Sylvia Drew Ivie Interview Transcript

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project  

 

Sylvia Drew Ivie 

Interviewed by Gabriel Solís 

November 30, 2023 

Los Angeles, California 

Length: 01:28:01 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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 Sylvia Drew Ivie, the Southern Oral History Program, 

and LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with Sylvia Drew Ivie, 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] 

 Gabriel Solís: Okay. This is Gabriel Solís with the Southern Oral History Program at 

the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today is November 30th, 2023. I'm here in 

Los Angeles with Miss Sylvia Drew Ivie at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and 

Science, conducting an interview for the Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project. Thank 

you, Miss Sylvia, for being here with us and agreeing to share your story with us. Will you 

just introduce yourself before we really get started here?  

 Sylvia Drew Ivie: Okay. All right. My name is Sylvia Drew Ivie and I am a staff 

member at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science. I work for the President, 

David Carlisle, and my role at the university is to stay connected to the community that 

founded us, in Watts, L.A. 

 [pause while microphone is adjusted] 

GS: And I want to talk about the founding of the university. It's named in honor of 

your father. 

SDI: Yes. 

GS: So, I'm wondering if, you know, it's such an important story. Before we get into 

everything else, I'm wondering if you could just talk about what you and I were talking about 

before we started rolling, about how this university came to be. 

SDI: Okay. In 1965, there was a community revolt in the Watts community because it 

was as though a circle had been drawn around this geographic area and it didn't have 

anything that it needed. It didn't have doctors, it didn't have nurses, it didn't have grocery 

stores, it didn't have daycare, it didn't have anything. All it had was public housing and many, 

many low-income people, the majority of whom at that time were African American. There 

was a conflagration in [19]65 and there was a fire. And the powers that be noticed that there 

was a place called South L.A. that needed help. [00:02:24] And out of that focus came a 



 
 
 

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hospital, the Martin Luther King Hospital, and the Charles R. Drew School of Medicine. So, 

we were born in the fire. We were born in the fire. There's no other university and medical 

school that came out of community advocacy for neglect. We want to live. We want our 

children to live. One of our leaders used to say, “I don't want to pay $15 and taxi to take my 

asthmatic child all the way downtown. I don't have $15 and my child needs care.” So, that's 

the kind of need that we've tried to meet. And we've been around doing it for a long time, and 

we're highly regarded now as a hospital and as a medical school and very happy to be here. 

[Pauses to adjust mic] 

GS: There were two things that you said when we were walking together that really 

stuck out, caught my attention. 

SDI: Mm-hmm. 

GS: The first, which you just sort of touched on, but I would like if you can to say a 

little more about it, which is the relationship between community needs and community 

resistance and in health care or public health. I think that tie is very interesting. [00:04:10] 

SDI: Yes. 

GS: It's something that we, you were saying is not often connected, people are not 

often connecting those things, but that is how this institution was founded. 

SDI: Right. 

GS: And the second thing you mentioned were the women advocates who were in the 

community, from the community. And if not for their direct actions and, as you said, getting 

in people's faces, you know. That’s such an important part of the story, so I was wondering if 

you can talk about that. 

SDI: Oh, we're just so indebted to the community leadership. And there were five 

women who were very, very strong in going downtown to the powers that be to say, “We 

demand that you recognize us. We demand that you get us health care.” And health care was 



 
 
 

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not really seen in the [19]60s as a pivotal civil rights issue. But in Los Angeles, because of 

the neglect of this geographic area and the tremendous need of people for primary health 

care, child health care, care for seniors, health became a civil rights issue. And so we really 

became a national leader in identifying that, not in the public health terms of “This is what 

good health is and these are the range of services that you need and we emphasize preventive 

care.” No, it's honoring people that live in the community and saying, “You're entitled, your 

grandmother is entitled to health care, your child is entitled to health care. And we are the 

government and it's our job to make that available to you.” [00:06:11] So, that's how we came 

to be. And it's really quite remarkable that we've lasted all these years because there wasn't 

money for it in the beginning, and we've never had a huge amount of money, but we've had a 

lot of support as the years have gone by, from foundations and private donations and we're 

just thriving. We just opened our first four-year medical school because before we were 

always two years here and two years at UCLA, because UCLA stepped up to say, “We'll help 

you get care. Doctors in your community. We’ll help you.” And so, they would do two years 

academic work at UCLA and two years practicum here because the people all needed so 

much health care. So now, all these years later, we’ve finally gotten enough respect and 

money and everything else, influence, that we have our own four-year medical school. So, 

we're very proud. 

GS: That’s great. 

SDI: We're very proud. 

GS: Congratulations. 

SDI: [laughter] Thank you. We have a great Dean, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, who's 

just marvelous. 



 
 
 

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GS: I'm thinking this next question might get us to go back to your childhood a little 

bit, which was to say why was this institution named in honor of your father? And then if you 

could tell us a little bit about him. 

SDI: Okay. My father was a physician, born and raised in Washington, D.C. And he 

died at a very young age, at 45, in a single-car car accident in North Carolina [00:08:07]. He 

and four other physicians were driving to Atlanta, Georgia, for a conference, and he simply 

fell asleep at the wheel. It was in the wee hours of the morning. He had worked and done 

surgery all day and the others were asleep and he fell asleep. The car rolled over. The others 

were thrown out. His foot was lodged under the accelerator. And so, he wasn't thrown out 

and the car rolling over crushed him. Now, Dick Gregory started the story that he died 

because he was denied medical care. And that is not true. He got medical care, but he was too 

badly injured. But no matter how often we try to straighten the record out, it never dies 

because there were many Black people, many brown people, many API people, poor people 

generally, who needed care and didn't get it because they were in the wrong package. 

GS: Right. 

SDI: Okay. So, I keep telling the story, but I understand why the story is meaningful 

to us. Sometimes if I say that's not true, they get mad at me. They think I'm trying to take 

away their history. I'm not trying to take away their history. I'm just trying to make the 

records be straight on that one individual. But it's a story that carries a lot of the pain that 

people have had for not being able to get health care. That's why they won't let it die. 

GS: And can you talk about, a little bit of, talk a little about all of your father's 

accomplishments in the medical field, even at that very young age? 

SDI: [00:10:05] Yes. He was trained at McGill Medical School in Canada. He had 

applied to Harvard but was waitlisted. And it was his good fortune to be admitted at McGill, 

where he had a professor named Dr. John Scudder, who was interested in blood. And so he 



 
 
 

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did a lot of work on blood and blood plasma and blood preservation. And then the war came, 

and his research became important because we needed to spin down the red and the yellow, 

dry it, and preserve it in a sterile way, and then ship it over to our soldiers in the warfront. 

They called on him to do that. So he had expertise in blood studies. But what he brought to 

that expertise was skillful organization of people. He was a leader and so he mobilized the 

Red Cross. The Red Cross invented a mobile blood collection van. They went up in Harlem 

and collected blood. At first, they said, “We don't want blood from Blacks.” He said, “Well, 

then I won't help you. I won't help you.” And they said, “Okay, you can collect from Blacks.” 

And they collected. And that the was war effort for people in Harlem, to give their blood. 

And so, with the Red Cross and their structure, we set up the blood banks and we sent blood 

over and saved many, many lives. So, he's remembered for that scientific contribution of 

blood, which is so symbolic of life and death. [00:12:04] And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful 

story. And it's beautiful by itself. You don't need the false narrative that he died for lack of 

access to care because he didn't. But he did make a contribution based on his studies, his 

work at McGill. And he was very almost fated to make his mark at an early point because he 

died so young. Most people don't get a chance to do what they're going to do before they 

reach 46 years old.  

GS: I have two daughters. I can't imagine what that loss must have been like. How did 

it affect your family, your young family? And what were their years like after that? You were 

very young.  

SDI: I was six. And I had two older sisters, 10 and nine, and a four-year-old brother. 

So, my mother, who is a saint, had four children to raise, no income. And we were in 

university housing. We had to leave housing. But again, the doctors who so admired my 

father came forward and they said, “We will collect a down payment for you to buy a house.” 

And that's how we got our home. And she was, she was a very strong, enlightened woman. 



 
 
 

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And she did a good job. She got four children through college and graduate school and never 

had any money. I don't know how she did it, but we all had scholarships. And she took us to 

the museums and she took us to cultural events. [00:14:18] And she just did a superb job for a 

single mom with four kids. So, I think my father would be very proud of her. 

GS: What was her name? 

SDI: Minnie Lenore Drew. 

GS: And where was that house? 

SDI: It was on College Street, 328 College Street, Northwest, which exists no more, 

because they tore it down for a dormitory for the school, for Howard University. But it was a 

rental house. We never, my father never owned his own home but he loved gardening and he 

let me garden in the backyard with him. And I learned in that process what doing a good job 

meant because he had a tray of red gardenias and he dug the hole and it was my job to take 

the little plant to put it in the hole and pull it up. And he said, “We can't move on to the next 

one because you haven't done a good job on that one.” And I said, “What? What didn’t I do?” 

And he said, “You have to pat it down. So a little plant will be firmly planted and can grow 

strong. If you leave it loose, it might fall over. It might not be watered properly. It won't grow 

properly. So, I need you to take care of each plant that you're planting.” Which was a 

powerful lesson, which I've always kept with me. Plant the seed I'm planting. Make sure that 

one grows before I move to the next one. 

GS: That is a good lesson. [00:15:57] We’re so quick to just keep it moving all the 

time that we don’t always. 

SDI: Well, we're busy, you know. And I thought, well, let's get the whole tray 

planted. We’ve got a whole tray of red little flowers here we’ve got to get in. No, we're going 

to do it one at a time and do a good job. 



 
 
 

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GS: Are there any other memories of him that stick with you like this one, that sort of 

guide you, have guided you through your life? [pause] Or even just a memory of him. 

SDI: I remember that he used to take us — remember, we didn’t have much money. 

And he used to take us down to Union Station at Christmas time. And the freight cars would 

come in, piled to the top with Christmas trees all tied up, and he would go through the pile 

and he picked the biggest, most beautiful, fattest Christmas tree and put it on top of the car 

and we would take it home. And that was always — we would stop by the department stores 

that had the Christmas displays and we'd look at all the little mannequins and everything and 

then we'd go home and we'd decorate the tree. I remember doing that with him and my sister 

Bebe would take the icicles and throw them up in a bunch. And he said, “Take that down. 

That is not the proper way to hang icicles. This is supposed to look like water falling. It 

doesn't look like water falling if you have a bunch of icicles.” So she had to take them down 

and hang them one at a time. And thereafter, we always hung the icicles one at a time to look 

like falling water from the snow. So I remember that about him. I remember my mother 

saying when he was waiting for the results of his students’ examinations, I think. He went 

down in the basement. He loved his students. He loved his students just like he loved his 

children. And he had a big hammer and broke up an old coal tin. [00:18:22] A lot of noise. 

But that was the way he got rid of his anxiety and tension about how were his students doing. 

So, one by one, the phone would ring and they would say, he passed, he passed, he passed, he 

passed, his surgical residents. They passed their examinations. They were all like his own 

blood. And he couldn't have been more invested in their success. And they all went on to 

head departments of surgery in public hospitals throughout the South, which was the only 

place where we had access to hospitals. So, they were his trainees, his skills invested in them. 

So, they were all, and the first president of this school was one of his students. 

GS: Oh, is that right? 



 
 
 

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SDI: Yes. Mitchell Spellman. 

GS: Thank you for sharing that. Can you talk about your education when you were 

young in D.C.? Interestingly, Brown v. Board was decided when you were about 10 years 

old, I believe. So, I'm just curious what your experiences were like before that point, and then 

how, if at all, that Supreme Court decision impacted your own education growing up in D.C.? 

SDI: Well, I went to a segregated elementary school that was close to the campus of 

Howard University. And because of segregation in those days, the best and the brightest 

teachers all had to teach in Black schools because they weren't admitted to white schools. 

Okay. So, we had excellent, excellent teachers and we were very happy. And we just walked 

to school. We lived close to it. We walked to school, carried our little lunch pails. We always 

had bologna and cheese sandwiches, which I thought were delicious. I didn't know there was 

anything else besides bologna and cheese, and it was just a happy time. The teachers were 

very close to the parents. And I needed glasses. And so, my teacher said, “You need to get 

your mother to get your glasses. You can't see the blackboard.” And she didn't see to it. She 

called her up. She said, “What about the glasses for Sylvia? I sent that note home. She 

doesn’t have the glasses yet. Could you get her glasses, please?” So, that’s the kind of 

relationship they had, which today I don't think that would happen. [00:20:58] I don't think 

the teacher would call up to say, “Your child's not seeing the blackboard well.” So that was 

great. Then they integrated the schools when I went to junior high school. And I remember 

my first friend was a very poor white girl who lived in the neighborhood. And I didn't know 

anything about poverty. I didn't know anything about poverty. I knew that some of the people 

next to my elementary school lived in the projects. And I felt very bad for my friend Rosalyn 

because the teacher berated her for not having her hair straightened and fixed before our class 

pictures. “Why didn't you have it done? You know, for now?” And I thought even, then I was 

conscious that maybe her mother couldn't afford to get her hair done. [00:21:57] You know, I 



 
 
 

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thought was very mean to make her feel bad about that. But it was a small community and we 

all had a great time at Lucretia Mott. Lucretia Mott was a suffragette and the school’s named 

for her. 

GS: So, in terms of your experience as a young person trying to learn in school, was 

there, it sounds like there’s not too much of a difference pre- and post- Brown, other than you 

then went to an integrated school? Was the quality of the education changed in any way 

because you were talking about how wonderful the teachers were at your segregated school. 

SDI: No, but I had wonderful teachers at the integrated junior high school. But my 

sisters had not had a good time in the integrated high school. When you were a little older, 

maybe it was a little harder to integrate for the students? I'm not sure. I didn't have any 

problems, but they did. And so my mother decided that she was not going to send me to the 

schools that they went to, and I was sent away to a Quaker boarding school. 

GS: That's right. That’s right. Can you tell me a little about that? 

SDI: Yes, I went to a school called Oakwood School in Poughkeepsie, New York. 

GS: How old were you at this point? 

SDI: I was 12, I think. I was very young. 

GS: And you were sent there? 

SDI: Yes. And I would take the train home by myself from Poughkeepsie. Had to 

take a train to New York City and then transfer to Grand Central and go home. So, I grew up 

as a traveler at a young age, but I had a scholarship. Eleanor Roosevelt paid for my tuition. 

GS: Really? 

SDI: Yes. Because she was an admirer of my father's. And my mother was very good 

at writing to people and saying, “I need help with my children. Their father is gone.” 

[00:24:07] And so, Mrs. Roosevelt said, “Well, I'll pay for Sylvia.” Because she lived in 



 
 
 

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Poughkeepsie, New York, which was where my school was. She knew Oakwood School, and 

she said, “I'll pay Sylvia's tuition.” So, that's how I got to be at Oakwood. 

GS: And so, was it that Mrs. Roosevelt chose that school for you, or had your mom 

known about the school and contacted Mrs. Roosevelt to send you to that school? 

SDI: No, what happened was my, I had a wealthy roommate, a wealthy white, white 

roommate [inaudible], who used to take me home to her big sprawling house in New Jersey. 

And Mrs. Roosevelt was a friend of theirs. And so, I met her at a dinner party at their house. 

GS: And so, how old were you at that point? 

SDI: Twelve or 13. And so, I called my mom and I said, “I met Eleanor Roosevelt.” 

And so, my mother just said, “Okay, good.” And then she wrote to her. [laughter] But it was 

it was fine. She was a very, very warm, lovely person. I used to write her notes and she would 

write me little notes back. 

GS: Do you still have those notes? 

SDI: No, they got thrown out. They got thrown out by accident. I don't have them. I 

wish I did. They weren't deep. They were just sweet little notes, you know. 

GS: And how did you respond to Quakerism, being at a Quaker school? 

SDI: I loved it. 

GS: How did that sort of influence the next chapter? 

SDI: Well, you know, Quakers are very interesting because they have an unusual 

religious practice of sitting in silence for an hour, and we were required to go to Quaker 

meetings twice a week, so we would sit in silence. [00:26:13] And what happens is, if you 

have a thought or a spiritual feeling, then you stand up and speak and then you sit back down. 

And that's the way the meeting goes. And people might pick up on that and follow with 

something, or they might not. And sometimes we just met for an hour in silence. But it's very 

centering, it was very spiritual and centering. I like the Quakers. And the Quakers were 



 
 
 

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always activists. They were always doing things to help people who needed help. And so the 

Quakers had weekend helping expeditions into Harlem. And I knew my mother wouldn't 

allow me to do it, so I faked the permission. And I took the train down to Harlem and found 

the American Friends Service Committee office. And they took me to an elderly person's 

apartment, and we painted it that weekend. And it was exhilarating. It was just one of the 

fondest things I remember at that time. So I just liked what they did. They were always doing 

something good. And I had a teacher who — you know, they were pacifists, Quakers are 

pacifists, and he got on the ship that sailed into Haiphong Harbor in opposition to the war in 

Vietnam. He was my teacher, and they might have blown him up. I thought, he’s so 

courageous. That’s so beautiful, so beautiful. [00:28:00] 

GS: One of my, one of my close friends is a has taught me a lot about Quaker 

practices. And I'm drawn to it as well. I would love to be more familiar with it and maybe 

start attending meetings at some point, because it sounds really great. 

SDI: The practice is different in different places. Some of them are more 

contemporary and they actually have a minister. But the old-fashioned ones, you don't have a 

minister. You just sit in a circle and it's just so quiet. You know, there's a sense that they call 

it, a sense of the meeting.  

[pause to talk about background noise] 

GS: How are you doing? 

SDI: Fine. 

GS: This is great. This is what I'm saying. I could stay here in your childhood forever, 

but we have to move on. 

SDI: We have to move on, yes. 

GS: That’s why these are hard to do, right? 

SDI: [laughter] Sorry, sorry. 



 
 
 

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GS: No, you’re not doing anything wrong. It's just I have so many questions. Yeah, 

but okay, well, let's keep moving here. You went to the Quaker boarding school, and then 

you went to Vassar. Talk to us about why you chose Vassar and sort of what your experience 

was like there. 

SDI: Well, Vassar's in Poughkeepsie, so I knew it from being at Oakwood because we 

would go to events at Vassar on weekends. But I also primarily went to Vassar because they 

offered me a scholarship, and my mother had to have a scholarship for me to go there. And I 

don't think I got scholarship offers elsewhere. And so that's why I went there. I didn't like it. I 

didn't like it at all. Because I — when you get admitted to the school, they send you a 

questionnaire. “Do you want to have a roommate? Do you want a single? [00:30:03] If you 

want a single, you have to have a good reason for it because we don't have very many 

singles.” I said, “No problem. I want a roommate.” And then I arrived and I had a single. So I 

asked for a meeting with the Dean and didn't get it. And I asked and I kept going back and 

back until I finally got a meeting. And she was Mrs. Drouilhet. And she smoked filterless 

Camel cigarettes. And she had a big wart on her chin. She looked sort of like a character out 

of a novel. And “What did you want to see me about?” she said. I said, “I want to ask you 

why you assigned me to a single room when I said I wanted to double, and you said singles 

were scarce. Why did you do that?” And she said, “Well, dear, we have a lot of Southern 

girls here, and we didn't want to hurt their feelings.” And I said, “Well, what about my 

feelings?” And I was kind of a shy person. I was, this was very strong language for me. And 

she said, “Well, dear, if you can find somebody who would like to room with you, we’ll be 

glad to put you two together.” I said, “That won't be adequate. I'd like you to change your 

policy right away. And if you don't change your policy, I'm taking this issue to the New York 

Times because this is wrong.” And she said, “We'll change the policy.” And that was the end 

of our discussion and it was the end of the policy. But I never liked the school after that. That 



 
 
 

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was such a bad faith introduction to an institution that was trying to teach people to take care 

of people and be leaders in society. So, it was very bad. It was very bad. [00:32:01] And the 

next year, they only admitted one as opposed to the usual two Black students. But they gave 

her a roommate. So, big victory, you know. [laughter] 

GS: And so, I mean, so how were the next three years there for you? I mean, it’s a 

four-year university? 

SDI: Yes, I just, I asked to come home. I asked to come home. I said, “I don't like this 

place.” And my mother said, “You have a scholarship. You have to stay there.” So, I just 

toughed it out. But then when it came to wanting to go to law school and I had a choice 

between Harvard, which had admitted me, and Howard, I went to Howard because I said I've 

had enough with white schools, thank you very much. I had a good time at Oakwood, but 

Vassar wasn't good. 

GS: So, what — you knew even as an undergraduate student that you wanted to go to 

law school? 

SDI: Yes, my friends in other schools, they were all interested in law school because 

we all wanted to be part of the Civil Rights Movement. 

GS: Oh, interesting. So, you are, so that was happening when you were an 

undergraduate. 

SDI: Yes. 

GS: And you already knew you wanted to be part of it someday? 

SDI: Yes, I wanted to be part of the change. 

GS: Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I think that's a very important part of 

the story. 

SDI: Well, you know, Quakers are progressive. Quakers didn't discriminate. And so I 

was imbued with that culture that I lived in. I lived on campus. That's what we did. And we 



 
 
 

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were always having speakers. And I remember Mr. Sherwood spoke and when he said he was 

against the war and he was sailing into Haiphong Harbor, I mean, Quakers were always doing 

heroic things, just very quietly. [00:34:08] There was no news involved, just quietly taking a 

stand. And so, I at that time, the Civil Rights Movement was beginning to come up. And so I 

wanted to be part of it. I wanted to, I entered in [19]61, I think, and graduated [19]65, in 

college. And so, it just felt like, that's where I wanted to go. And I think Harvard didn't give 

me a scholarship. And that was also an influence. If I’d gotten a scholarship there, I might 

have gone there. But I'm so glad that I didn't because I had a very good experience. [Pause as 

a phone rings; GS and JP ask SDI to restate her previous sentence] Another reason that I 

chose to go to Howard was because I didn't get a scholarship at Harvard, and I had to have a 

scholarship or I couldn't go.  

GS: So talk to me about returning to Howard, because the last time you’d been there 

was as a young child, you lived on campus, when your father was there. What was that like to 

return to Howard now, not as a child of faculty, but as a law student?  

SDI: Well, it was a great experience. I had great teachers. I had great classmates. And 

it was just such a warm environment. [00:36:10] Vassar had been such a cold environment. I 

liked my fellow students, but the administration was so cold that it felt like I had gone into a 

warm bath. It was just it was just embracing. And of course, we were in the Civil Rights 

Movement. And so we were always having lectures from people who were involved in it. 

And there was kind of, there was a culture of heroism, you know, "What are you going to do 

to help? Everybody here has to help in some way. What are you going to do?” 

GS: So what was happening in the country around that time when you were in law 

school? What was, you know, what was meaningful to you while you were training to be —  

SDI: Well, the 1963 March on Washington was happening. And I went to that with 

Dr. Montague Cobb and sat in the third row. Martin Luther King was just a stone's throw 



 
 
 

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away from where we were seated. And he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. And it was 

electric. It was just absolutely electric. And there were 250,000 people there. So again, it was 

an immersion experience, just being with all those people of every stripe. It wasn't all Black 

people. And we just had come together. We’d come together to say, you know, things have to 

change in this country. So that feeling has always stayed with me, that feeling, that triumph 

of the people coming together to say, “We can do better and we will do better, and we insist 

that we do better.” [00:38:14] And Mahalia Jackson sang. Martin Luther King gave his “I 

Have a Dream speech.” Of course at the time I didn't know that this would be such a big 

marker in history. But I wasn’t that enthusiastic when Dr. Cobb, Dr. Montague Cobb, who I 

was working for, he was an anatomy professor at Howard University Medical School. And he 

said, “We'll be going to the March on Washington.” I said, “We will?” Because the 

newspapers were filled with, oh, “There will be riots and people will be killed. It’ll just be 

horrible. Don't go,” you know. He said, “There will be no violence. It will be a quiet 

demonstration of the power of the community to demand change.” I said, “Okay, okay. Okay. 

I'm going, I’m going.” And it was just as he said. 

GS: It's so intriguing to be sitting with someone who was there because growing up, 

that's like the most, that’s like the event that we learn about so much growing up about U.S. 

history. And you were there. 

SDI: I was. I was there on the third row. And I didn't know that I was witnessing 

history because I was so young. But Dr. Cobb said we were going to be fine. He was an 

anatomy professor and he was the editor of the National Medical Association Journal. And it 

was my job working for him to catalog the pictures of all the Black doctors that were featured 

in each journal issue. So I would take the, it was block that you do for printing, and I would 

put the name of the person and wrap it up and store it. [00:40:10] So, that's the way I learned 

about all of the men and women in medicine, Black men and women in medicine who were 



 
 
 

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from all over the country by my little job for the National Medical Association Journal. But 

he was, he was quiet. He was a quiet advocate. And he would refer to us, to a Black person as 

“Mose.” So, he's always telling me, “Well, Mose is experiencing this, or Mose — .” And I 

knew that Mose was the symbol of the Black person in America. And he was a historian. He 

was a historian. He was a physician. He had a Ph.D. in anatomy. I was always getting 

lectures on anatomy also, which I didn't need. But anyway, he was a great influence. He was 

like a great he was like a father figure. He and my father had gone to Amherst together and 

my father was a track star. And Dr. Cobb was a long-distance runner. 

GS: Were there other people like Dr. Cobb around this time in your life, Vassar, 

Howard Law, either people you knew that were influential — writers, activists, maybe you 

didn't have a personal relationship, but people who were sort of shaping your life and your 

worldview as a young person sort of about to embark on their adult life? Are there others that 

stick on your memory? 

SDI: [00:42:03] Well, the people that I worked with at the Legal Defense Fund were 

giants. We were the New York office of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, but we had 

cooperating attorneys in all of the southern states. They were the ones on the front line. They 

were the ones that filed the lawsuits. And they were the ones who had their houses burned, 

their cars blown up. They took the brunt of the pushback in the Civil Rights Movement. It 

was our job to help the local lawyers who would bring these cases in housing and school 

desegregation and public accommodations. It was our job when they would bring these cases, 

lose these cases, I would write the appeal and argue the appeal at the appellate court. They 

were brilliant. They were brilliant, and they were fearless. Avon Williams in in Tennessee, 

Julius Chambers in in North Carolina, John Walker in Arkansas, [U].W. Clemon in Alabama. 

These guys were amazing and fearless. So I always felt it was just an honor. And their trial 

briefs were just excellent, everything — you know, my job was simple because they had laid 



 
 
 

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it all out. And then I would argue the case in the Court of Appeals. And we always won. We 

always won the cases because the Court of Appeals at that time was liberal. Okay. And some 

years later, they changed and they became conservative. But during that period of civil rights 

advocacy, they were with the people that I just mentioned. [00:44:21] They knew what they 

were doing. They appreciated what they were doing. And they read the quality of their 

writing. And the lawyer in North Carolina was first in his class at University of North 

Carolina. I mean, these were not lightweights. These were the heavyweights. The one in 

Arkansas went to Yale Law School. But they put their lives on the line. They could have 

done, they could have gone into private practice and made a lot of money. But no, they 

wanted to be civil rights lawyers. 

GS: What do you think motivated them to do that? 

SDI: There was a need and they could meet the need through litigation. They could 

meet the need. And they took the opportunity to do that. The lawyers were so important in 

that period. They were so brave and I was so inspired by them. So, I would just, I would have 

done anything for them to support what they were doing. I don't think I would have had the 

courage to do what they did. You know, if somebody blew up my car, I don't know whether I 

would have kept doing that work. But they kept doing it. And they didn’t, they didn't talk 

about it. They just kept, they just kept going. It's real heroism. Real heroism in all of those 

places. And the people who they represented, the plaintiffs in their cases were also heroic 

because there was pushback against them. “Why are you causing trouble here? Why don't 

you just mind your own business?” So, the combination of their courage and the lawyer's 

courage is powerful. It was quite a quite a wonderful time. I'm very happy I lived through 

that period. 

GS: I have several questions about your time at LDF, but let me just backtrack for a 

just a second. Graduated from Howard. When did you realize LDF was where you wanted to 



 
 
 

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go and contribute to this legal advocacy of what was happening around this time? [00:46:51] 

Was that something you knew while you were at Howard? How did that next step happen for 

you? 

SDI: I didn't know about LDF until Gabrielle Kirk McDonald went there. She was a 

year or two years ahead of me and she was first in her class. And she was just a wonderful, 

bright, hardworking person. And I really admired her. And when she went to the Legal 

Defense Fund, I said, “Well, that's where I need to apply to go.” And I really didn't expect to 

get admitted to their, their staff because all of the lawyers there were from Ivy League 

schools. But Gaby was the first one from Howard, okay, and the others were from Harvard 

and Yale and Columbia. But Gaby, Gaby was just — she was an employment discrimination 

lawyer, and she was just very quiet, methodical. She used to come in every morning and 

sharpen four pencils and line them up next to her pad. [00:48:03] And that was the beginning 

of the day with the four pencils. Just organized. Sharp. 

GS: So, talk to me about the process of applying to work with LDF and being hired, 

and then you said you worked in the New York office, right, so can you talk to me a little bit 

about just sort of the beginning months of your time at LDF? 

SDI: Well, it was very scary. You know, I was living in New York City. 

GS: What part of the city were you in? 

SDI:  Well, it was Columbus Circle. The office was at Columbus Circle, and I had an 

apartment on, I think, 94th Street and Columbus Avenue. And I was kind of, I would say I 

was kind of a naive person. I didn't know much about anything, but I wanted to be a civil 

rights lawyer. And I was very happy that I got hired to do that. And all of the people at LDF 

were from the big schools. They had gone to Harvard, they’d gone to Yale, they’d gone to 

Columbia. They were all very bright, very bright. And Jack Greenberg was the executive 

director and Jim Nabrit was the number two. Jim’s father had been president of Howard 



 
 
 

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University, and so I knew them because we lived in a duplex. And Dr. Nabrit and his son Jim 

lived there, and we lived on the other side, on the Howard campus. So, I knew who Jim was. 

And then I think I was really embraced by these lawyers in the field that I'm describing 

because they said, “We want you to work with them and take their appeals.” So, I said, 

“Okay, fine.” [00:50:10] And so, I would meet them and get their information, get their trial 

transcripts. And that was really my, that was my immersion. That was my education about 

what segregation in the South really was, what it looked like, what it felt like, what it did to 

people. 

GS: Had you been to the South at that point in your life? 

SDI: I really hadn't. I was very, you know, I'd been with the Quakers in 

Poughkeepsie. I didn't, I didn't know anything about, much about the South, I just — it was a 

revelation to me. My mother, of course, knew about it, but she didn’t — she tried to shield us 

from the ugly things that went on. She tried to expose us to the uplifting things. She would 

take us to the symphony. She would take us to the museum. She would, we always had 

classical music going in the house. She really wanted to expose us to the wonderful things in 

life. She didn't deal a lot with what was wrong. I don't think my father dealt a lot with what 

was wrong. They just had kind of a straight ahead, let's apply our gifts. Let's help people. 

Let’s move ahead. But I wanted, because I worked at the Legal Defense Fund, I developed an 

attitude that I wanted to thump some people. And I was the only one in the family who had 

that drive. But I was delighted to be able to beat them in court and make them change. It 

didn't last. [00:51:57] You know, we integrated the schools and then they re-segregated. But 

there was a period of time where we had integration and the children got to know each other, 

and we broke down the barriers. So it wasn't a long-lived triumph, but it was a triumph for, I 

would say, 10 years. 



 
 
 

22 
 

 
 

 

GS: Tell me about working in that office. Just like the physical space of it, how 

people were interacting. I'm trying to build a scene in my head about what that must have 

been like at that time. You mentioned Jack Greenberg being the Executive Director at that 

time. Was it a small staff? Was it a big staff? I’m wondering how big your office was at that 

time. 

SDI: It wasn't that big. I think maybe there were maybe 10 or 12 lawyers and we were 

mostly on one floor and a few on the next floor up. We were all friends. I don't think we 

socialized a lot. Lawyers, I learned, drank a lot. And so, they would always go after work and 

have a cocktail across the street at Wolfie's Delicatessen. And so, I learned how to have 

cocktails as social hour.  

GS: And were you all still working during social hour or was it still really social and 

you were trying to take a break from work or were you just strategizing about litigation while 

you were? 

SDI: No, no, we would often go back to work. We would, they could handle their 

liquor. I could only have one wine, one whiskey sour. That was it for me. But I learned that 

lawyers drink a lot. I didn't know that in law school, but lawyers drink a lot. And so that was 

just part of the culture. But we worked long hours. It was, it was a calling. It wasn't a job. It 

was a calling. And people worked very hard, long hours. They came in on weekends. I 

worked on Saturdays a lot. But we didn't feel bad about it. We felt privileged, really. We felt 

privileged to be in a place with colleagues where we could do something about the problems 

and it would work. [00:54:47] You know, we were successful. 

GS: Did the, when you were reading these briefs and reading testimonies from the 

plaintiffs about what their lives were like in the South, what they, the kind of violence and 

discrimination, they were suffering. Did that have any kind of emotional impact on you? I 

mean, you're at a physical distance here in New York. You're at a distance in that you're 



 
 
 

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reading this information. You're not face to face, interviewing a child that had been harmed 

in some way because of the color of their skin. But, so, I'm just wondering, even despite that 

distance, did, was there any kind of emotional impact on you? 

SDI: Oh, civil rights was a religion. It was a religion at that point in time. You know, 

we were a little army and we had to do whatever it took to stand up and push back and to use 

the power of our distance, because we weren't in Little Rock, we weren’t in Charlotte, we 

weren't in Mobile. We used our distance and our connection to money to fund an 

organization that was like an army of support for the local lawyers. It was an amazing team. 

[00:56:22] We weren’t there. We weren’t the ones having our cars blown up or our houses 

burned. But they knew when they called us and said, “We need you for this housing 

discrimination problem. This employment discrimination, this school desegregation.” We 

were there. Whatever they needed from us, we would provide that, not in money, but in 

litigation. We would back them up in the litigation, we would back them up in the appeals. 

And it was very effective. It was very effective because they were very good and we were 

very good at our part of it. So, we were two pieces of a puzzle that fit very nicely together.  

GS: Did you ever have to travel to the South? 

SDI: Yes. 

GS: Can you talk a little bit about those experiences? Would, do you remember your 

first trip to the South and where was it and how did it go? 

SDI: I'm sure, I'm sure I traveled, but I didn't really have to travel a lot because I was 

just mostly writing. And I would travel, I would travel to the places where the Courts of 

Appeal were that I had to go and argue the case. That was the main travel that I did. I had to 

go to Cincinnati all the time, not a city that I really liked much, but I think I probably went to 

North Carolina a couple of times. I remember we had a case in North Carolina. [00:58:02] 

The thought of it makes me teary, but a young woman, a young woman and her husband and 



 
 
 

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child. I can't remember exactly what it was, but her husband was killed. He was killed by a 

white mob. I don't know why they killed him, but they killed him. She was pregnant. And so 

we were representing her in a civil rights and a wrongful death suit. So, I went there for that 

trial. And I'll never forget her because she was so young, she was so pretty and so broken by 

the loss of her husband while she was carrying their second child. It was just, to me, it was 

just, it was the closest I'd gotten to a particular client. 

GS: And remind me where this was, I’m sorry. 

SDI: In Charlotte, North Carolina. And Julius Chambers was the main lawyer and we 

had a jury and we lost the case. And the Judge said to us, “The reason you lost this case is 

because you brought that Jew man down here from Washington as your expert.” That's what 

the Judge said to us. And there was nothing to appeal because the jury had sifted through the 

facts and they were the final say on the facts. So, there was nothing for us to take up and 

reverse it. So there was no remedy for this mother. There was no remedy for this child. That 

was bitter, that was bitter. And we couldn’t get a Black physician to testify for us. So, we had 

gotten a Jewish physician in Washington to come down and say — what had happened was 

the husband had been attacked by Knight Riders. They didn't kill him. He went to the hospital 

and he couldn't move his arm. He couldn't move one of his arms. So, it was pivotal that we 

get that testimony in because he, later that night, died. And if they had diagnosed the arm 

problem, they could have saved him if they had properly diagnosed that. [01:01:00] So, it 

was a wrongful death suit as well as a civil rights matter. And we couldn't get a local Black 

physician to testify for us because they were afraid. 

GS: Afraid of the implications? 

SDI: Afraid of being too activist. You know, they wanted to do their medical part. 

They didn't want to do their civil rights part in court. They didn't want to do that. Okay. So 

we got a Jewish lawyer from Washington who wasn't afraid. And he came and he testified. 



 
 
 

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And then the Judge, just laid it out. You know, that jury didn't like that Jew man from 

Washington down here. It was ugly. It was just, everything about it was ugly. And then the 

poor mom, you know, the poor mom, just went through that, went through that whole trial 

and got nothing for it and had lost her husband to a mob. So that was my, that was my most 

personal immersion in what it was like to be a Black person in the South. [01:02:08] You 

know, that was unbelievable to me. That was unbelievable to me. But that's what they lived 

with. And their courage was just astonishing. The courage not only of the lawyers, but of the 

people who worked with the lawyers because they were punished for standing up. They were 

punished. And it was a remarkable time of courage. A remarkable time of courage. I just 

admired the people so much. I was so happy that we were, we had an institution that was 

there to help them. 

Jesse Paddock: The holiday party is about to start. I just want to make sure that those 

outer doors are swinging closed. 

SDI: Okay. 

GS: Holiday party already. November 30th. They're getting started early. 

SDI: I don’t know. I guess so. I don’t know. I wasn’t invited, I don’t know anything 

about a party. [laughter] 

GS: Let me check, I think we’re doing great on time. Let me check. This is so 

wonderful, this is so wonderful.  

SDI: I’m sorry, I’m going — long stories. 

GS: This is great. We're good on time. It's noon right now. 

SDI: Okay. 

GS: You want to take a break? 

SDI: No, I'm fine. 

GS: Let's see here. [pause] All good out there? 



 
 
 

26 
 

 
 

 

JP: Yeah, we just closed the doors to the suite so.  

GS: So, it’s noon now. Jesse, I think we’re doing really great on time. You good? 

JP: Yeah, I apologize for the interruption. 

GS: No, that’s fine. I was hearing it too and wondering if it was going to be a 

problem. 

JP: It’s so much better now. [01:04:02] 

GS: Do you remember that woman's name by chance? I know it's been a long time. 

SDI: No, I don’t remember her name. 

GS: Did you, how did that, I mean, clearly that case impacted you. You're recalling it 

now all these years later. At that time, do you remember how it impacted you personally, 

having, again, you said you were down. That's the first time you'd really seen how Black 

people in the South had been treated. And then you were interacting with this — [pause as JP 

adjusts microphone] Yeah, I’m just wondering if at that time, as a young lawyer and then 

being there, seeing how this trial, first the violence against this man, racial violenc,e and then 

the trial and then the trial and then the Judge’s comment, you know, just wondering, how did 

that, did that demoralize you in any way? Did that, or did that just give you more, you know, 

motivation? 

SDI: No, it strengthened me and it made my admiration for the local lawyers grow 

even higher because they were dealing with that all the time. I was perfectly safe at 

Columbus Circle and in New York. You know, I didn't deal with ugly people like that. 

[01:05:58] I didn't have any, I don't have any intercourse with people like that. And they had 

to deal with that all the time. They were just really, they were so heroic, just so heroic. And 

all of those people that I worked with are now gone. You know and Julius is gone, and John 

Walker’s gone. 

GS: You also mentioned Norman Chachkin. 



 
 
 

27 
 

 
 

 

SDI: Norman, Norman was my teacher. Norman is the one, he was in charge of 

school desegregation. And he's the one who taught me how to do it, how to write the briefs, 

how to identify the issues, how to write well in a legal brief. He was very important as a 

trainer for me. But they, they all had a role in, they were all very generous in sharing what 

they knew because they were older and more experienced. And I was, I was maybe the 

youngest person because I just came straight out of school and they were glad to help me. 

And I loved writing. I thought I was, I thought I was a pretty good writer, but I was a much 

better writer when they finished teaching me how to do it. And when I would write my briefs 

after that, the senior lawyers would take them and show them to the Director Counsel, Jack 

Greenberg. “Look at this, look what Sylvia did.” And so, I was very, very proud of that. 

GS: Can you talk to me about, you mentioned a little bit, having to travel to 

Cincinnati to argue in front of the Appellate Court. Can you talk to me more about whether 

there were any particular judges or cases that you were arguing that stick out in your memory 

or any experiences doing that litigation? [01:08:13] 

SDI: No, I really don't have too many memories of that. But I remember going to 

Cincinnati. I think I had to go there a lot because of — maybe Avon Williams’s Tennessee 

cases were argued in that circuit. And I was always writing his appeals. Avon was very 

litigious and he was suing people all the time and winning, no, losing and then appealing and 

winning on appeal. But Cincinnati was a very prejudiced city. And so, I didn't get good 

treatment there. I would be by myself. People would wonder what this Black woman was 

doing in this hotel by herself, and I just, I remember feeling sort of scared that I was not in 

friendly territory. But once you're in the federal court, you're fine. You know, everything was 

fine there. But I didn't like Cincinnati. And see, when I was going to the local lawyers, I'd be 

under their supervision. I was always protected because they were telling me where to stay 

and they were making arrangements for me to get picked up and taken wherever I was going. 



 
 
 

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So I wasn't on my own. But when I did that, I always felt like I was not, I was not prepared 

emotionally. I was not prepared. I was not tough enough to be in a strange city by myself 

with people that stared at me, you know, like — I think maybe they weren't accustomed to 

having a single young Black woman go into a restaurant and sit down and order a meal. 

[01:10:10] I think they thought that was, there was something wrong with that. So after that 

experience, I would never go to a restaurant by myself. I would just order and have room 

service because I didn't feel like I was kind of safe in the environment where people didn't 

expect me to be there with them. Cincinnati was not a friendly city.  

GS: And was it just the looks and the gazes that were. 

SDI: Yes. They didn't say anything to me.  

GB: No one harmed you physically or anything like that. 

SDI: No, but the vibe was —  

GS: You could feel it, right. 

SDI: Oh, I could feel it. I could feel it. You don't belong here. You don't belong here. 

GS: Were there any other LDF attorneys or cooperating attorneys in these localities 

that stick out in your memory that, when we were chatting before, you said something like, I 

am the living memory of these people who are now, some people are gone. And that really 

struck me. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

SDI: No, it’s true. So many of them are gone. I’m almost 80. I’m going to turn 80 in 

February. So, and I was one of the youngest lawyers. So, the senior lawyers probably would 

be 85, 90 at this point. So, I'm sorry. What was the question? 

GS: Just if, you’ve mentioned several individuals by name. I'm just wondering if 

there are others that stick out to you in your memory. 

SDI: Crawford in Alabama. He was a character. [01:12:03] A lot of them were 

characters. He was a character. He was very boisterous, not reserved at all, but fearless. You 



 
 
 

29 
 

 
 

 

know, they were all fearless. They just weren't afraid. They would just do the thing that they 

were going to do. Who else? I mentioned John Walker in Little Rock. He brought the school 

desegregation cases there and suffered for it. 

GS: What do you mean? 

SDI: Well, they hated him. They, you know, Little Rock, Arkansas, didn't have a 

whole bunch of liberal people, and they identified him as the troublemaker. You know, he 

was a change maker, that they didn't want any change. But we were so important to them 

emotionally. I always felt, not individually, but collectively, that we had their back. And they 

were, they might be alone in Arkansas or Charlotte or some of the other places, Virginia. But 

they always had us. And we would, we would help them get money. We paid them a certain 

amount of money on the cases, I think, and that helped them be able to do it because 

everybody's got to eat. I don't remember what those arrangements were. I wasn't part of that. 

But I think there was, I think we supported our cooperating attorneys. It was a whole cadre of 

cooperating attorneys that that we enlisted. And they had to be good. They had to be brave. 

And they helped us more than we helped them because they had the connections with the 

people. And they were just good lawyers. They were just very, very good lawyers. Stayed at 

it for years. I don't know any of them that quit. [01:14:28] I never worked with anybody who 

quit saying, “I'm not going to do civil rights cases anymore.” 

GS: As hard as it was?  

SDI: Yes. No, they just kept going. 

GS: You were at LDF for about five or six years. Is that right? 

SDI: I went there right after law school, and I left in [19]75. I have to tell you this. 

There was a guy who did our xeroxing. I don't remember his name now, but he was very 

funny, and I did so much xeroxing. I practically lived in the xerox room. And he says, “Time 

for you to get married isn’t it?” You know. And the thought hadn’t occurred to me that there 



 
 
 

30 
 

 
 

 

was a clock ticking or anything. I was just doing my cases. And he said, “About time for you 

to get married now. I’d like to see you get —” 

GS: [laughter] The Xerox guy telling you —  

SDI: Yes, that’s what he told me. That's what he told me. And so, I was dating 

somebody from the office next door, public television. And he said, “Do you think we ought 

to get married?” I said, “Yeah, yeah. Leroy says it’s time for me to get married. Let’s get 

married.” [laughter] So, we got married. And then he got — 

GS: In New York? 

SDI: In New York. [01:16:00] Did we get married in New York? Yes, we got married 

in New York. And he got a scholarship to the American Film Institute. He was a journalist, 

and he wanted to be a filmmaker, and he got an AFI grant. And so, we moved out here. Ad he 

said, “We'll just go for a couple of years. We just go for, during this.” And that was in [19]60, 

[19]65 or [19]67, I forget, and I'm still here. 

GS: So, that was around what, this says maybe [19]74, if you’d worked for LDF from 

[19]69 to [19]74. 

SDI: So, it would have been, so it would have been [19]75 probably that I left. I got 

married and I left and came here. 

GS: And was it hard to leave LDF? I mean, was it, were you ready for a break? Were 

you ready for a change? What was that like for you, I know that you’re now newly married 

and? 

SDI: Well, what happened was the courts began to change. They began to be against 

us. 

GS: The appellate courts. 

SDI: The appellate courts. They had been with us all the years that I was there. And 

then they started saying, “No, you don’t win your appeal.” And so, that took the wind out of 



 
 
 

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my sails because I could have done it, the way it was happening, I could have done it until 

time ran out. But when they started saying no, then it sort of, it just meant that it was a 

roadblock that I couldn't get over. I couldn't get over that roadblock. And that's really why I 

switched from civil rights into health law when I came out here. Civil rights had reached its 

zenith and I was privileged to be part of it. [01:18:10] But then it was downhill after that. Not 

that we don't still need it, but those were the glory days. 

GS: How do you think that shaped, that experience at LDF, shaped your approach to 

health law work and your approach to public health work? 

SDI: Because health care access is a civil rights issue for poor people. For people of 

color. It just hadn't been framed in that way. But I brought the same ethos that I had to the 

civil rights in education, to the health care arena. And I would bring cases that would say 

“This is a violation of the statutory law and it's also a violation of constitutional law. What 

you’re doing, what you're failing to do.” So, I did both and I liked interweaving them. 

GS: What do you want people to know about the LDF and its impact on my life as 

somebody who probably certainly benefited from some of those wins? 

SDI: Yes. 

GS: I'm just curious, when you think about LDF, the legacy of that work and what it's 

meant for this country. [01:19:55] 

SDI: I'm sure it's still a very important institution. But in the time I was there, it was 

doing the pioneering work. Thurgood Marshall was the first Director Counsel, and he was 

fearless. He was a fearless champion. Jack Greenberg was a tireless, brilliant man. We had 

cooperating attorneys who were brilliant. Marian Wright Edelman at the Children’s Defense 

Fund. They were just, they were, I don't know. They were just singular kinds of leaders 

associated with it at a pivotal time in our civil rights history in this country. And they were 

that arm at that pivotal moment. Without them, everything would have been different. 



 
 
 

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Everything would have been different. And so just it's a very, very important institution. It's 

still very, very important. But it was it was fresh at that time. It was fresh at that time. The 

audacity of Black lawyers standing up to power. The audacity. 

GS: We’re in 2023 now. I’m sure you see the news every day. It's sometimes hard to 

stomach. Things still happening in our country around violence against poor people and 

people of color. It's hard to even get online because of the news that I see day to day. I’m sure 

you see it too. What role do you think LDF ought to play or needs to play today, keeping in 

mind everything you just said about that legacy? [01:22:02] 

SDI: Well, the battle isn't over. We're just in a new stage of it, and the need for it gets 

greater as we lose civility. We're losing civility now. There was a period where we had sort 

of civility going on. Now people are saying, you know, they're just getting really ugly in their 

animosity and hatred. And so, we've got to have institutional backup at LDF and with their 

local lawyers to be prepared to fight back. It's the same, it's the same need. It's just a different 

time. It's the same need. I wish that we had Martin Luther King leading marches because we 

don't, you know, he was very important in kind of rallying the rank and file residents. 

Because you need that. You don't need the lawyers if you don't have any rank and file raising 

up to say, “No.” The rank and file creates the need for the lawyers. The local lawyers have 

the need for the Legal Defense Fund. We don't have, in my consciousness, and it may just be 

because I'm old and out of touch, but I don't think we have the local energy that I witnessed 

during my time where the local people would say, “I'm not standing for it. Whatever it costs 

me, I'm not standing for it.” [01:24:02] 

GS: Yeah. It seems like there's been moments of that, little ruptures. Like, for 

example, the Black Lives Matter, after George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, there are moments of 

this but maybe you’re talking about the sustained outrage with people over time with people, 



 
 
 

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community members coming out and putting their homes on the front lines. Putting 

themselves on the front lines.  

SDI: Yes, it was, it didn’t happen by itself. You know, the [19]60s didn't happen by 

themselves. It was the culmination of years of oppression before it that sort of bubbled up 

into people saying, “No, we're not having this. Whatever it costs us, we’re not having this 

anymore.” So, we don't have, we don't have that trajectory right now, as far as I know. But 

we might and I just don't know it, of community resistance. Community saying “no.” It's 

much murkier. And a lot of it has become economic as opposed to racial. And people aren't 

knowing how to combine those two things effectively. So that you represent poor people of 

any stripe who are being oppressed. Can't just be Black, can't just be brown. It has to be, 

really has to be poor people of any stripe who are not getting what they need to survive. And 

that's a harder, that's a harder recipe. That's a harder recipe. If you're a Black person at a big 

Baptist church and your minister is with King and says, “This is what we'll do next,” then 

that congregation is going to do that next. Okay. We don't have that kind of channeling, I 

don't think, now. [01:26:25] Most of those great ministers are gone, too, just like the great 

lawyers, you know, they were part of that era. The ministers were very important. So, we've 

sort of gotten, we've gotten ahead but we are also behind because we've gotten ahead. It's 

kind of an irony, isn't it? 

GS: Lastly, I just want to know if there's anything that I should have touched on or if 

there's anything that you want to include in this interview about anything that we talked about 

that maybe I would have failed to ask about or failed to inquire about. 

SDI: No, absolutely not. [laughter] I had no idea we were going to go this deep. 

GS: So I’ll get an A plus [inaudible]. 

SDI: Thank you, thank you both. 



 
 
 

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GS: Thank you so much. It’s really been a pleasure meeting you. And like I said, if I 

could, I would take another couple of hours to go even deeper, but we’ll stick with this for 

now. 

SDI: You're a glutton for punishment. [laughter] 

GS: Thank you. I really appreciate it. 

SDI: Thank you very much for putting this down someplace so that the collective 

effort can be remembered. 

GS: It’s so important. 

SDI: It's a collective effort. And I'm so proud of all the people that were part of it, so 

proud. It was my privilege to be part of it. 

GS: It's amazing. Thank you.  

SDI: Okay. [01:28:01] 

[END OF INTERVIEW]