesse — Helms v. SCLC, where Jesse Helms was trying to reopen the old Martin

Luther King tapes that had been placed under seal. All he wanted to do was spread dirt. And Wiley

Branton had handled the case, but he had just left Howard and gone to work at Sidley and Austin,

and he didn’t know whether the firm was going to allow him to do it. So, he asked me. “Bill,” he

said, “Bill, you’ve got to take this case and you handle it personally.” Okay. And he got a hold of the

case, out of file. And I read the case and wrote a brief. And by the time it was ripe for arguing in the

district court, Wiley had gotten approval from the firm to join me, and he made the argument in the

district court. I had written the brief, but he made the argument. But then when it went up on appeal,

he said, “Okay, Bill. You’ve written two briefs. Now you can argue the case on appeal.” And I got to

argue that case on appeal. And it was gratifying in part because we defeated Jesse Helms and his

attempted mischief, but it was also a big honor and privilege for me to work directly with Wiley

Branton, somebody who I had known for many years and admired. I knew Wiley, Wiley knew me,

but we really had never worked together. And that was a great pleasure. And then later, when I

became Dean of the law school, Wiley again was very helpful because he was former Dean at

Howard. But he was also very active and very high up in the ABA and its accreditation hierarchy.

And so once again, he was very helpful to me as a dean of a fledgling law school. [02:40:19] And so,

that, again, was something that was easier. Wiley was very approachable and would do the right

thing no matter who it was. But it was me and he helped me. And I’ll always savor the occasions

where Wiley and I worked together on the Jesse Helms case, on law school matters, and a couple of

other ABA things where we worked together. And so, in addition to all the cases and everything else,

I’ve just had a wonderful opportunity to work with some of the truly great and special people in the

legal profession, people like Jack. And got a chance to do some things with Bob Carter, Julius

[Chambers], Wiley Branton, Elaine [Jones], so it’s, I’ve really been blessed along the way. Couldn’t

have planned it better if I had [laughs] written the script myself.

SP: Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you want to talk about? We’ve covered a lot. I

know there’s so much more we could talk about, but.

BR: You know, I’ll probably think of something tonight [laughs] right before I fall asleep,

but for the moment, no, you’ve been very thorough. And I must say, it’s been very delightful to talk

with you.

SP: It’s been delightful to talk with you.

BR: All right.

SP: Thank you so much.

BR: All right. [02:41:49]

[END OF INTERVIEW]

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Bill Robinson Interview Transcript

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