O. Peter Sherwood Interview transcript

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project  
 

O. Peter Sherwood 

Interviewed by Melody Hunter-Pillion 

February 17, 2024 

Harrison, New York 

Length: 02:27:46 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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. 



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This transcript has been reviewed by O. Peter Sherwood, the Southern Oral History Program, 

and LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with O. Peter Sherwood, 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. 

 

 

 

 

 

  



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[START OF INTERVIEW] 

 Melody Hunter-Pillion: This is Melody Hunter-Pillion from the Southern Oral History 

Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is February 17, 2024. I’m here in 

Harrison, New York, with Justice O. Peter Sherwood to conduct an interview for the LDF Oral 

History Project. Thank you very much for joining us and for sharing your story and first – 

 O. Peter Sherwood: Happy to have you. [laughter] 

 MHP: Thank you. If you will, again, tell us your name and also a brief summary of your 

career.  

 OPS: Oh, sure. So, my name is Orville Peter Sherwood. That’s what the “O” stands for. I 

suppose what you want is my career from the point where I became a lawyer. I was admitted to 

the bar in 1972, having graduated from NYU Law School in 1971. I worked for a large Wall 

Street firm for about two seconds when I got an offer to clerk for a fellow named Fritz 

Alexander, who was at the time a New York City civil court judge sitting in the Supreme Court 

in New York. I clerked for him for a couple of years. Then had the opportunity to be hired by the 

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. And I did that for about 10 years. Doing primarily 

employment cases. [I did] fair housing cases as well. When I left LDF sometime around 1985, I 

went to the New York State Attorney General’s office to become the deputy solicitor general for 

the state. [00:02:00] About a year and a half later, I became the solicitor general for the state of 

New York, which was [the] number two job in the office of the attorney general. In 1990, I 

became the corporation counsel for the city of New York. So I was in charge of the New York 

City Law Department, which is responsible for and had charge for all the law-[related] business 

of the city of New York. It’s an office with about 700 lawyers. I worked for Mayor Dinkins as 

part of his administration. After he left office, I went into private practice, where I practiced 



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commercial law for the next 15 years. I then sought and was successful in being nominated by 

Governor Paterson to the New York State Court of Claims. I was confirmed by the New York 

State Senate to that job and was immediately assigned as an acting Supreme Court Justice in 

Manhattan. During about a year into that position, I was asked to serve in the commercial 

division of the Supreme Court, which is probably the most prestigious part of the court. They 

handle the big dollar cases that are brought in New York and since we were in Manhattan, the 

cases we saw were for amounts in excess of $500,000. And it would go up into the billions. And 

I did that until I aged out about two years ago. [00:04:18] And I’m now a commercial arbitrator 

and mediator. I’m not ready to retire just yet. 

 MHP: Well, you have enjoyed and still enjoying a distinguished career and given a lot of 

service to your state and to the city. But let’s go back a little bit and let’s go to the beginning. 

You were born in Jamaica. But you grew up in Brooklyn. I want you to talk a little bit, if you 

will, about the Brooklyn of your childhood, how you remember that. And tell us first a little bit 

about your parents. 

 OPS: Well, as you said, I was born in Jamaica. My mother and father separated relatively 

early. I must have been two years old when they went their separate ways. My mother was born 

to Jamaican parents in Harlem, New York, along with most of her [siblings]. They [her parents] 

came to the United States right after World War I. Had most of their – lived in Harlem, had most 

of their children, and returned home [to Jamaica] at the onset of the Depression. And my 

maternal grandmother never came back to New York. My maternal grandfather, I think he – my 

mother finally talked him into coming to the U.S., coming back to the U.S., I suppose, when he 

was 89, something like that. [laughter] And he lived with us. [00:06:01] But the point is that my 

mother was born here. And so when she decided she wanted to strike out and make a career for 



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herself, I was left with my maternal grandparents, which was not unusual. We lived in an area 

where there were, we had two houses. We – my grandparents did. And others of her children and 

therefore my cousins lived either in the house they lived in or the house next door, which was 

part of the same complex. So there were a lot of kids who were around and uncles and aunts and 

that kind of stuff. My mother remarried in New York. They bought a brownstone in Crown 

Heights in 1953, and thereafter they brought me to New York. So I came to New York in 1954 to 

live with my mother and stepfather. 

 MHP: Any siblings? 

 OPS: I have a sibling who is many years my junior. My mother did have other children, 

but they did not survive childbirth. That’s a whole, that’s a whole other story about the health 

care system. [laughter] 

 MHP: Which is a whole story. [laughter] 

 OPS: That’s a whole, that’s a different story. [laughter] 

 MHP: In Jamaica you were in this, really a community of family. You really transitioned 

from being in Jamaica in a community where you’re really surrounded by an enclave of family, 

right? And all these family networks, uncles, aunts, cousins. [00:08:02] Then you come to New 

York, you’re in Crown Heights. I was just asking you to describe, what was it like in that 

neighborhood growing up for you? 

 OSP: Okay. I remember when I first came to St. John’s Place, there were all these cars, 

and we never had that many cars on the streets in Jamaica. So that impressed me. The 

neighborhood was mixed housing. There were apartment buildings, there were brownstones. We 

lived in a brownstone, as I mentioned. And my parents enrolled me in Catholic school. I’m 

Roman Catholic. It was about three blocks away, so we could walk from my home between 



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Albany and Troy down to Brooklyn Avenue, where St Gregory’s the Great church, and next to it, 

the elementary school, were. And the school was, the teachers were overwhelmingly nuns, so 

they were in habits, of course. There were a few lay teachers but they were, as I said, mostly 

nuns. I was nine years old, but they put me in the second grade, which I had no idea what that 

meant at the time. I think I probably should have been in a higher grade. My parents didn’t push 

back, but I can tell you that after I’d been there, I guess six months, a year, year and a half, I got 

moved up three times. [laughter] [00:10:16] And at the time, you had semesters. So two 

semesters a year. So I guess I caught up to the extent of a year and a half. But that’s the way it 

started. As I said, I didn’t know what that all meant. It was pretty clear to me that what I was 

being taught, I already knew. I like to read, and they used to reward you for reading books. I 

think I was – they gave you a, if you read a certain number of books, you were designated a 

bookworm. So, hey, I wanted to be a bookworm. [laughter] So, that’s kind of the way it was. 

Apropos to this conversation, the school was 80 percent white at the time. This is 1954. The 

white population was moving out to Long Island generally. Replaced by folks who were moving 

up from Harlem. So that was the demographic that you saw. When I graduated in 1959, I would 

say the school was flipped the other way, about 80 percent nonwhite, 20 percent white. 

[00:12:14] So you had that transition in just that short five-year period, it turned around pretty 

dramatically. 

 MHP: What did that mean for the cultural climate? What was the cultural climate when 

you came in? And then by the time, in just that flip, if there was a particular cultural climate. 

 OPS: I was a little kid. I don’t think people – the kids, we played on the street. I was 

pretty good at street sports, which was stickball or handball or Chinese handball. We all used – 

you ever heard of the Spaldeen? It’s a tennis ball without the cover. And so it’s a pink ball. At 



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the time, you could buy it for about 25 cents. And it had many uses. So you could use it to play 

stick ball, like baseball. And the rubber ball was also good for Chinese handball. Stoop ball, we 

played that, where you would throw the ball against the edge of the step and you would either, 

and the ball would bounce across the street and you would either be caught out or it would 

bounce. And depending on how many bounces, that’s how many bases you got and that kind of 

stuff. [00:14:00] So, the ball had great utility. And if you came up in the city during that time 

period, you would understand what a Spaldeen was. Of course, the ball was made by the 

Spalding Company, but everybody called it a Spaldeen. But the point of my story is that on the 

street, if you’re reasonably good in sports, Black kids and white kids played. But that was sort of 

the beginning and end of it. We didn’t go into each other’s homes, for example, and that’s sort of 

the way it was. I don’t think there’s anything special about school. I don’t think there were – I 

certainly don’t recall racial issues coming up. I’ll tell you this, though. You would have the kids 

who were having a hard time were the Jewish kids. The, as I said, as I was telling you earlier, the 

Labuvitch community had established itself, at Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway, a very 

small community. And some of them had a hard time. It was usually the white kids, quite 

frankly, who were beating them up, which was not good. There’d be fights between Black kids 

and white kids. But [inaudible] their own. 

 MHP: Even to a young child, as a child, you could see what was going on with the, you 

know, some, you know— 

 OPS: There were differences. You saw, you certainly were not, would see some 

consequences of what I now call tribalism. You know, the Italians being among themselves. The 

Irish, likewise Black folks, that kind of thing. But I got along generally well with kids of the 

various races. I guess the one place where I was of had concern was those people who were in 



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gangs. There was a large housing project not far from where we lived, and there was a gang 

presence in my neighborhood. That’s what I wanted to avoid and did avoid. You know, we 

didn’t go to public school. We were in a parochial school. So, we were in a different segment of 

our local neighborhood. So anyway, that’s kind of the way it went. 

 MHP: Let me ask you about, and maybe for you at the time, it didn’t have as much of an 

impression, especially for your own personal life, but do you recall Brown v. Board being 

passed? 

 OPS: Not at all. Not at all. I came here in March of 1954. Brown was May 19th, 1954. 

Now, I learned that later on in life and of course the implementation of the Brown decision was a 

year later. But no, the Brown decision did not make an impression on me. I think – as is obvious 

from what I’ve been saying, my grade school was integrated. In retrospect, the issue was white 

flight, where the neighborhood was really turning over quite rapidly. [00:18:32] 

 MHP: You went to Brooklyn College of the City University of New York for your 

undergraduate degree and graduated in 1968. What was it like there during your undergrad years, 

especially during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement? 

 OPS: So I entered – I went back to Jamaica for high school, to give you some context. 

And the British education system was not completely aligned with the way in which the system 

worked here. There are a number of differences that are significant. Bottom line, though, is that 

when I graduated from high school in Jamaica and came back here, I was not eligible to go into 

day school at Brooklyn College or any of the units of the city university. You had to have a 

certain grade point average and you had to have taken a certain number of Regents courses and 

so on. So, in my case, for example, while I had a fair amount of mathematics and actually that’s 

where my strength was, one of the things that you were required to have to get into Brooklyn 



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College at the time was you had to have taken trigonometry. [00:20:13] I didn’t do trigonometry 

in Jamaica. [laughter] We just didn’t. We did geometry. So I had to go to summer school. And 

so, the courses I took were not aligned and I had not taken the SATs. I didn’t have, they didn’t 

have any way of – the way you got into the Brooklyn colleges was based on SATs and grade 

point average. They weren’t accepting my grades because it was from a different system. So, I 

started night school. And when I first got here, I got a job as a, I ran one of those – 80-column 

cards were used in computers. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the cards that were used for 

computing. So, the way it was back then, information was stored on these cards. They would 

punch holes in them. They had machines that punched holes that, depending on the combination, 

went zero through nine or in combinations “A” through “Z” and special letters and all of that. 

And you had accounting machines that then read the cards and essentially did computations. At 

about that time, they were transitioning from the accounting machines that I’ve just described, 

which were programed by people sitting on high chairs with a pegboard and lots of wires. 

[00:22:30] And they quite literally would plug in. Think of the telephone operators from the old 

movies. They were plugging in to pegboards. But computers were being introduced into 

businesses around that time. I was hired to operate one of these sorting machines. And the 

company I was working for was about to transition. They gave aptitude tests to the people who 

were in the computer department. And it turns out, and I don’t know why, that I wasn’t invited. 

Okay. Now, I understand that I was the youngest and certainly the newest on the floor. But 

anyway, one morning I was getting on the elevator in the building, and the guy who ran the place 

happened to have come on and an aunt of mine actually worked for him. She was his secretary, 

which is how I got the job in the first place. And he asked how I was doing and I was honest. I 

said, “Ah, it’s alright.” So he goes upstairs and he asked my aunt, “What’s with Peter?” And she 



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calls me and she says, “Well, what’s going on?” [00:24:13] “I’m bored.” That starting job was 

the most boring job I’ve ever had. I was terrible. Anyway. Next thing you knew, they offered me 

the opportunity to take the aptitude test to become a computer programmer. I passed. So, at age 

19, I became a computer programmer [laughter] and I went to night school at Brooklyn College. 

And if you got grades at a certain level, you could then transition to day school, which is what 

happened in my case. I didn’t do that right away because I needed the money and I did okay as a 

programmer. So after about two years, and I’d had enough money to buy myself a Volkswagen 

Bug, I transitioned to day school and completed my education at Brooklyn College. So, you 

asked a question about Brooklyn College. What do you want to know? [laughter] 

 MHP: First of all, and I think you told me we would take some paths that I didn’t expect 

and I would have never thought that you really started as a computer programmer, went to night 

school, and so, one that – I want to know that, like what was going on with you in your life when 

you’re going to college. I didn’t expect that. But also, what the atmosphere was like at the 

college? 

 OPS: Sure. 

 MHP: And in particular, was there a different sort of feeling, an environment as a night 

student as opposed to going to school during the day, is there any difference? [00:26:05] 

 OPS: There’s a huge difference between the day school and the night school. The day 

school tended to be, the faculty tended to be full time faculty members, some full-time faculty 

members taught at night. But many of the people who taught at night in night divisions were, you 

know, they were high school teachers or in business or whatever. But I was an evening student. 

But evening students were engaged as well in extracurricular activities. I got involved in civil 

rights then as an evening student. There was a, there were two civil rights groups on campus. 



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There was the NAACP, that day students belonged to, Black and white. And the night division, 

there was an organization called the Congress of Racial Equality, CORE. And so, I was engaged 

with and involved in CORE. And at some point, became the president of CORE. So, I had my 

day job. I went to school at night and I was a student there. 

 MHP: Was there a lot of activism going on? 

 OPS: Absolutely.  

 MHP: Yeah, so tell me more about that. 

 OPS: So, there was certainly activism, a lot of civil rights activity going on in the 

community and around the country. Now we’re talking about 1963, [19]64, [19]65, [19]66. 

That’s when I was in the night school. I transitioned to day school at some point, I think the fall 

of [19]66. But anyway, there was certainly a lot of civil rights activity around Brooklyn. 

[00:28:27] One of the leading local civil rights organizations was Brooklyn CORE, and they 

were cutting up for sure. And you have to remember you had riots going on in some of the major 

cities, including New York, quite frankly, though not where I lived, thankfully. And we as 

students were engaged as well, both off campus and on campus, quite frankly, was also for us, a 

social group. We did a lot of protesting and sit-ins but also some partying for sure. So that’s kind 

of what it was like. You have to remember Brooklyn College at the time was free tuition, which 

means if you were in the day school, you paid a student fee for the princely sum of 24 bucks. 

And, so it was hard, you know, it was sought after for sure, because if you had the academic 

talent, you could get in and be a student there and earn an education. And it was free, was pretty 

extraordinary. 

 MHP: What was your major? [00:30:20] Tell us about your favorite classes. 



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 OPS: Well, I started, I wanted to be an engineer, but Brooklyn College didn’t have an 

engineering program. You’d have to go to the City University, CCNY, up in Harlem. And I 

thought I’d do my first two years at Brooklyn College doing the prep courses. You know, math 

and chemistry and physics and that kind of stuff, and then transition to City College. By the time 

I got to the point where I would need to transition, I was no longer so much interested in 

engineering. I was a math major at the time at Brooklyn College. But the problem with that is 

that it didn’t align with what else was interesting to me. I was deeply engaged in civil rights 

stuff. Most of my friends were over there in the social sciences. And you have to understand, the 

war was going on. The Vietnam War. A big deal, particularly for the white kids on campus. So 

that you get a sense of the dynamic, Blacks represented two percent of the student population. 

[00:32:01] It was overwhelmingly white folks and a highly sought-after school. I can tell you 

that many of my white friends went to Brooklyn College, having been offered by their parents, 

“Well, you can go to Brandeis and we’ll pay the tuition or you can go to City University and 

we’ll use the money to buy you a car.” Many of them opted for the latter. [laughter] Anyway. So, 

it’s the fall of my senior year and I was, again, as I said, I was president of a civil rights group on 

campus. And in order to have any group on campus, you had to have a faculty advisor. And the 

faculty advisor for my group was a Black woman lawyer who was recently graduated from Yale 

Law School and was teaching political science. And I’d actually taken her course, but I’m still a 

math major and the federal government had decided that you could no longer get a student 

deferment for graduate school. [00:34:00] That was a problem. And I remember having lunch— 

 MHP: Deferment from the service, military service? 

 OPS: Military service, yeah. Vietnam was raging, and students were doing all kinds of 

thing, some going to Canada, going into teaching public schools and so on. Anything to avoid 



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the draft. And no exception for me. And so I’m having lunch with her and complaining about not 

knowing what the hell I’m going to do next. And not particularly — I’m allergic to bullets and 

bombs. [laughter] So, I didn’t want to go. [laughter] So I had to figure out what to do. I knew 

that a Ph.D. in math was not in the cards for me. And by the way, I wasn’t interested. And most 

of my friends were over there in the social sciences. She was teaching political science. But 

anyway, I decided that semester that I would transition to the social sciences, become a political 

science major. And so at lunch she suggested I take the LSATs. All right. So, I took them. 

Results come back and we’re talking again and she invites me — no, we weren’t talking — she 

invites me to a meeting of the Pre-Law Society, which she was also the faculty advisor to. And a 

guy named Bob McKay, who was then the Dean of the NYU Law School, was the featured 

speaker. [00:36:16] And of course, everybody was interested in how do you get in. And he 

brought some applications and he talked about that. And I took one. I filled it out. And lo and 

behold, I get an invitation to attend the law school. But that wasn’t going to work so well 

because I didn’t think I could avoid the draft. I was more focused on doing two years in graduate 

business school and by the way, I had a very attractive scholarship to Washington University in 

St. Louis. And I figured by going to double summer session there, starting early, I could do it in 

a year and a half, get my MBA and if I got to do the Army, well, I’ll deal with that then. But the 

idea was to get my graduate education and get it done before I went off to the service. So I 

started early. I got admitted, said “Thanks, but no thanks,” because I went off to Washington U. I 

hated St. Louis. Oh my God, did I hate St. Louis. And that’s where I was confronted with this 

race issue. I couldn’t find an apartment. And some of it was pretty blatant, quite frankly. 

[00:38:05] And graduate, business school didn’t really interest me. And so, over the 4th of July 

weekend, that was the break point between the first semester and the second semester of the 



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summer, I remember coming back home and reaching out to the dean of admissions at NYU. 

Asked him, “Is that scholarship you offered me still available?” He said, “Well, send us a letter.” 

So, I sent the letter and they admitted me. [laughter] 

 MHP: Did you still get the scholarship? 

 OPS: With scholarship. Just remember something. This is 1968. And as I said, 

deferments were no longer being offered. And so, and I learned this many years later, they didn’t 

have enough males to fill the class. And so, my year was the first year that NYU’s class was 20 

percent female. That was not unique to NYU, by the way. True across the country. And of 

course, they never looked back. They continue to grow the number of women lawyers. So, I 

entered there and the first brief I ever did was to advocate for myself to be given a hardship 

deferment, which I got. And for about six months, I got it for about six months. [00:40:12] And 

by the time we got to the end of that, they had come up with a lottery system for military service. 

And my number was 305. No chance of being drafted. [laughter] So that’s the way it went. So, I 

graduate from NYU. Long story, I know, but it’s really important. And – 

 MHP: And you graduated in [19]71 from NYU? 

 OPS: [19]71 from NYU. And I started out at one of these Wall Street firms and then the 

clerkship became available. And so I did that. Prior to that time, I envisioned that I would 

become a tax lawyer because I’m pretty good at numbers. So that was the sense. I came out of a 

family that didn’t have much money. And if you wanted security, hey, best thing in the world to 

do is become a tax lawyer, right? 

 MHP: So that’s where you were heading. 

 OPS: That was my logic. [laughter] So, that’s that. So, towards the end of the clerkship, I 

get a call from a professor who I’d been a research assistant to and his name is Leroy Clark. 



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Leroy was on the faculty at NYU, having served for any number of years, where? At the Legal 

Defense Fund. And apparently somebody at LDF had called him and they were looking for, they 

were doing hiring. [00:42:21] And he recommended me and asked me, called me up and said, 

“Are you interested in the Legal Defense Fund?” By then, I was very interested in civil rights 

issues. And of course, you know, I died and went to heaven. And apparently Jack Greenberg was 

hiring, LDF was hiring, of course the person who ran the place was Jack, about three people at 

the time. And it may have been more, but in any event, I was one of those that he hired to do fair 

housing cases. That’s what he wanted me to do. Now, I was more interested in employment and I 

let him know that. But he said, “Look, I want you to do housing cases.” So, you got to ask the 

question, why did he put me in the office of the guy that was running the employment program? 

So I doubled up in an office with a guy named Mike Baller who was on the staff and was, I 

think, leading the employment program at the time. And of course we would talk and I wasn’t 

shy about expressing my interest in employment. And that was music to his ears. And while I 

was doing housing cases more and more, I got employment cases. [00:44:11] And off I went. 

 MHP: But see, let me ask you, how much did you know about LDF prior to that being— 

 OPS: Very little. 

 MHP: You were working with Leroy Clark so maybe he said— 

 OPS: I knew about LDF generally, but I didn’t realize how extraordinary a place it was. I 

knew that, you know, Thurgood ran the place sometime earlier and there were these iconic folks 

that had been there and so on. But I really didn’t understand the breadth and depth of the 

program that they had from capital punishment to housing to education to voting, employment. 

You know, and they were engaged in, as I said earlier, putting meat on the bones of the Civil 

Rights Act of the middle of 1960. And this is now 1973, [19]74. 



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 MHP: So, coming into that office, just those first few weeks, what were those like for 

you, coming into an office like that? 

 OPS: These were folks that came from a different world. Because you remember, 

Brooklyn College was a commuter school. You didn’t have dorm life. And I was probably the 

only person there who came from a commuter school. NYU had dorms and so on. And I was first 

introduced to that at the law school. [00:46:04] But, you know, everybody there, they were really 

smart. I said, “What am I doing here?” So, obviously I had to make sure that I worked hard to 

measure up. [laughter] So that was that. But they were welcoming of course, and it was family. I 

gained many, many friends, some of them long term friends, some of them friends to this day. 

 MHP: Talk about your LDF colleagues, if you don’t mind for a minute, we have listed 

some of these, you know, but Patrick Patterson, Mike Baller, you mentioned. 

 OPS: Mike Baller, yeah. 

 MHP: Tell us about— 

 OPS: These were really, really bright folks who were committed to civil rights issues. 

They were interested in precedent-setting litigation. It was interesting work. It made a difference 

in people’s lives. And so we were pretty excited about that. But it was a highly professional 

office. They were, as I say, as a group, quite welcoming. Certainly, the folks who were in 

employment work were because that’s where I was focusing sort of my time and attention. Folks 

in some of the other areas, while I knew them, we didn’t spend much time together to tell you the 

truth. But it was all right, you know, the folks who were over there in death penalty, for example, 

while I knew them and was friendly with them, I certainly was not, I didn’t build close social 

relations with them. It was really folks who were in housing or voting or as I said, employment. 

Employment was the biggest program at the time anyway. [00:48:23] Many of them, some of 



17 
 

them, lived in Brooklyn. At that point I was married and we had bought a house in the Ditmas 

Park section of Brooklyn and others had homes in the general neighborhood or rented apartments 

there and so on. And so, we built a social relationship. But Patterson, Patrick Patterson, lived in 

Brooklyn. 

 MHP: Did you work with Patrick Patterson quite a bit? 

 OPS: I spent a fair amount of time with him. Another couple that they had a house there 

that became friends for a time, a guy named Deval Patrick. He and his wife Diane lived not far 

from us. Barry Goldstein was a good friend. She and – his wife and my wife hit it off. So, they 

became real good friends and, you know, spent a lot of time together with them. It was kind of 

like that, it was an extended family. 

 MHP: You also have worked with cooperating attorneys, right? The staff attorneys, 

cooperating attorneys. Can you — 

 OPS: These are lawyers in private practice in various places around the country. 

Typically in the South. LDF had a program to essentially seed communities, particularly in the 

South, with lawyers willing to take civil rights cases, because that was always a challenge. 

[00:50:26] And they had the Earl Warren Program, for example, you came to LDF out of law 

school, you spent a year interning essentially at the Fund, and the Fund would engage you as 

probably your first client when you went back home to your community. And so that’s the way 

they grew out the program. Some of those folks, of course, I knew and was friends with during 

their intern year, but others were folks who were in private practice who had civil rights, many 

civil rights cases. So, you know, C.B. King, for example. 

 MHP: C.B. King, working with him, talk to me about what it was like working with C.B. 

King. 



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 OPS: I was in awe of him. Big, booming voice, clearly a pillar of the community, 

respected by all, perhaps feared by some. He’d actually run for governor of Georgia. His practice 

was in [phoneticized] Al-BINy, as opposed to Albany. Albany, Georgia, which was a little bit 

south of a place called Plains, Georgia, where Jimmy Carter was from. [00:52:08] And so we 

sued. He had sued the city of Albany – Albany, excuse me, over employment discrimination. 

And I was the person who worked with him and his law partner. And we tried the case before 

Wilbur Owens and we won. And the judge basically took over the city and kind of forced it to 

reorganize and hire and promote Blacks on fair basis. But C.B. was well known within his 

community and well respected and so on, and he always had great stories to tell. 

 MHP: Let’s talk about that case a little bit more. Can you tell us a little bit more about 

the case and some of the strategies there? 

 OPS: Well, we were concerned mostly about fire and police, but we saw the opportunity 

to expand the case to cover all of the city and all of the city agencies and provide an opportunity 

for a more fair selection process. And of course, a lot of it was challenges to civil service exams 

and quite frankly, nepotism within city government. And the idea was to monitor those various 

agencies. The judge had his own ideas with respect to that. He thought the place was 

dysfunctional. So this gave him an opportunity to require the city to bring in experts to look at 

the city and the way in which it was organized. And basically, reorganized the whole city. 

[00:54:30] We settled the case with respect to the remedy so that we won liability. And then on 

the remedy stage, there was some negotiations back and forth and we were able to be successful 

in coming up with a with a plan that worked. And C.B. went on to the next case. [laughter] 

 MHP: Let’s talk about that. 



19 
 

 OPS: So, Herb Phipps, his partner, went on to, I believe he became a Justice of the 

Georgia Supreme Court, which, by the way, is what happened to some of the folks who were 

cooperating attorneys. I remember Adams, Baker, and Clemon in Birmingham. Adams became 

the chief judge of the Alabama Supreme Court. Baker became the chief lawyer for the city of 

Birmingham. And think about Birmingham. Think about what that city was like and this 

extraordinary turnaround where, lo and behold, this Black guy runs the legal operations for the 

entire city. [00:56:08] And then U.W. Clemon, of course, was the first Black person appointed to 

the federal bench in Alabama. So, this is a bit of a joke, I know, but the firm that had been a 

thorn in the side of the leadership in the city. They couldn’t beat them in court. So, what did they 

do, they hired them all. [laughter] Anyway. 

 MHP: They were cooperating –  

 OPS: But they ended up running the place, so. [laughter] 

 MHP: You worked with them as cooperating attorneys also, right? You worked with 

them as cooperating attorneys? 

 OPS: Yeah, yeah. They were cooperating attorneys, we worked with them on specific 

cases. Yes. 

 MHP: Let’s talk about some more specific cases.  

 OPS: Why don’t we talk about Fletcher Farrington and Bobby Hill. [laughter] Bobby’s 

one of the brightest guys I’ve ever met. And funny, oh God was he funny. But he, Bobby, was a 

Black guy. Fletcher was a white guy. I say was because, unfortunately, both have passed. Well, 

they were partners in a firm that spent a lot of its time doing civil rights cases. And I had the 

good fortune of working with both of them. And the Myers v. Gilman Paper Company seniority 

case. [00:58:12] Boles v. Union Camp, for example. Both of those cases involved challenges to 



20 
 

seniority systems at paper mills, craft paper factories throughout the South. Pine trees grew 

pretty quickly there, and they would use pine to create craft paper. And of course, it was sold 

across the country, across the world. And the structure of those factories was segregated. They 

were organized into seniority lines. So, you advanced in the factory according to the number of 

years you had, you were working there. The seniority system essentially, and they had job 

seniority. So, if you were the longest tenured in the particular job, you would get first dibs on the 

next job up. And so, it depended on where you were first put into the seniority line. The white 

line went several steps up. The Black line, there were really just two jobs. [00:59:56] The initial 

job and one up, and that was the end of it. And that was the segregated world pre-Title VII. 

There was a provision in Title VII that essentially was intended to protect seniority systems. 

That’s one of the things that the unions insisted on. But there was no intention that the seniority 

systems could be used to prevent the newly protected Black workers from moving up as well, so 

one of the things that LDF did early on was to identify the industries where they wanted to pay 

time and attention. And paper was one of them, because there are a lot of jobs that our folks were 

in, and stuck in low paid jobs. And so, he would sue, challenging the job seniority structure, 

seeking to have our clients allowed to transfer over to the white lines and use their company 

seniority. So, you could be in the company for 25 years in one, in the Black lines, and without 

the litigation, if you moved over to the white line, you would be at day one, even though you’d 

been in the company for 25 years. So what these lawsuits allowed, if you won, is by proving that 

the way in which the seniority system was maintained, it was discriminatory. And the remedy 

was to allow people in the Black lines, if they chose, to move over to open jobs in the white line 

using their full company seniority in the white line, just as the white folks had been able to 

effectively use. [01:02:15] And there are any number of those cases. So, Boles v. Union Camp 



21 
 

was one of those. Myers v. Gilman Paper Company was one of those. The other problem at the 

time was the use of aptitude tests essentially for the [craft] type jobs. And those were the very 

best jobs, where you fixed the machines, that kind of stuff. And we challenged those, the tests 

used for advancement in those lines. And at the time, the EEOC, the Equal Employment 

Opportunity Commission, had developed testing guidelines that essentially was an exercise in 

industrial psychology. And testing in the industrial area, in which the guidelines required that if 

the test had an adverse racial effect, then what you had to do in order to continue to use it is to 

show that the test was in fact job related. Because as I was saying to you off camera, paper and 

pencil tests were not particularly good at differentiating between levels of ability. [01:04:22] 

They were cheap, easy to [use], but they didn’t separate the people who were good workers from 

those who were great workers, really didn’t. So, you had the EEOC guidelines, which we at the 

Legal Defense Fund worked on. And, well, the Justice Department and the EEOC were working 

on the guidelines, and we were certainly giving input and with respect to that, and they were very 

important for a whole range of jobs. And among them were these mechanics jobs at paper mills 

and textile mills and other industrial facilities. 

 MHP: So, let me ask you, when you went from one to the other – and you know, just as 

someone who doesn’t know law, I would think, oh, once you’ve won the first one, then the next 

one should be easy, right? That’s what people outside of law might think. So, Myers v. Gilman, 

you win that. Was it a pretty straightforward win or were there some concessions? Was it pretty 

straightforward? 

 OPS: Well, in Myers, no, you had to go from factory to factory and you had to prove it 

each time. And there was a pattern. And as I said, there was a pattern, but not necessarily 

identical. But you had to essentially prove your case. You had to put your statistics forward to 



22 
 

show the adverse impact, to show that the criteria for progression was not job related, if you’re 

talking about a test, for example, or some evaluation system. [01:06:21] Or you had to prove that 

the seniority system that existed at that plant perpetuated the effect of past segregation within the 

factory, all of those things. And you did that for each company. No question about it. And 

sometimes there were unique aspects to them, but generally they fit that kind of pattern. So yes, 

you would have to do that. Now, you asked about Gilman Paper. So we were winning a whole 

series of cases across just about all of the 11 circuits, showing that the seniority systems where 

you had a seniority system that was combined with segregated job assignment, it locked in Black 

workers for their entire careers, basically. And the only way you were going to break out of that 

was to see if you could get a court decree that would require that employers allow people to take 

their seniority with them. Now, that did not sit well with some labor unions, because seniority 

systems are the holy grail of people in factory work. [01:08:09] But then again, they’d been the 

beneficiaries of the system because they didn’t have to compete with Black folk. It was all for 

them. So that was a problem. And so, the civil rights laws come along. Congress made it clear 

that the statute was supposed to be forward-looking, not backward-looking. And so one of the 

challenges was to come up with a theory that talked about the present effects of that past 

discrimination. All of the circuits bought into that theory that we’d worked on since shortly after 

the Civil Rights Act was passed. Then you got to the Supreme Court, I guess sometime around, I 

guess the late [19]70s, not quite sure. But anyway, the Court decided the Steelworkers case in 

which the Court said if you’re going to challenge a seniority system, you have to demonstrate 

that the seniority system was designed or maintained with a discriminatory intent, a significantly 

higher burden of proof on the plaintiff in those cases. You didn’t have to, no longer was it 

sufficient just to show that the system had an adverse effect and it was locking people into 



23 
 

segregated jobs. [01:10:03] We had won Myers and had constructed a consent decree as a result 

of, so you won liability and then you work out a consent decree for going forward. Steelworkers 

gets decided. And the union in that case said, “Well, this system, this remedy is no longer valid 

because the Supreme Court says you have to now prove intent, discriminatory intent with respect 

to the seniority system.” So, we were back in court. We were in the Eleventh Circuit, for the first 

time after this case, after Steelworkers was decided, essentially trying to prove to the, to argue 

that the seniority system was maintained with a discriminatory purpose. And we were successful. 

[laughter] 

 MHP: As you were going in, though. 

 OPS: And there were other cases like that. So I had, for example, the case called U.S. v. 

Georgia Power, which involved, again, a seniority system. The company at that time went back 

to the court to lift an injunctive order that had been in operation for a number of years prior to 

Steelworkers. And so they went back to the court to lift it and the court lifted it. Then our clients 

came and said, “Wait a minute, they just took away my seniority.” So, the company went back to 

the court without telling us. We weren’t served with the papers that they filed with the court. We 

said, “Hey, hello! We’re here!” [laughter] [01:12:15] And I believe the district judge actually 

gave us a hearing and then ruled against us. We took them up to the Eleventh Circuit and once 

again, we were able to establish that the system was maintained with a discriminatory purpose 

and we were able to get the remedy that we had worked so hard to get reinstated. 

 MHP: Let me ask you this, because as we’re talking and you’re talking about some 

different cases, especially the LDF cases, they’re, you’re coming to the South. Now, a young 

man who, you know, grew up in Jamaica for a while and then moves – 

 OPS: Out of Brooklyn.  



24 
 

 MHP: Out of Brooklyn. Tell me about, so let’s talk about that. We’ll get back to some 

cases. But as you are coming in to the South, doing some cases, especially for the first time, what 

were some of your impressions, as you know, someone coming into the South, in the courtroom 

and what you were experiencing and seeing? 

 OPS: Well, it all depended. If you were in a city, it was just like any other city I might go 

to. And, you know, I was concerned about the attitude of the judge but many of the judges there 

were moderate Republicans. I mean, I don’t know how much you know about the South and the 

political atmosphere and so on. But, you know, the Democrats were Dixiecrats and pro-

segregation. [01:14:00] Some of the most racist judges that I appeared before were appointed by 

John Kennedy. They were Democrats. The people who were more moderate and progressive on 

civil rights issues, but conservative on economic issues were the Republicans. And so I was 

always happy to be, for the most part, being before a Republican judge. That was a reality. And, 

you know, so long as I was given the opportunity to educate the judge about my case, I was 

willing to live with that. And I knew how to conduct myself in the courtroom. So, that was fine. 

I’ll say this, though. Some of the cases I had involved – my clients lived in rural communities. 

And you go out to see them. And some of those, when you went to some of those smaller 

communities, there were times when I would be concerned because just about every pickup truck 

had a had a rifle rack and I’m coming from New York. I suppose in some areas in my 

neighborhood, folks had switchblades and those kinds of things. But I certainly didn’t see a lot of 

rifles back in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. They had guns. [laughter] So, you know, if you 

were in a rural community – I just remember times when I was concerned. [01:16:03] But it was 

merely a concern. The other side of that story that made me feel proud, the folks who had the 

courage to be named plaintiffs, you’re putting yourself out there. You really are. And, you know, 



25 
 

your white neighbors aren’t going to be happy with you. And these are not folks who are like 

ministers or undertakers or folks who were not dependent on the white community for their 

livelihood, these are factory workers. And you know, their supervisor is a guy who isn’t 

particularly happy with what he is bringing his lawsuit about. So, I was proud of them. But I just 

remember any number of occasions where I’d end up visiting my client at his home and one 

house in particular, I walk in, modest house. He had a boat in the front yard. I go in the house 

and there wasn’t a table top that didn’t have pictures all over the place. And what did they 

feature? Caps and gowns. Caps and gowns. So proud. So proud. So it was an honor to represent 

him. [01:18:18] 

 MHP: As a Southerner with humble beginnings, education is everything. And you from 

Jamaica, I know it’s the same. Education is everything.  

 OPS: Right. They educated their kids. 

 MHP: That’s right. 

 OPS: Anyway. 

 MHP: So, let’s talk about a Southern case, a Southern case in particular, Williams v. City 

of New Orleans.  

 OPS: Williams? 

 MHP: Williams v. City of New Orleans. 

 OPS: So, Larry Williams was a police officer, feisty guy, troublemaker, but he didn’t get 

himself fired. But he had been represented by some local or – I think Landrieu was the mayor, I 

think so, when the lawsuit was brought. And the case sort of languished and at one point was 

about to be dismissed, we really didn’t have a role in the case initially, but when the motion to 

dismiss was made, they called us and asked us to help and I had the case. By that time, I was 



26 
 

essentially supervising the employment program and my personal interest was to focus on cases 

in the uniformed services, police, fire, corrections, for a number of reasons, and also to build out 

the law in the area of affirmative action. [01:20:29] And police and fire cases were perfect for 

that. So, we showed up, convinced the judge that we were there for the duration and “Please 

don’t dismiss our case and we will prosecute the case to its conclusion.” And that’s what we did. 

While we were doing that, Dutch Morial became the mayor, first Black mayor, of the city of 

New Orleans. The civil service system was still in the control of the traditional forces, let me put 

it that way. And the mayor really could not, didn’t have control of the Civil Service Commission. 

I think it was, many of [its] appointees were state appointees as opposed to city appointees. So, 

[while] the city was a defendant, the Civil Service Commission was [too]. [Its lawyer was], there 

was this old white guy who represented the Civil Service Commission. [01:22:04] And he was 

[laughter], I’ll tell you why I’m laughing. He was funny, but in a kind of a racist way. So, he 

referred to us as hemorrhoids. “When they come down, they never go away” was his line. 

[laughter] I’ll never forget that. So, I was his hemorrhoid. [laughter] 

 MHP: And you didn’t go away, really. [laughter] How did that case go? 

 OPS: Right. So the mayor was in favor of settling the case rather than trying it. And we 

had long, extended negotiations essentially between LDF and the folks representing the Civil 

Service Commission, with the mayor wanting to have a police department that was more diverse. 

And so, going back and forth, we finally were able to negotiate a settlement, which – and we 

were asking for promotions for a period of time on a numerical basis. [01:24:05] One to one, or 

something like that. And the issue was related to the system for selection of police officers, both 

for hire and for promotion. You’re talking about, once again, aptitude tests, which as I’ve said 

many times really didn’t differentiate between people’s skills and abilities. And the Civil Service 



27 
 

guy was not particularly happy with that and he didn’t want to disadvantage the whites. So, we 

negotiated with the city where they would essentially add to the number of supervisory slots. So, 

if there were, and I’m making up the numbers here, if you had 100 sergeants, in order to 

accommodate the decree, they might extend, they might increase the number of total number of 

sergeants to 120. And the 20 would be filled by Blacks being promoted to those slots. And that 

was acceptable to the to the Civil Service guy. And in addition, we had some provisions around 

hiring, which was also race conscious, and it was a pretty far-reaching decree. Ronald Reagan 

was President. The district judge thought that the consent decree was discriminating against 

white people because it went too far and he rejected the consent decree. [01:26:28] We appealed 

and won before a three-judge panel. The case then gets some attention by the Civil Rights 

Division of the Justice Department during the Reagan administration. And a guy named William 

Bradford Reynolds, who was the head of Civil Rights Division at the time and was no fan of 

affirmative action. The losing side appealed to the en banc court. So first you had three judges 

and then there were 13, I think, was on the Eleventh Circuit at the time. Fifth Circuit, I’m sorry. 

And the en banc court decided to take the take the case at the urging of the Civil Rights Division 

of the Justice Department, essentially. And it got lots of press. And we argued it before the court 

and the panel was reversed seven-six. We came close to winning. I’m not so sure that if we had 

won, that would have been such a great thing because the case then would have gone to the 

Supreme Court and who knows what would have happened. But anyway, we had to go back to 

the district court and had a more slimmed down version of the consent decree, which was then 

appealed and upheld. And that was that. [01:28:29] 

 MHP: This process takes some time. 

 OPS: Oh, yeah. 



28 
 

 MHP: It takes a lot of time. And before I even go on to another case, we’ll talk about 

what’s, you know, which ones are most important to get to, because we’ll have some final 

questions. I want to ask you about when you’re, you know, sort of covering these, and there’s a 

specific question that we’ve had here about that, about covering these more— 

 OPS: Long term cases. 

 MHP: Yes, yes. 

 OPS: Well, Williams was one of those. It’s not like the education cases. You know, the 

school desegregation cases would go on for generations sometimes. The employment cases tend 

to be, tended to be, relatively speaking, shorter. But we’re not talking about six months, we’re 

talking about years. Williams was one of those cases, as I say, that had been pending for a while. 

You didn’t have people who had the, I guess, time interest experience with those cases. And of 

course, frequently the clients didn’t have the wherewithal to support it financially. And lawyers 

want to eat. So, sometimes those cases that are not adequately funded ended up languishing, 

essentially. 

 MHP: What, can I just ask you, though, and I’m sorry if I interrupted, but what kept you 

encouraged when you were working on these cases, whether they were longer or shorter cases? 

What kind of kept you encouraged, especially over the years as you’re seeing— [01:30:13] 

 OPS: It made a difference. It made a difference in the lives of other people, and that was 

always a big motivator for me personally. Plus, I was working with great people, you know, 

lawyers who were interesting or funny or had interests not very different than mine, etcetera. 

They’re great, great people to work with. And we were able to get results that made a difference 

in the lives of a whole lot of folks. I’ll give you some examples on that. So, years later, of course, 

I go on to do other things and every now and then somebody up and says, “You’re the lawyer 



29 
 

that worked on the Williams case.” Yeah. “I ended up being an inspector in the police 

department. Thank you.” And that happened on multiple occasions. I wasn’t expecting that 

[laughter], but that happened. And that’s a good feeling. 

 MHP: Yeah. Decades later, the work you did. 

 OPS: Yeah, and you know, this was 15, 20 years later. 

 MHP: Let’s talk about— 

 OPS: And my daughter, for example, I was up at her college for a parents’ weekend and 

that happened. This guy out of Detroit, you know, came up and essentially said like, “Thanks.” 

[01:32:06] Yeah, his daughter was in her class as well, so. 

 MHP: It’s a legacy. 

 OPS: Excuse me? 

 MHP: It’s a legacy, you’ve really left this legacy that still continues to make a difference 

in people’s lives even today. 

 OPS: That’s true. And to their kids. That’s true. 

 MHP: I’m wondering, before we move on, any other LDF cases that you want to talk 

about before we talk about transitioning from LDF, I mean, you were there for a decade. 

 OPS: Well, we probably ought to talk about the Detroit Police case. 

 MHP: Okay, let’s turn back. 

 OPS: So, DPOA, there are two cases. The Detroit Police Officers Association v. Young 

and Bratton or the Lieutenant and Sergeants case v. the City of Detroit. Coleman Young 

becomes, former labor leader, strong personality, becomes the mayor of Detroit, which has a 

troubled history, let me put it that way, with its police department. If you went back and did 

some research, you might remember. Well, Detroit had two major riots. One in the [19]40s and 



30 
 

another one in 1966 where, race riots, lot of places burning etcetera, etcetera. And there was an 

effort after the [19]66 riots to try to do something about the tensions between the police 

department and the Black citizens. [01:34:16] So, Coleman Young, who was a labor leader, gets 

elected mayor and tries to do something about it. Let me back up a little bit on the 1966 riot. It 

was all over the national news and there’s a picture on that, regarding the Detroit riots on the 

front of Time magazine. I’ll get back to that later. So anyway. Coleman Young decides that he 

wanted to hire and promote and particularly promote within the police, his police department, 

one Black person for each white person. The union and its white members went nuts. It was 

essentially guns drawn between Black officers and white officers on the steps of the courthouse, 

where they were fighting there. That lawsuit related to, I think, wages. I think it was related to 

wages. [01:36:00] There was a second lawsuit involving [promotion] from police officer to 

sergeant, which challenged a decision of the Detroit Police Commission to approve this 

appointment, this promotion on a one-to-one basis. It gets tried before a federal district judge in 

Detroit and the city loses. The city asks then, the corporation counsel for the city then contacted 

the Legal Defense Fund and asked if we would help with the appeal. Of course we said yes. It’s 

an important case. So we took that case and we weren’t particularly happy with the record in the 

case. It was okay, but it needed some other things. At the same time, there was a follow-up, a 

different suit involving promotions from sergeant to lieutenant in the department, in the Detroit 

Police Department. And it was the same 50-50 promotions. And by then— 

 MHP: Was that the Bratton case? 

 OPS: That’s the Bratton case. That’s Bratton. And by that time, the police commission 

really had two concerns. One was the issue of, just racial discrimination in hiring and promotion, 

but also and more importantly, there was a great deal of, by then a great deal of social science 



31 
 

learning, showing the relationship between a segregated police force and the extent to which the 

police department could effectively fight crime. [01:38:22] And the notion was, it really is true, 

cops don’t solve cases. They really don’t. Citizens do. And if the citizens aren’t willing, if the 

citizens see you as an occupying force, you don’t get much cooperation. And to say nothing of 

the tension between citizens and police officers and the use of lethal force and all of that. And 

the police commission understood that, and that was one of the reasons that they had for having 

this pretty aggressive promotion system. That case was assigned to Damon Keith, who was a 

district court judge at the time that the case was filed. Somewhere along there he gets appointed 

to the Sixth Circuit, but he kept the case. And so, we were asked to take on that case, and we did. 

It was a long-standing case because the judge was splitting his time between the district courts 

and the appeals court. He couldn’t give us his full attention. [01:39:57] So we tried the case for a 

year. About two months of trial time. That’s a lot. That’s a long trial. And basically, we put on a 

case that described the racial history between the police department and the Black citizens of 

Detroit over an extended period of time. While we were representing the city and we were 

involved in all of that, for some reason or other, some of our records were being moved to 

someplace else and we hit gold, because apparently the Legal Defense Fund, Thurgood Marshall, 

was involved in legal proceedings back in 1948 during the early riot. And so, we had the legal 

record from there, affidavits from Black citizens about police mistreatment, and so on. There had 

also been a study by the Civil Rights Commission of the State of Michigan, which published a 

volume, several hundred pages that described all of that in great detail. So that was extremely 

helpful in putting on essentially a racial history of Detroit and, [coughs] excuse me, the tensions 

between the police department and the citizens. [01:42:05] We also tried to prove, and did prove, 

that there was an operational need for having this aggressive program because if you wanted to 



32 
 

have more effective policing, you needed to have the cooperation of the citizens and in order to 

do that, one of the necessary components, that’s not sufficient, understand, but one of the 

necessary components is that you have a more integrated police department. And we put on 

expert testimony to show that. There were some presidential commissions back in the [19]60s 

that made that point. And we put that on in great detail in the trial, and wrote one of those – our 

post hearing brief ran hundreds of pages. [laughs] It really did, as we told the story. And for the 

most part, the judge bought our theory both for the racial discrimination in hiring and promotion, 

but a large part of it had to do with the operational needs. One of our lead witnesses was the 

deputy police chief. White guy. And he talked about this operational need. And he was pretty 

effective. [01:44:10] So, it turns out, I mentioned to you this Time magazine article for the riots 

of 1966. So, he was in the picture and he had a rifle. He had his foot on the body of a Black 

person on the ground and had the stock of the rifle on his knee holding it up. Same guy. 

 MHP: And he ended up testifying for you? 

 OPS: Yeah. He worked for Coleman Young, he understood what his job was. And I think 

a good part of it, too, is that, you know, he came around to seeing that the department needed to 

go in a different direction, and he was very effective, quite frankly. So during the course of the 

case, the other side is cross-examining him and asked him, and I didn’t know this. “Weren’t you 

opposed to, didn’t you, at the meeting where they the commission was talking about this, you 

were opposed to the 50-50 promotion, weren’t you?” And he said, “Yeah, I was opposed to that.” 

[01:46:03] So, and I didn’t know what the answer was to it. So, I asked him during a break, 

“What was that all about?” He said, “Well I was opposed to it. What I wanted was 100 percent 

quota so that we could get done with this faster.” [laughter] And that was his testimony. Know 

your witness. 



33 
 

 MHP: So you’ve got this great strategy. You’ve got, thinking of very pragmatic, 

practical side of the efficacy of, right, of what it does with the community in place. So, then, 

you’ve got this all the historical context, right that goes with the – 

 OPS: The other part of it was that it also had an impact with respect to, and we put a lot 

of evidence on this, the police brutality issue. And there was a lot of fighting back and forth 

about that. And the evidence was that during the period that we’re talking about, when they 

implemented the 50-50 program, the number of complaints against the police went through the 

roof. What was that about? So, the same guy – and I knew what the answer was to this. You 

know, the other side made a lot of a lot of that. He said, “Yes, well, that’s true. But the quality of 

the and nature of the complaint was changed.” They were no longer talking about cracked heads 

or broken arms or any of that. The complaints were in the nature of, “The officer wasn’t polite 

enough.” [01:48:10] And there were a lot of those. But the number of things that, complaints 

related to police brutality – phew. Down. It was an interesting way of viewing the effects of 

having an integrated police department. So that encouraged me to do more of those. And that 

followed with, following that was the Williams case. [laughter]  

 MHP: Let’s just say – you have worked with LDF a decade. Won some, lost some, and 

even in the, I guess, settlements, you know, for the most part, you would consider those wins. 

Right? 

 OPS: Oh, absolutely. 

 MHP: Exactly. Those are wins. And but then you do leave LDF. How does that come 

about? 

 OPS: Well, 10 years is enough, don’t you think? [laughter] 

 MHP: You did great work. 



34 
 

 OPS: Look, when I joined LDF, I expected I’d be there for three years, and then I’d try 

to get a job in one of these white shoe firms. But I was doing things that I thought were 

important, and so I kept doing it. But then, you know, you need to move on and I needed to get a 

job that paid enough so that I could pay tuition and a mortgage, those kinds of things. And so I 

was looking to leave LDF. [01:50:12] And I was recruited by the New York State Attorney 

General to join their office. Now, I can’t say that pay was much better. It was better, but not by 

much. But the office was doing things that kind of got my adrenaline running. And so, I took the 

job as deputy solicitor general and a year later became the solicitor general. So, this was the 

number two office, the number two person in the office of the attorney general. And I oversaw 

all of the appellate work of the Attorney General for the great state of New York. It’s a much 

bigger platform. And I still had an interest in civil rights, but I had responsibilities going well 

beyond that, which was also interesting, and covered a lot of other things outside of civil rights, 

but were of – that one would consider progressive, I suppose. So, it was a great job. You know, 

New York, as I said, it’s a much bigger platform, bigger megaphone. [laughter] [01:51:58] 

 MHP: How would you say your years at LDF shaped, you know, even when you went on 

this career, how do you think your years at LDF shaped the work you did after that? The roles 

you were in? 

 OPS: It was certainly important. I was broadening out the range of things that I was 

paying attention to, but what was nearest and dearest to my heart were civil rights cases. And I 

would, when the opportunity came to represent an interest in the civil rights area, I’d pay 

attention to that. You know, I suppose the people who were in the Civil Rights Bureau at the 

AG’s office were happy to have me as the solicitor general because I’m paying attention to what 

they’re doing and the good work they’re doing, etcetera, and helping fashion their work. So, it 



35 
 

was terrific. But I was doing securities law and antitrust and consumer matters and criminal 

prosecutions and on and on and on. It was a full plate. 

 MHP: What was it like, let me ask you this, because, you know, eventually you do 

become a state Supreme Court Justice. But, and before we talk about that a little bit, can you talk 

about arguing before the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court, for the Local 28? The Local 

28 Sheet Metal Workers case? 

 OPS: So, while I was at LDF, I certainly had my fair share of cases where I either wrote 

briefs or participated in briefs, second-seated in Supreme Court arguments. [01:54:07] But I 

never really had a case where I was the lead person. Solicitor general gets to pick and choose 

whatever he wants to argue, before the highest courts in both the state and the federal level. And 

cases would come along that either interest me or, and frequently this was the case, the client 

agency would say, “Peter, would you argue this?” And the general counsel of the State 

University of New York was always knocking on my door to have me argue their case. And they 

had some of the most interesting cases. So, the Fox v. SUNY for example, it’s a first amendment 

case. The background there was this entity was selling cutlery and dinnerware in the dorms. The 

way they positioned themselves were to coeds suggesting that they could build their dowry there. 

You know, over time. They didn’t need to buy it right then, but they could, over time, pay for the 

cutlery for their home after they got married, that kind of stuff. [01:55:58] So, I called it selling 

Tupperware in the dorms. And there was a regulation that the university had that said you can’t 

engage in commercial activities in the dorm rooms. And the argument was that these students, 

the regulation threw out the baby with the bathwater in the sense that, well, suppose they had a 

meeting around, you know, abortion products. That’s still a product. [laughter] So, that’s what 

they wanted. And the case made its way all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the court 



36 
 

was deciding what is the standard that one would apply to commercial speech, because that’s 

what was going on. And we won, six-three. So, that was good. 

 MHP: Was that your first, as you, as the primary – 

 OPS: That was the first one that I argued, where I argued it before the Court. So, I did the 

brief. I’d done many of those. And worked out the strategy and argued the case. 

 MHP: How does that feel the first time when you do that or is it, does it become almost 

like when you argue, once you get up there, or does it have a different feeling? 

 OPS: It’s a matter of preparation. You have to give it the respect it deserves and it takes 

time and attention and so on. And if you’re – you’d be amazed how calming it is once you get up 

there, where you are satisfied that you know what you’re talking about. [01:58:12] So it was fine. 

 MHP: So, there’s that case. And then Local 28, is Local 28 also before the U.S. Supreme 

Court? 

 OPS: I argued that as well. Yeah, that was a very interesting case. It involved race 

conscious court orders that were not victim specific. Once again, we were at odds with William 

Bradford Reynolds’s Civil Rights Division. So, this was a case – talk about longstanding cases. 

Somewhere around 1968, the then Attorney General for the state of New York established the 

Civil Rights Bureau [in the AG’s office]. And one of the first things that they did at the time was 

to try to break the exclusionary practices of the construction trades. You know, construction 

trades are the children of the guilds of old, the construction guilds. [02:00:00] And nepotism was 

at the heart of that. You know, you pass the job down to your son or your nephew, along those 

lines. Never your daughter, of course. Never your daughter. And since nobody who was a 

journeyman in the union was other than white, the jobs stayed with white folks. And so, there 

was an effort both at the federal level and the state level, to essentially integrate the construction 



37 
 

trades. And the state was quite successful with much of that, except for the Sheetmetal workers, 

who would have none of it. And so while there was the effort beginning in 1968 to open up that 

union, the resistance continued. So here I am in 1985 and one of the many court orders involving 

that union, where the district judge actually held the union in contempt and imposed goals and 

timetables, or some people would say quotas, that went up to the Second Circuit, which was 

affirmed, and then it went to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court granted cert. [02:01:54] 

About two years ago, I was talking about that case with one of my colleagues who was kind of a 

nerdy guy, but he is fascinated by Supreme Court and the Supreme Court’s decisions. And it 

turns out that the papers for Lewis Powell, who wrote the majority opinion in Local 28, had 

become available. So I had the chance to read his notes. So put a pin in that for a minute. So, I 

get up and once again, preparation is everything has long been my view. So, by the time I got up 

to argue, I knew everything there was to know about the case. And at that point, which was 21 

years after the AG focused on the union, there’d been a long history. Turns out that there were, 

you won’t believe this, 55 court orders against the union over a 21-year period, and it was still 

flaming. But you know, there they were in the Supreme Court. They were held in contempt and 

the Court had imposed goals and timetables and required them to do that until the, maintain that 

program until the union was 29.3 percent. [02:04:10] I mean, it was that precise, which is what 

the union was saying, you know, this is a quota and it’s not allowed. Okay. So that was the 

argument. And at that point, the plaintiffs in the case were the EEOC, the city of New York, and 

the state of New York. Ronald Reagan was the President, Ed Koch was the mayor, Bob Abrams 

was the Attorney General. And so, cert gets granted and the Solicitor General of the United 

States steps in and changes the position of the EEOC. Puts it to the side, essentially argues not 

for upholding the contempt determination [the EEOC had won], but for reversing it as an 



38 
 

unconstitutional quota, and also in violation of Title VII. The city and the state worked together 

for their respective briefs, but we were sort of coordinating our efforts, and so I was working 

with the [city Corporation] Counsel, except when we came close to actually having to file, Ed 

Koch said no. He would not, we could not, the city could not support the court order because Ed 

Koch was against quotas. [02:06:13] So that left just the state of New York, then little me, 

arguing for upholding what the Court had ordered by way of the contempt finding. So, there we 

are. So, I’m reading Powell’s notes. Oh, by the way, we win five-four. 

 MHP: So, you go in with odds really stacked against you. 

 OPS: [Yes, but we ended up winning] five-four.  

 MHP: It’s kind of a David and Goliath, but okay. You win five-four? 

 OPS: We win five-four. And so, I’m reading from Powell’s notes and so in the Supreme 

Court, there’s a memorandum for granting, assessing the case and deciding whether cert should 

be granted or not. And the recommendation was that they grant cert and overturn the lower court 

decision because it was viewed as an [unlawful] quota. And there were a lot of notes, etcetera, 

etcetera, etcetera. So, it was pretty extraordinary, I thought, that, oh, oral argument really did 

make a difference. [laughter] And it’s probably because, you know, this is lawyers again. 

[02:08:00] So, the other side was the petitioner. So, they went first. And this guy who 

represented the union was arguing about how much of a quota this was. And at one point he said, 

effectively saying, these weren’t his exact words, but effectively saying that the various amici 

were unfairly arguing to the Court that the conduct of the union was egregious. And I said, hmm, 

okay. So, I was prepared to talk about the long history of resistance and discrimination by the 

union. But then he gave me this gift. So, I get up and after the little introductory stuff, I said, “As 

I was sitting there listening to Mr. Gold, I couldn’t help but wonder to myself whether we were 



39 
 

here to discuss the same case.” That’s a hell of an opening. [laughter] And I said, “Just to give 

you an example. He argued that the amici [were] being unfair in characterizing the conduct of 

the union. Well, I can tell you that’s the word used by the lower court in describing the conduct 

of this union.” And then I went on and tell them about this long history. All I can say is I think 

that rendition ended up in a five-four decision our way as opposed to a five-four decision going 

in the other way. [laughter] [02:10:00] Anyway. 

 MHP: You have had some important wins. 

 OPS: That was a big win.  

 MHP: I was going to say, that was certainly –  

 OPS: And it’s the law as of the moment. Next week, it may be gone. 

 MHP: I want to talk about that as we, you know, look back at law, at precedent, at your 

wins in the past. But now looking at sort of when you think about being with LDF and you think 

about just more, the trends in the country, trends that we might be seeing now, what do you think 

is the most important area of civil rights legislation today and how do you think, in your own 

opinion? 

 OPS: Voting. No question about it. Voting. And that’s because it is the bedrock of all 

other rights. You know, in the [19]60s, after all of that protest that occurred, we got the civil 

rights legislation passed and that changed things rather dramatically. And in the law, you know, 

we can go on and on about that. And then with the loss of the protections of the Voting Rights 

Act, you have now have a Supreme Court that is populated by folks who have a very different 

view of civil rights and beyond. Back in the day, the Supreme Court decided what, five-three for 

Roe. [02:12:01] Now it’s the other way with respect to abortion and any number of other things. 

Environmental issues, criminal justice issues, on and on and on. And unless we find a way to do 



40 
 

something about gerrymandering and extreme gerrymandering in this country, we’re going to 

continue to have the trend that results in the restriction of civil rights of peoples of all genders 

and colors. That’s a reality. 

 MHP: In the current climate, then, in your opinion, how do you think LDF can continue 

to do meaningful work in this century? 

 OPS: Oh, we need LDF as much today as we did back then. They’re doing extremely 

important work. They are fighting the fight. They are, you know, without LDF, you’re not going 

to see the gains, limited as they are, in voting rights because those are difficult cases, they’re 

expensive cases. They need talented lawyers. And LDF’s at the forefront of much of that. So, I 

mentioned voting rights, but there are other areas too. They’re at the forefront of the effort to end 

the barbaric history of this country with respect to capital punishment. That and employment of 

course, you know, the landscape has changed with respect to employment. [02:14:15] I think 

many employers have had an epiphany with respect to that. And so, this DEI stuff is here, 

although the Supreme Court has, apparently has other views with respect to DEI. And so, let’s 

see if we can once again, with the assistance of outfits like LDF, bring back what I regard as 

sanity to our legal system. So, now, a lot has changed. It used to be the federal government and 

civil rights organizations against state and local governments. That’s less the case. You now have 

states that are really quite progressive on the issues that are of concern to us, and that’s a good 

thing. We’ve had some of those. 

 MHP: Some. Some. Are there any questions that I didn’t address or any things you’d like 

to talk about that my questions didn’t address? 

 OPS: Well, it’s the last thing we just talked about. That is where are the states in some of 

this. When I was coming along, states’ rights was anathema to me. And if you were a student of 



41 
 

history and you look at the development of the law around the 14th Amendment, so much of it in 

the early years related to the so-called to so-called states’ rights. And states’ rights was, in my 

view, a substitute for “segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” [02:16:36] 

And so I was wary about states’ rights. Over time, a number of things happened. Going back to 

Bobby Hill and Fletcher Farrington. I remember them as being the first ones who thought that 

individual cases involving civil rights as opposed to class actions were better brought in state 

court. And they had positive results where you put on your case and show to plain, ordinary 

citizens, sometimes all white, that this is just unfair. And you persuade them and you get much 

bigger judgments than any judge would give them. So, there’s that. You see states moving away 

from the death penalty, for example, or enacting their own voting rights act. New York has 

something called the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. [02:18:00] And what’s that the result of? 

Because the legislature these days has minority folks who are sitting at the table. The head of the 

Senate is a Black woman in New York. The head of the assembly is a Black man in New York, 

and, you know, the governor is pretty progressive. She comes from a pretty conservative part of 

the state, but she’s pretty progressive. And you see that in other states. And you can, if you have 

in places in government, and I learned this when I was in city hall as corporation counsel or 

when I was solicitor general. You can move a lot more and a lot faster if you are in a position of 

leadership in, you know, in governmental agencies, for example. You can turn a lot of things 

around very quickly. If you, the lawsuits that LDF brought – critically important. You have to 

have them. But they’re slow. I’ve come to the view that litigation is, litigation of the kind that 

LDF does, is the vehicle of people who are out of power. But if you have power, you can bring 

about those progressive changes a lot faster. [02:20:04] 



42 
 

 MHP: Anything else you want to add or Jesse, any questions that you have that I didn’t, 

after listening, if you want to ask, and I’m just making sure I haven’t. [pauses] I think, anything 

Jesse, you’re good? I think the only thing, and we don’t have to talk about this. But you did 

mention the death penalty a few times and there was a case in here that you were, did you have a 

death penalty case? Because normally –  

 OPS: That’s Johnson v. Mississippi. 

 MHP: That’s it. 

 OPS: Yeah. We talked about that, I think. 

 MHP: We did talk about that, yes we did. 

 OPS: But there’s another, you know, that’s another example. Someone who has a 

progressive outlook is willing to take up a case like that and on the side of life as opposed to, you 

know, a government sanctioned murder. [laughter] So, most, as I say, I don’t – at the time, I 

don’t think there was a single case where an attorney general has taken a position in court against 

the imposition of a death penalty. But let me tell you about one other case, which is not a death 

penalty case, but it’s important in the context of what we were just talking about. And that’s the 

Johnson case that’s in that list there. I’ve forgotten who the defendant was. But for a long time, 

you were able to, beginning in the 1960s, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, [18]67 and [18]68 were 

revived, essentially. [02:22:11] The Supreme Court had in the late 19th century, essentially 

nullified those acts. Beginning probably in the [19]50s and [19]60s those acts come back to life. 

And initially, when Title VII was passed, it didn’t extend to claims against government. And 

there are procedural hurdles that you had to follow, had to overcome, etcetera. One of the areas 

that was used by advocates was 42 U.S.C. Section 1981, which is a Reconstruction-era statute 

that outlawed racial discrimination with respect to contracts, and that was used in hiring and 



43 
 

promotion cases and so on. So, one of those cases was at the Supreme Court. And while nobody, 

and all the circuit courts had pretty much agreed that you could use 1981 to bring a civil rights 

case [in employment which, of course, is a contractual relationship]. You [also] got a somewhat 

longer statute of limitations [in most states]. It had its benefits. The Supreme Court on its own 

asked the parties to brief whether or not the 1981 could be used in a promotion case because it 

talked about the making of contracts as opposed to the implementation of contracts. Sorry to give 

you all this lawyerese. [02:24:06] So, the Supreme Court asked the parties to briefly issue. That 

set off all kinds of alarms that they were getting ready to essentially turn back the clock with 

respect to 1981. I was solicitor general and I said to Bob Abrams that we ought to, we needed to 

weigh in on that. And I thought, and he thought, and he agreed with me, that the attorneys 

general across the country, we should try to get as many attorney generals as possible to weigh in 

on the brief. So that’s what we were planning to do. And he at the time was, I think he was 

president of NAAG, the National Association of Attorneys General. And we were coming up on 

one of our periodic meetings, and I’d gotten six attorneys general to write a letter to all of their 

colleagues to sign onto this brief. Prior to that time, the largest number of attorneys general that 

had ever signed on to any civil rights case on a progressive side was 15. And so, we had this 

Johnson case and we reached out to the attorneys general to sign on. [02:26:03] Guess how many 

folks signed on to it? Forty-eight, plus the District of Columbia. There were only two that didn’t 

do it, that didn’t sign on. Now, I suspect that anybody who was at LDF that was in my position 

could have and would have done the same thing and gotten similar results. You know, if you’re 

in the seat, you can make things happen. And it’s your duty to make things happen, at least that’s 

my view. 

 MHP: And that was important to you. 



44 
 

 OPS: Oh, yeah. By the way, we lost the case. The Supreme Court did overturn the prior 

interpretation of Section 1981, but, as a result, outfits like LDF were able to go to the Congress 

and get them to amend the law to turn it back to the way it was. And the fact that 48 states had 

said to the Supreme Court, “The law ain’t broken, no need to fix it,” made a difference. 

 MHP: I think that’s a perfect note to end this on. Unless there’s something else. Are you 

guys all set? 

 OPS: Amen. [laughs] 

 MHP: Thank you. 

 OPS: My pleasure. [02:27:46] 

 

[END OF INTERVIEW]