William Quigley interview transcript

This item is featured in:

Bill Quigley Oral History

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project 

 

William “Bill” Quigley 

Interviewed by Alissa Rae Funderburk 

February 8, 2025 

New Orleans, Louisiana 

Length: 02:04:22 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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 Bill Quigley, the Southern Oral History Program, and LDF. It 

has been lightly edited, in consultation with Bill Quigley, 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] 

Alissa Rae Funderburk: [00:00:00] This is Alissa Rae Funderburk, the Mellon-funded oral 

historian for the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. I am acting as an interviewer 

on behalf of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

It is Saturday, February 8, 2025. I'm here in New Orleans, Louisiana with William Quigley to 

conduct an interview for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project. Mr. Quigley, thank 

you very much for being here and sharing your story. For the record, do we have your permission to 

record this interview?  

William Quigley: [00:00:34] Absolutely, yes.  

ARF: [00:00:35] Thank you. Can you say and spell your name for the record as well?  

WQ: [00:00:40] William Quigley. I go by Bill. It's W-I-L-L-I-A-M Q-U-I-G-L-E-Y.  

ARF: [00:00:47] Perfect, thank you. We're going to get started with a little bit about your 

early life. I heard you were born in Chicago. Can you tell me a little bit about your parents, your 

family, the life you were, kind of, born to? 

WQ: [00:01:05] So I am the oldest of nine kids in a big Irish Catholic family. Born in 

Chicago, first couple of people in the family born in Chicago, I left pretty young and grew up in 

Indianapolis a lot of the time. Went to grade school and high school there. My dad was a car 

salesman, he had a high school diploma, and he was in the Marines. My mom was a physical 

therapist, but really a stay-at-home mom with nine kids. We grew up in a middle-class white 

environment but Catholic school all the way. Grade school and high school.  

ARF: [00:01:56] Can you talk a little bit about what the cultural climate was in Indianapolis 

when you were growing up?  

WQ: [00:02:04] The slogan of the town was, "It's not a great place to visit, but you wouldn't 

mind living there." They called it Nap Town, it was a pretty quiet place. The neighborhoods that I 

lived in were overwhelmingly white, middle-class, big families. Culturally, I think, just middle 

America, really. We had cousins that lived on a farm 15 miles outside of town, so we got to spend 



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time with them and they with us, and they actually had more kids than us. They had 13 kids, so. 

You know, that was our life, really, our cousins, our school, our church. That's where we lived 

within walking distance of school and walking distance of church. And little league and you know, 

basic football and basketball, et cetera, just really, young kids growing up.  

ARF: [00:03:11] You mentioned you were walking distance to your church, that you went 

to Catholic school. How much would you say religion impacted your upbringing? 

WQ: [00:03:22] So, religion-slash-spirituality has really played a big role in my life and 

when I was growing up, I thought I wanted to be a priest. I was impressed by the priests that were at 

our parish. It seemed like a good idea of service, and to service the community. Plus there were a 

couple of priests when I was growing up who were really radical priests, so got arrested for anti-war 

efforts. Assistant pastor at our church went down to Alabama as part of the civil rights marches. I 

thought that was a good life and a good way to maybe give something back to the community. I 

wouldn't say organized religion so much, but I think the basic beliefs of the Judeo-Christian 

Tradition. Old Testament, prophets for justice, you know, the New Testament, things for love and 

sharing and peace and standing up for what's right. Those things were always important. I ended up 

going to Purdue for college, and after Purdue, I came to New Orleans to go to Notre Dame 

Seminary here in New Orleans. That was the continuation of my idea of becoming a priest. I was 

sent out as a seminarian to different Catholic parishes where you did teaching, especially for the 

kids who weren't in Catholic schools, grade school and high school. As it turns out I was much 

more attracted to the messages of social justice than I was to the Mass and the Rosary and the 

Sacraments, all of which I thought were important, but the social justice message of the people in 

the church who were living that out was really the thing that attracted me, and that pulled me into 

studying theology here in New Orleans.  

ARF: [00:05:51] Interesting. I'm going to back up a little bit, back to your early education. 

You mentioned that you attended Catholic school. Do you recall at all any school desegregation 



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efforts that might have been happening in Indianapolis, or was your neighborhood, since you were 

within walking distance to your Catholic school, less affected?  

WQ: [00:06:25] No, honestly, I grew up white, Catholic, and Irish and German and that 

stuff, and I didn't know what was going on in terms of desegregation efforts in Indianapolis. It 

wasn't really until I was in high school that I started to become aware of the civil rights struggle. 

Reverend Jesse Jackson came to Indianapolis when I was in high school, and he was a young man 

at that time, and held a press conference in front of the Governor's mansion for some civil rights 

issue, that for the life of me, I don't remember what it was, but I went to that and took pictures on a 

little Kodak camera, and he was the first civil rights activist that I really knew. Around that same 

time one of the priests in our parish came south to be a part of the civil rights struggle and honestly 

it just never occurred to me that civil rights wasn't just in the South. I thought it was just a Southern 

issue. We had a lot of the same things going on in Indianapolis, in Chicago, and all the other places, 

but, at the beginning, it was thought of by most people, myself included, as a Southern issue, and 

just part of my naivete and innocence and lack of experience.  

ARF: [00:08:03] Do you recall when it was that Jesse Jackson came to Indianapolis? You 

said you were in high school? 

WQ: [00:08:09] Yeah, I think it was the 1960s, and I don't know exactly when.  

ARF: [00:08:16] That's fine. I forgot to ask, what year were you born?  

WQ: [00:08:18] 1949.  

ARF: [00:08:19] [19]49. So, you mentioned a couple of priests, especially the one who went 

down to Alabama to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement, that kind of impacted your world 

view, so to speak. Were there any other people, parents, family members, teachers, that you feel had 

a similar impact?  

WQ: [00:08:49] Honestly, the priest was the first one, that I knew as a person, who did this, 

and he went just to be part of the clergy marching, and I was shocked because he got a lot of grief 

about that in Indianapolis, which was very surprising to me because, again, I thought civil rights 



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was a Southern issue. It was a lot of, "You shouldn't go sticking your nose in down there," and 

"You're just a troublemaker," or "You're an agitator," or something like that, which he really wasn't. 

He was a very kind, thoughtful man and went down there with the best of intentions. But there was 

a nun that I knew in high school who was very interested in social justice issues, but that was more 

local and it was poverty issues, economic justice issues, and the like, really weren't so much civil 

rights issues. So, it was really this priest that introduced me to that, and then seeing Jesse Jackson, 

that really was my introduction to it, but remember, at this time I had no interest in becoming a civil 

rights lawyer. I didn't even know they had civil rights lawyers. I was interested in becoming a priest 

myself. Really, my focus was on studying Latin, studying the Bible, learning about the Sacraments, 

that sort of stuff, and wasn't really in terms of contemporary history too much.  

ARF: [00:10:24] That's fair. I doubt there are many kids in high school who are, well, 

nowadays probably more so, but who are that knowledgeable, right? Naivete is a part of all of our 

growing up. 

WQ: [00:10:41] Well, I would say this, since becoming a civil rights lawyer and becoming 

an adult, I've done a lot of studying about the Civil Rights Movement, and clearly there was a lot 

going on in the [19]50s, in the early [19]60s, and up until I graduated from high school in 1967. So, 

there was a lot going on, and had been going on, in Washington D.C., in the streets, in the courts 

and all that stuff. I knew almost none of it. It didn't impact my life. [I] didn't have the opportunities 

to learn about things nationally and internationally like we have now. We had the Indianapolis 

paper that came in the morning, and we also had one in the afternoon. I was a paper boy for a while, 

but I don't remember coverage of civil rights issues, and certainly none in our town of Indianapolis.  

ARF: [00:11:36] That's not surprising. A lot of the success of the Civil Rights Movement 

happened when it started to be on TV.  

WQ: [00:11:46] Yeah. 



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ARF: [00:11:49] But before that how else were people to know? But you mentioned 

wanting to go to seminary eventually, but before that, you attended Purdue University. Can you tell 

me a little bit about how you chose Purdue, how you came to be there?  

WQ: [00:12:07] Studying to be a priest, they wanted you to do liberal arts stuff. So, I had, I 

think, a major in American literature and a minor in philosophy. So, neither one of those really 

contemporary issues that much. I like to read, I still love to read, so that was easy for me to do that. 

Purdue's heavily [a] science school, engineering school. It was close to where my family lived and I 

had gone to this high school seminary. It was a nice break to be at a big place where not everybody 

knew your family and everything else, you know, the way you're just yourself. I enjoyed that, but 

my goal all along was to go back to the seminary after graduation.  

ARF: [00:13:02] Can you talk a little bit about what the campus was like, what the 

atmosphere on campus was like at that time? So, this was the late 1960s?  

WQ: [00:13:12] Yeah, the social justice issue in the late [19]60s was the war, you know, the 

Vietnam War, and so there were marches and there were demonstrations and there were teach-ins 

and that sort of stuff, but honestly that was the focus of the activism that was there. Purdue is not a 

heavily activist school compared to Indiana University, which is there, which is much more a liberal 

arts school, and I worked going through school, and so I had always worked, one of nine kids, 

parents don't really have the money to pay for a lot of this stuff, so you have to either work-study or 

part-time work. I worked in nursing homes. I worked in car dealerships. I worked paper routes, 

warehouses, that sort of stuff, but again, to the extent that I was focusing on, other than just my 

schoolwork, it was the idea of becoming a priest.  

ARF: [00:14:15] So, you wanted to be a priest from childhood, it sounds like. You made it 

through Purdue with that goal in mind, can you tell me a little bit about starting seminary?  

WQ: [00:14:31] Yes, so I drove to New Orleans from the Midwest and enrolled in Notre 

Dame Seminary, which is a small seminary, but right in the middle of New Orleans, and I studied 

there for a year and a half. It's usually four years after college to become a priest. It was dawning on 



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me that maybe I wasn't really cut out to be a priest. I had had some run-ins in the past with people 

who were seminary folks saying, "You may be a little too headstrong if you're gonna be a priest, 

you're supposed to go along with the Church and go along and don't question everything," and I was 

in a generation, and myself headstrong, and questioning, and that sort of stuff, but seminary was 

good, but I learned that really what they wanted priests to do was to focus on Mass and the 

Sacraments and that sort of stuff, and they really, I had these two [role models], the Berrigan 

brothers, they were both priests. They had been arrested and imprisoned for burning draft cards and 

that sort of stuff in the war, and I really looked up to them. It became clear to me that not only did 

they not want more Berrigan brothers in the priesthood, they didn't want the ones they had. They 

weren't interested in that kind of priest. So, I realized that I was much more interested in social 

justice than I was in the Mass and the Sacraments and that, and so, after a year and a half of the 

seminary I left. I really didn't know what to do next, because I didn't feel like moving back to the 

Midwest was something I could do, and I met some Catholic nuns who lived in a housing 

development in New Orleans, and they were looking for somebody to come and work with them in 

an uncredentialed social work sort of thing, so I worked in  St. Thomas housing development in 

New Orleans for a year and a half with the people in the development. Taking them to the hospital, 

helping them get through the administrative work for public benefits. Doing some education, that 

sort of stuff, very basic stuff, and got to know a lot of people and in the course of that, got to meet 

some lawyers. Legal aid lawyers, public defenders, that sort of stuff. Honestly, I was underwhelmed 

by the lawyers that I met. It didn't seem to me that they really were passionate about the people that 

they were representing, and I knew from the people's perspective because I helped them find 

lawyers, how desperately they needed a good lawyer. And the lawyers that they got I'm sure were 

adequate, but they weren't really something to write home about and didn't seem to be really totally 

dedicated to it. And that's when I start thinking, "Well, you know, maybe that's what I can do when 

I grow up," you know, I'm in my early 20s at that point and thinking, "I like to read, I like to write, 



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I'm good at schoolwork," that sort of stuff, and so that's when I first started thinking about 

becoming a lawyer.  

ARF: [00:18:12] I have a couple of questions to follow up on. The first is, how did you 

happen to choose Notre Dame Seminary? What made you want to come to New Orleans 

specifically?  

WQ: [00:18:25] Well, I had come to New Orleans once for Mardi Gras and I loved it. It was 

so radically different than the Midwest. And I made the mistake when I was talking, having this 

discussion with the bishop who I was going to be part of the diocese if I became a priest. He said, 

"Well, where would you like to go?" And I said, "I hear they have a seminary in New Orleans." 

And he said, "Oh, New Orleans, why would you be interested in that?" And I said, like I said to 

you, I said, "Well, I went there for Mardi Gras. It seemed like a great place." Bishop was not 

thrilled with that answer. So, I said, "And I understand they had good pastoral counseling and a 

bunch of other stuff!" and he accepted that, but really it was because New Orleans was the opposite 

of Indianapolis. It's quite a different place, and so that's how I came. Not really any noble thoughts 

or anything like that. That was just, "This looks like it's got a lot of sun, it's got a lot people, it's got 

a lot of music, it looks like a good place to be." 

ARF: [00:19:35] Yeah, that's as good a reason as any in my book.  

WQ: [00:19:39] Yeah, well, you and he were at different books.  

ARF: [00:19:42] [Laughter] Clearly. How did your family feel about this move?  

WQ: [00:19:47] You know, as I said, I'm oldest of nine. They had kids all over the place, 

and by this time, I have a brother that's 18 years younger than me, so the spread is quite dramatic, so 

they still had kids in grade school and high school and all that. At this point they're like, "You go do 

what you gotta do, and you're grown up now, so." They were supportive. They did not totally 

understand it, but they didn't have any problem with it.  

ARF: [00:20:15] Did that attitude change when you left seminary?  



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WQ: [00:20:21] No, I think they were okay with that as well. They just had so many kids 

that if you seem like you're happy, we'll go with that.  

ARF: [00:20:37] That's great parenting in my book. I'll have to share my book when I finish 

writing it.  

WQ: [00:20:43] Okay.  

ARF: [00:20:45] You talked about working sort of as a social worker. That experience kind 

of guiding you towards law. So, can you tell me about your process to attend law school?  

WQ: [00:21:05] So, I was active with the Tenant Council in the Housing Development. This 

is a 1,500 apartments development. The place that the nuns that I worked with worked closely with 

the Tenant Council as well. You know, problems with housing, problems with utilities, problems 

with public benefits, problems with the criminal law, all these things, or just constant life, you 

know, with 1,500 people, with 1,500 families, it's always somebody who has a kid in trouble or 

needs some help with access and more medical care and the like. And it meshed with my ideas of 

social justice at the time. I started thinking, "Well, where could I go for law school?" I really felt in 

a way, that I don't think I could really articulate at the time, that the women that I was working with 

in public housing, the residents, they were teaching me a lot. I was helping them a lot; there's no 

doubt about it. I was learning a lot from them as well. I decided I did not want to leave New Orleans 

because I wanted to stay connected to the housing development leadership and the people there, 

because they were not really clients or anything like that. They were friends, and people that I got to 

know and so we had two law schools in New Orleans, Tulane and Loyola, and at that time I wanted 

to spend as little time in law school as I could, and Loyola had a clinical program for their third year 

that you could get into. Tulane didn't have a clinic yet. So, I applied to Loyola, it was the only 

school that I applied to, and they accepted me, gave me a little bit of scholarship money, not very 

much, but some, and so that's how I ended up going to Loyola. Around that time, I got married as 

well. Since everything else in my story is a little unusual, my wife was studying to be a Catholic 

nun, and this group of nuns was affiliated with this other group of nuns that were living in the 



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housing development. I got to know her through that and so she had not taken her final vows as a 

nun either, so we were like each other's first dates, and so we got married. She was 22, I was 24, 

and that's about the time that I started law school. She put me through law school; she's a high 

school science teacher. I lived at home and she was really good for me for law school because law 

school has a tendency to take everything that you can possibly offer, and there's a sense of, you're 

thrown into this thing, and it's just all-encompassing. Super competitive. Super intellectual and all 

this other stuff. After I'd been there for about a week or two, she said, "Look, this is not working 

out. You know, you're, like, absent, and you know, if you're going to put in 40 or 50 hours a week 

for schoolwork, that's fine. But you're not going to be putting in 80 or 90 hours of school. That just 

doesn't work for us. We got a relationship we have to work on here. You need to scale this back and 

do this thing right. You know, your goal is not to become a millionaire." Her goal was the same as 

mine, which was essentially to live a simple life, to live a social justice life, and that sort of stuff. 

She said, "You know, you don't have to be top in your class or anything like that. You just need to 

become a lawyer so you can go work at legal aid and public defenders, stuff like that." She helped 

balance me. That was a real plus for my legal education, and the other thing she did is she gave me 

a briefcase. Because people were carrying briefcases to school and all, but my briefcase had this big 

paisley pattern on it. It was like really something of a luggage set or something like that, and I said, 

"I don't know if I can bring this to law school, you know, people are going to--"  She said, "Look, if 

you can't take people making fun of you because you've got a paisley briefcase, how are you going 

to take them being a lawyer for the underdog and public housing and everything else?" I took it to 

law school and it was a big help for me, I got through that.  

ARF: [00:26:01] That's a wonderful story, what was your wife's name?  

WQ: [00:26:05] Debbie, Debra. 

ARF: [00:26:05] Debra. Can you tell us a little bit about her background?  

WQ: [00:26:11] So Debbie, born in Louisiana, is one of two kids. Cajun country. Lived out 

in the country, and a very small French community. She was the top of her class at every stage 



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along the way, and then after high school went to study to become a sister, Catholic sister. She 

taught chemistry, biology, that sort of stuff, and what she was very interested in, spirituality too, but 

also social justice, changing the world, that sort of stuff. We were fortunate enough to find each 

other. You know, this is before cell phones, much less before online dating. We met in the housing 

developments. There's a story that one of my kids came back from school and said, "They asked us 

at school today, how did your parents meet?" And Debbie said, "Well, what did you tell them?"  

[He] said, "They met at a soup kitchen." My wife says, "Well, I hope you told her we were serving 

at the soup kitchen, not just there to get soup." The kids knew what we were doing.  

ARF: [00:27:27] Well, that's lovely. I'm sure they were impressed by it.  

WQ: [00:27:31] He said, "Everybody else's parents met at a bar," so, being in a soup kitchen 

was something different. 

ARF: [00:27:39] So you mentioned the housing development and the impact it had on you, 

and wanting to go to law school and clearly the impact it had on your wife. Can you talk a little bit 

about the kind of community you seem to have built there, friends. Did that follow you into your 

marriage? You mentioned wanting to stay connected, can you talk a little more about that?  

WQ: [00:28:07] Yeah. We became good friends with a lot of families that lived in public 

housing, and I ultimately represented them in class actions against the Housing Authority and sued 

HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development] and, all these things over the years. 

And I'll tell you, the way I realized how much it meant to me is that I interviewed for the job of 

Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, and it was an 8 a.m. meeting of 

everybody, and the staff and all their board and all this other stuff. I had been at Loyola as a law 

professor for 20 years by this time. I hadn't done any interviews for a long time. I didn't know how 

to interview, really. One of the people said, "Well, tell us who was your best teacher." And I was 

really at a loss there for a little while, because I more endured law school than I did enjoy it, and I 

said, "You know, honestly, the best teachers I ever had were the women in public housing. Because 

I did a lot for them over the years, but they did a lot for me over the years. They introduced me to 



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what life is really like. They were raising their children and grandchildren on less than $1,000 a 

month, and a really tremendously challenging environment, and yet they kept up hope and courage 

and community and they really, I think, were my most influential teachers." And we stayed in touch 

with them and connected to them over the years and still have friends that live in public housing 

today, although public housing is a completely different animal post-Katrina. They were 

overwhelmingly women, overwhelmingly grandmothers, seeming like most of them are raising 

their grandchildren because their children are either in jail or suffering from other things, that sort 

of stuff. So really, really great people. Not much formal education, but real wisdom and courage. 

Very inspiring people to be friends with, and that's where I started to learn this idea, you lawyer 

with people, not for people. Because one of the things they taught us in the seminary, and I stayed 

with it even after being a lawyer, is to be a voice for the voiceless. That was what social justice was 

about. Not long after I was a lawyer, one of the organizers I was working with said, "Bill, you 

know, you've talked about this a couple of times, voice for the voiceless." He said, "You know, 

there really aren't very many voiceless people. There's a lot of people that people don't hear, 

because they don't want to listen to them, and so if you really want to help them, you should be a 

voice with them. People whose voices are not heard and try and quiet down the room so that the soft 

voices of the people who were never heard have a chance to be heard and let them tell their story. 

Because it's powerful telling other people's stories, but it's much more powerful telling your own 

story." And so, I don't think the "voice for the voiceless" thing really works for the second half of 

my career. I've tried to prioritize opportunities for people to tell their own stories. There's always a 

role for me to play clearly, but whenever people can tell their own stories, that's really important.  

ARF: [00:31:55] I have to agree, obviously. Can you tell me a little bit about finishing law 

school, you mentioned that Loyola had that third year clinical program. Can you tell me a little bit 

about what clinical was like, and then how you segued into your career?  

WQ: [00:32:20] So I went to Loyola because of the clinical program. I didn't work the first 

two semesters I was in law school, but then I did work for a lawyer, civil rights lawyer, during the 



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summer. He did a lot of civil liberties work, he was very big with ACLU and that stuff. He died, 

and so I switched over and worked with another civil rights lawyer who the other person knew, who 

was representing the teachers' union and employment discrimination and that sort of stuff. Comes 

time for the third year, for me to go in the clinic, and they had a rule that you couldn't work and go 

be in the clinic, and I had to work to be able to pay, supplement what my wife was making then, so 

we could get through law school. So, I never ended up in the clinic after all that. I'm still glad I went 

to Loyola, but clearly I went there for reasons other than what actually happened. And so, while am 

I working with these civil rights lawyers, I got introduced to legal services, civil legal services. In 

New Orleans it's called New Orleans Legal Assistance Corporation. I thought that was the place 

that I really was called to be. It's low pay. It wasn't public defender, just civil legal services for poor 

people, and so my goal was to get a job there. I interviewed with them. They didn't have any 

openings and I ended up getting a job offer at a legal services office in Monroe, Louisiana, which is 

250 miles away from New Orleans, and I talked it over with my wife and decided, well, we would 

move there and go ahead and do that. So, I called The New Orleans Legal Assistance and told them. 

"You know, you don't have to keep me on the list anymore because I got this other job," and they 

said, "Oh, you're that serious about this work? Well, let me talk with the manager," and so they 

ended up extending me an offer, and I ended up staying in New Orleans to work here, and the 

person in Monroe who turned out to be a lifelong friend of mine later, I felt so terrible, I said, "You 

know, my wife is pregnant," [she] said, "I understand. Half the people we offer jobs to don't take 

them because it's so far away." Anyway, so I went to work at New Orleans Legal Assistance 

Corporation and worked there for about a year doing eviction work, trying to help people not get 

evicted, public housing, public benefits, family law, a little bit of everything, and it was a great 

experience for me. I did that for about a year, and then New Orleans elected its first African 

American mayor, [Ernest Nathan] “Dutch” Morial, and I went to work in the City Attorney's office 

for that new administration, doing legal work on the federal programs in the city, and did that for 

about a year. Realized I really wasn't cut out for being on the inside of government, and so I went 



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back to legal services for a couple of years, and was introduced to community organizing by a great 

guy, Ron Chisom, who went on to start the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond, and does 

racism training all over the country, all over the world, and I was lucky enough to work with him 

for a year or two while we were there, did work with a lot of organizations, around police brutality, 

around land rights, around discrimination, municipal services, that stuff all over, you know, in the 

countryside and in the city itself. Now, that’s really my first five years of practice.  

ARF: [00:36:43] It seems like such broad experience.  

WQ: [00:36:45] It really was broad experience; I was very fortunate. Those different kinds 

of legal work, a lot of federal court legal work, but a lot of state court legal work and a lot of just 

helping organizations figure out how to resist, or to organize, or come up with an ordinance that 

they [could] advocate for in their local government to do stuff, so it was a tremendous extension of 

my education.  

ARF: [00:37:18] Just to follow up. That first few summer jobs with a civil rights lawyer. Do 

you recall the lawyer's name?  

WQ: [00:37:29] Now the first one was named Ben Smith. And Ben was probably in his 

fifties, and there was a person who I knew through the community that I was with, the Catholic 

community that was working in the public housing area. He said, "Look, this guy, you know, I think 

he may be a communist, but, there's probably some good experience to work for him," and he said, 

"I'll try and ask him if he would interview you," and I said, "Sure," at those days, everybody was a 

communist if you were doing anything good, so that didn't bother me in the least. He had some 

federal court things and state court things. He didn't live that long, and then I switched over to this 

other guy, Jack Nelson. These are both white guys who did both personal injury work and civil 

rights work. They were complimentary, but those were really tough days to be a civil rights lawyer, 

but I learned a lot from them. I also learned a lot that I didn't want to do that they did, [so] it was a 

really great experience.  



16 
 

ARF: [00:38:46] Again, thinking about civil rights law at that time, while you were still in 

Loyola, did you find many of your classmates were also interested in civil rights law? That kind of 

culture?  

WQ: [00:39:05] No, law school was really about making money, honestly, and people were 

really interested in having as good a life as they could, and I remember the first week I was in law 

school, it may have even been the first day, with people saying in the group that I was with, "I can 

hardly wait till I make my first million," and I just didn't compute it. I thought everybody was going 

to law school for justice issues and it really wasn't, it was for business, it's for commerce. There 

were a few people who went into the federal government to represent HUD or something like that. 

Or a couple of people that had gone to legal services. Everybody was really just into insurance or 

personal injury or whatever, the regular stuff, there really wasn't much, there was very little 

exposure to being a civil rights lawyer. In fact, while I was in school, the only time I ever really had 

something like that was, there was a flyer at Loyola that a lawyer was giving a talk at lunchtime at 

Tulane, which is maybe a half a mile away from Loyola. They were very close to each other. [The] 

name of the talk was, "How To Be A Civil Rights Lawyer And Not Starve To Death." So, I went to 

that, and that was really very inspiring. He was funny and it was a Jewish guy who did work with 

the ACLU and other groups and he said, "You can do it, you got to do other things too, but you can 

do it." So that helped me get through it and get through law school. Law School was pretty non-

inspiring for me.  

ARF: [00:41:01] I'm sorry to hear that. [Laughter] 

WQ: [00:41:03] [Laughter] Well, I don't think very many people go to law school to be 

inspired, so I did, and I missed.  

ARF: [00:41:11] It's unfortunate, but it seems like other places picked up the slack for you. 

WQ: [00:41:16] That's right. There was other things in the community going on.  

ARF: [00:41:20] For this talk that you mentioned at Tulane, did he draw a crowd?  



17 
 

WQ: [00:41:25] You know, it was probably 25 people or something like that, which was 

very interesting. Yeah, it was nice because that was about 22 more people than I thought would 

show up, so I was happy for that.  

ARF: [00:41:38] That's lovely. So, you already started walking us down your career path in 

those early years. You talked about civil legal services, dabbling in government a little bit there. 

Can you tell us a little bit more about how you transitioned from practicing, maybe transition isn't 

the best word, but how you went from those early career years of practicing to teaching?  

WQ: [00:42:11] So, after about five years, Ronald Reagan was elected president, and he 

started doing all kinds of cutbacks on legal services. We were sure that Ronald Reagan was the 

worst president that could ever be elected. Obviously, we've missed the boat on that, but there's a lot 

of people who left legal services at that time. I left at that with some other people and started a 

private practice, and my goal in a private practice was to do about half social justice work and about 

half work that actually paid somehow. I didn't know how that would happen, so, at about that time, 

I was recruited to become the General Counsel of the ACLU of Louisiana, and that was because no 

one else would do it. It was a volunteer job. I was probably 29 or 30, and the director was younger 

than I was. And so, I took over that job, I did that, and started getting introduced to all the various 

civil liberties and civil rights issues that ACLU covers, and I was really pressing all along on 

economic justice, poverty. Poverty law was the reason that I became a lawyer, and I have continued, 

that has been an important part of what I have done. And so, I did a number of class actions for 

Medicaid, issues for other kinds of public housing, again more public housing stuff, lead poisoning 

in public housing, lots of things like that, and it was about that time that I did my first case with the 

Legal Defense Fund. Major v. Treen, which ended up creating Louisiana's first majority Black 

congressional district, and that was a real eye-opener for me in terms of what could happen, and I 

know we'll talk some more about that. I continued to do this work with poverty, civil rights, I did 

some death penalty work. I did living wage work. I also did some personal injury work. There were 

some lawyers that were in my class who did personal injury. People would come to me, ask me to 



18 
 

help them on stuff and I would work on the cases with them. They knew what they were doing. I 

knew what I was doing in some areas, but personal injury was not the area that I knew. So anyway, 

I continued to be an outspoken advocate about poverty issues. After I've been a lawyer 10 plus 

years, Loyola reached out to me and said they had a required course in law and poverty, that they 

had agreed that everybody in the school had to take in order to get a big federal grant for the law 

school, and they had a Jesuit priest, who was also a lawyer, who had been teaching it, and he went 

for one semester to India, and called them up and said, "Look. I'm not coming back." And they had 

a lot of people who couldn't graduate unless they taught this course in law and poverty, and they 

knew that I was really interested in poverty and law and that sort of stuff, would I be interested in 

teaching this course? And it was actually two courses in the same semester because they were 

backed up, and so I got over there and I taught that and I enjoyed it, and it was controversial and all 

kinds of stuff because I taught it in a different way than other people had taught. I brought a lot of 

people in. I ended up going there just as a part-time basis, and then the guy who was the head of the 

clinical programs had a stroke, and they asked me, would I stay on [and] be the acting director of 

the clinic while they found a new director and then ultimately I got hired as a director of the clinics 

and you know I ended up staying there for 30 years continuing to teach law and poverty and 

continuing to be the head of all the clinical programs at the school, and they have a program called 

the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center that I was the head of as well. It was a great opportunity for me 

and I took it because it was a clinical program, we're teaching students how to practice, and I 

continued to do quite a bit of neutrally called "public interest practice," or "social justice practice" 

or "civil rights practice," and some of those death penalty, some of it was voting rights, some of it 

was public housing, it was living wage, it was everything under the sun. It was a great place for me 

to be and I stayed there for 30 years and [was] very fortunate to do that.  

ARF: [00:47:39] I'm curious how Loyola knew about your work doing poverty law at the 

time, to contact you about this teaching position. Was there strong alumni community?  



19 
 

WQ: [00:47:57]  Loyola, at that time, had its first African American Dean of the law school, 

and as part of his job, he had been on the Board of Directors for the legal services program, as had a 

couple other people there, and the guy who ended up being the director of the clinics that I replaced 

was one of the lawyers I had clerked for, a civil rights lawyer who I had clerked for when I was still 

in law school, so I was known a little bit. And there wasn't much competition, you know, hardly 

anybody goes to law school interested in poverty, they're interested in avoiding poverty in law 

schools. I taught the course, and I taught it in a different way. They had been teaching in the past of 

administrative law and this, that, and the other, and I taught it in terms of, "Look. You're law 

students, you don't really give a damn about poverty law. But you have a family, and you have 

cousins and you have nieces and stuff like that. And I guarantee anybody who's got a big enough 

family, has people that have problems with Social Security and occasionally need food stamps and 

problems with disability in education, Americans with Disabilities Act, and on and on, and so my 

goal in teaching that was to sort of give these lawyers a GED in regular people's law, because 

people don't come up to you at Thanksgiving and say, "Tell me about when two ships get in a 

wreck," they tell you, "Look, I got this big stack of things from Medicare. I don't understand what's 

going on," or "My kid's in all kinds of trouble at school and he's really smart, but he's just, you 

know," so to understand what it is that everybody has, that tens of millions of people have these 

problems, and they have hardly any lawyers to help them out. So, you're gonna have to be the one 

to at least help them get started, help them find lawyers, or help them, and if you can't find a lawyer 

and that's your grandma or whatever, then you should help them. Figure it out you can, figure it 

even though you don't want to, and you didn't study that. That was the way I approached it was like 

for a GED in regular people's law.  

ARF: [00:50:15] Give them a little more human perspective. Wow, so we've talked about 

your private practice, we've talked about how you got started with teaching. Can you tell me what 

the impact of teaching has been on you as a person, but also as a practicing lawyer still?  



20 
 

WQ: [00:50:42] Well, it's been really good for me. When I went into law school, I had fairly 

rigid ideas of what people were and weren't. Right after law school, one of my classmates, I saw 

him on the street. And he was getting into this big Mercedes. And I said, "Hey, how you doing? 

You must be doing good." I said, "What are you practicing?" He says, "Environmental law." I said, 

"Oh, that's really great," and we talked a little bit, and I drove away, and I found out afterwards, he 

was representing oil companies and gas companies, it was anti-environmental law. I think teaching 

and getting to know people and understanding that, it made me more understanding of people who 

didn't really understand social justice stuff. That if you don't have a chance to be in contact with 

people who are poor or oppressed or being discriminated against, and you tend to think of them [as] 

whatever the news media or the TV or somebody shows you, and so, I felt it was more than just 

arguing with people or condemning people. More my job to try to bring [them] to the point could 

they could spend a little bit of time in somebody else's shoes, and understand what their challenges 

are. So one of the first things I would do in law school was, in the first class, I would assign 

everybody, I said, "This is a woman that's 24 years old, has a five year old kid, her husband left her, 

and she's moving to New Orleans because she can't afford where they lived when they were a 

couple. She's moved into New Orleans. I want you to find her a job, and a house. You know, find 

that stuff." They had to try to find what you could rent in New Orleans, where a person without a 

college education could get a job, then, how far away the job is from where you can rent and 

actually afford, and then, what do you do for childcare for the child who's not yet in school? And in 

doing that, quickly realize themselves, that there's no way a single mom with a kid can make 

enough money in New Orleans to survive, but for most people, they had never thought of that, and 

they are often single people who are surviving, but they're surviving with loans and all that other 

stuff, and they have big money coming. This person has nothing coming. So that was really the 

thing about law school, [is] getting able to meet people, when they had to be there, but trying to do 

it in such a way it wasn't about guilt or embarrassing, but these are things you need to learn, because 

there are tens of millions of people in the shoes of these individuals that we're talking about, and 



21 
 

then in terms of practice. It really is fun to go out in the country somewhere representing a 

community that's fighting a grain elevator and because they're a little community on the grounds of 

formerly enslaved folks that are fighting the placement of chemical plant or grain elevator or 

something like that, and you go to court and the judge goes "Oh, Professor Quigley, I remember 

when you taught me Law and Poverty," and of course, you don't remember because there's 

thousands of people that have gone, or one of the lawyers on the other side says, "Oh yeah!" And 

so, that's fun, and gives you a little break. Although there is this other experience of it, which is, I 

had this case while I was at Loyola of a person who had been beat up by the bridge police and had a 

jury trial, so we went down to pick the jury. They had all the lawyers introduce themselves to all the 

potential jurors. So, "Did anybody know this person, anybody know this person anybody know this 

person," they said. "Does anybody know Mr. Quigley?" And this one guy raises his hand and he 

says, "Well, I know that he's a professor at Loyola." And I'm like, "That's cool, you know, that is 

great that I get this." And the judge says, "Well, how do you know that?" "Because my wife has 

taken a course from him." And I said, "Oh, OK." "And would the fact that your wife has taken a 

course from him make you more inclined to put weight on what he said?" He said, "Not in the 

least." [Laughter] I'm like, "Oh!" So, I don't know if I gave her a bad grade or what, but sometimes 

it works, sometimes it doesn't work.  

ARF: [00:56:00] That's hilarious. [Laughter] Excuse me! Oh, man.  

WQ: [00:56:12] That was, that was.  

ARF: [00:56:14] I don't know if I would've been able to keep a straight face in that 

courtroom. [Laughter] 

WQ: [00:56:18] Yeah, I was like, "Oh wow!" That reminds me that I've gone to Haiti 

maybe 25 times as a human rights visitor down there, helping a priest who was in and out of jail for 

telling the truth and stuff like that, and one of the first times I went there they took us through the 

prison, and the prison is a massive place with 25, 30 or more people to a room, and they just had a 

bucket in the corner and all that stuff. Your family's supposed to bring you food and they let you out 



22 
 

once a day to wash your clothes and those things, and we’re touring and something like that, and 

some guy from the end yells, "I understand there's a human rights lawyer in this group!" There was 

no other lawyers in the group. It was only, like, five of us, something like that. So, the guy says, 

"Well, I think he's talking about you." And I said, "Oh, okay." So, we walk [over to him], he says, 

"You're a human rights lawyer?" I said, "Yeah, I guess I am." "Look, I just want to tell you, you're 

doing a terrible job! [Laughter] Said, "this place is hell, what are you doing?" I'm like, "It was the 

first time anybody ever called me a human rights lawyer, and I was doing a terrible job, I guess."  

ARF: [00:57:41] Wow, can you tell me a little bit more about how you came to visit Haiti 

so many times?  

WQ: [00:57:50] One of the things I've done is represent several hundred people around the 

country in civil disobedience actions. A group of people that go on to places that they have nuclear 

weapons and they break into the military base there and they go and spray paint peace signs on 

places where they build the weapons and that sort of stuff. And then they go to prison for a couple 

of years because of that, but they asked me to be their lawyer so that I can maximize their 

opportunity to tell their stories in the courtroom, because they see telling the story in the courtroom 

as part of their witness that they do. They know they're going to prison, and they're all ready for 

that, but anyway. But then I [did] represent maybe 200 people who went on to the grounds of Fort 

Benning, Georgia. They had a school there called School of the Americas that was training high-

ranking soldiers from Latin America, and they were mostly affiliated with terrible regimes in Latin 

America. You know, massacres, that sort of stuff, really the terrible things that go on. So, every 

year they would have a vigil outside the gates of Fort Benning, trying to get the army to close this 

school, you know, because they weren't training us. They're training these folks, and these folks 

came in, it was really like vacation and an opportunity to shop in the United States. It was an honor 

to come here. I ended up representing over the period of a number of years, I represented about 200 

people who usually went to federal prison for trespassing onto the property. So anyway, one or two 

of them were going to Haiti right after President Aristide had been deposed. And they were going 



23 
 

on a human rights delegation with this Catholic bishop, Bishop Gumbelton, who was a friend of 

Aristide and some other people, so I went. We got introduced to this Haitian priest who was like, 

the right-hand man of Aristide and that stuff and he said, "Oh, it's great to meet you, and if you're a 

lawyer, you know, I'm probably going to need a lawyer as well." "Well, I represent a lot of priests 

and nuns and other people like that. I'm happy to be your lawyer." A week later somebody calls me 

from Port-au-Prince with a very heavy accent, I can't hardly make it out, they're saying that, "The 

priest is in jail, and he said to call you. That you said you would help him out." And I'm like, "What 

the, I don't know how to do this!" So, I flew to Haiti. Went to visit him in the jail, and did some 

investigation of some of the things he was accused of, and he had a Haitian lawyer, and I would go 

to court with the Haitian lawyer, I didn't understand Creole or that sort of stuff, but the mere fact 

that I was there, a white lawyer from North America who was a law professor at, you know, a Jesuit 

school and all that stuff made a difference then. I would go every time he was imprisoned, or at the 

time there was some sort of bad thing going on, so, until he died, in the eight or ten years between 

when I first met him till when he died, I went there a couple of dozen times.  

ARF: [01:01:32] And what was his name? 

WQ: [01:01:34] This name was Gérard Jean-Juste. J-E-A-N hyphen J-U-S-T-E.  

ARF: [01:01:45] Interesting, so interesting. At this point, I think I'm going to segue.  

WQ: [01:01:53] At some point, we're going to get to the--[Laughter] 

ARF: [01:01:54] [Laughter] To the LDF! You did mention them a little bit earlier in how 

you got started working with them on your first case with them in 1983. Major v. Treen?  

WQ: [01:02:07] Right.  

ARF: [01:02:07] Can you tell us a little bit more about that one?  

WQ: [01:02:13] 1983, I'd been a lawyer for six years. I'm a baby lawyer. You know, I don't 

know what I'm doing, and the state of Louisiana had done a reapportionment of their congressional 

districts. There were members of the Black Caucus [who] said, "Look, we'll raise some money. But 

we need to fight this in court. Louisiana's a third Black, [but] has no Black U.S. Representatives at 



24 
 

all, and they keep gerrymandering these districts so that they're 40% Black, two 40% Black districts 

instead of one that's 60% of that." And so, they said, "Well, we want you to file suit on that." I knew 

them from other things that I had done, death penalty and other stuff. [I] started trying to figure out 

how to do that. I hadn't done any voting rights cases before at that point and studied a little bit and 

there was an older lawyer who had done some voting rights cases in the [19]60s and [19]70s, and he 

said, "Well, the first thing you got to do is you got to contact the Legal Defense Fund. Because they 

have experience, they have expertise. They got people they know what's going on and they'll help 

pay for the cases." And pay for the cases, meaning like to hire them historians that come and testify 

about the history of racial segregation in Louisiana. Hire the experts who will look at the voting 

rights, look at the voting data and show, "What are the predictions of this kind of district versus that 

kind of district?" And demographers, and all this other stuff. All of which I really didn't know 

anything about. We were lucky enough to get Lani Guinier as our first person that we were working 

with. She brought on some other people as well. But they helped us figure out how to file the suit, 

how to litigate the suit. How to get the experts that we needed and the like. We ultimately, after a 

couple of years of work, were able to get the courts to agree that the way Louisiana was 

reapportioning its congressional districts was a violation of the Voting Rights Act, and therefore, 

they had to create, because it was easy to create, what is essentially a New Orleans based district. 

Which was at that time, I think 80 or 90% of the average district, they could have just done that 

fairly easily, but they just played cut up New Orleans to be in other places and to dilute the voting 

strength of the African American voters. That was really my introduction to it. I had worked with 

Joel Berger at the Legal Defense Fund on some death penalty issues before. This was the very first 

thing to start from the beginning. Lani Guinier was just fabulous, fabulously smart, poised, 

incredibly disciplined, hardworking lawyer and it was so great to work with her. She was really our 

guide. We did tons of work, but she said, "Well, this is what we need, and this is how we got to get 

them." This other older lawyer, Stanley Halpin, he was involved in the case as well, and there were 

a couple of young lawyers, Ron Wilson, Jim Kellogg, Roy Rodney, who were around to help, but 



25 
 

we were really all taken direction from Lani Guinier and the team at LDF. I don't think it is an 

exaggeration to say that without LDF, Louisiana would look very different. LDF has always been 

there to help out in terms of voting rights in particular, but also school desegregation and a lot of 

other civil rights things. [They] have been around to help create the first Black majority district in 

Major v. Treen. To help with the fight for a second African American majority district in the Hayes 

case, where we weren't the main litigators, but we were amicus briefs to represent the Black caucus 

and Black voters in a district. In the Chisom case, which just ended, it started in 1986, created the 

first African American majority electoral district for our Supreme Court, seven-member Supreme 

Court, and helped in numerous what were called Section 5 challenges to local school boards, local 

city councils, parish councils, and the like all over the state. They really, not alone, because the 

Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights was helpful as well, ACLU to a much lesser extent, but 

without their help, we would still be much more deeply segregated than we are. We continue to be 

segregated: economically, culturally in many ways, but at least electorally, due to LDF's putting feet 

on the ground, bringing the expertise to the table, helping fund the cost of these things. They didn't 

pay for the lawyers, they just paid for the out-of-pocket things that cost a lot of money, especially 

for brand new lawyers like what we were. They were just essential.  

ARF: [01:08:27] Can you talk to me a little bit more specifically about how you made that 

contact? You mentioned someone told you, "Hey, if you're gonna take this case, call someone at 

LDF." What was that call like?  

WQ: [01:08:42] I don't really remember that, to tell you the truth, and I might not have 

made the call. Might have been the other guy who made the [call] but I think it was something we 

knew. Because I've been working with the Legislative Black Caucus already. We knew what was 

going on was wrong, but we didn't know how to challenge it in federal court. Because voting rights, 

at that time, they had two processes to challenge things. It's an administrative process where you 

just wrote up what the problem was and you submit it to the Justice Department as part of their pre-

clearance process. So, the law was that most of the states in the South, before any change to 



26 
 

elections could go into effect, it had to wait 60 days and have the Justice Department decide 

whether they would approve it or not. We had challenged a bunch of other things with them through 

this administrative process, which was really just getting the information from the caucus, getting 

some people to explain what it's like, et cetera, et cetera, and then the Justice Department would do 

a lot of the work. In Major v. Treen, that didn't work, and we needed to do a federal lawsuit, and not 

just a federal lawsuit, but a lawsuit suing the Governor, suing the state, the attorney generals on the 

other side. It was very expensive, very time-consuming, and the like, which we didn't mind. It was 

great work. It was educational work, but we needed a guide, and we needed a leader, and LDF was 

our leader.  

ARF: [01:10:27] Wonderful. So, you mentioned the Chisom case that was in 1991 and then 

you talked a little bit about Hayes v. Louisiana, which happened in 1996, or at least started, right? 

Because as you mentioned these can go on for a while, but you are also still continuing doing other 

cases throughout this time that you are working with LDF?  

WQ: [01:10:58] Well, I think I did seven federal cases with LDF and numerous other 

administrative challenges to electoral reapportionment. I don't have any idea how many there were, 

it was quite a few. Also, they had for a while a death penalty component that they helped people try 

to fight the death penalty, and I was, in the 1980s, did a couple of death penalty cases of people who 

had run out of all their appeals. I did do some work with Joel Berger during that time.  

ARF: [01:13:43] I have here a list of some of those other LDF cases. This one is Maxwell v. 

Foster. Intervention on behalf of African American voters. It sounds quite similar to-- 

WQ: [01:12:07] [Hayes v. Louisiana] Yes, and I think it was a companion to that. 

Louisiana, at this moment, has two Black congressional districts. The first one is the one Major v. 

Treen created. Second one is created just in the last legislative session, and [still] much being 

challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court. It's not clear whether it's going to survive or not. That 

same sort of thing was going on in the [19]90s, and there was a second Black congressional district, 

and then that was ultimately thrown out by the courts. We, LDF, and a number of other civil rights 



27 
 

organizations got involved in that, and that was District Court, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court, 

back to the District Court, up to the Court of Appeals. There's a lot of years of litigation, which we 

ultimately lost, but I think that fight helped set the foundation for this most recent fight for the 

second congressional district. Again, the state is over 30% Black, and we have seven districts. It's 

logical that you could create two majority Black districts. We got the first one through the fight, and 

continuing to fight for the second one.  

ARF: [01:13:43] You mentioned you lost, and now you're continuing the fight. What 

lessons did you learn from losing?  

WQ: [01:13:53] You have to learn lessons from losing if you're a social justice lawyer, 

public interest lawyer, civil rights lawyer, human rights lawyer, because we lose a lot. We lose a lot 

because we're not satisfied with what's going on right now, and we're trying to change. And when 

you're trying to change, you're swimming upstream. I think that the best way to do these cases in a 

way that, after losing enough, that I realized that losing is certainly a very possible outcome from a 

lot of these social justice cases, is to do the cases in such a way that you partner with local 

community groups and community leaders, and help them become the face of the litigation and the 

challenge, because even if you lose in court, it's possible you could win in the legislature, and even 

if you lose in the legislature, you might win in a court of public opinion, which maybe does 

something later on. If it's all just about the lawyers and the courts, then if you lose in court, then 

you've lost, and what's the point of all the work that you've done? But if you're doing it in 

partnership with local folks who get a chance to be on television and to be part of the press 

conference at each stage, and are understood, and local legislators [are] doing that as well, that this 

becomes their fight as well. As lawyers, we can win or lose in court, but there's a lot of other places 

to win or lose besides court, and most lawyers have a tough time with that because it's sort of the 

myth that all the civil rights progress came about through the courts, and a bunch did, but most of it 

did once there was enough pressure locally, and organizing and empowering people and 

organizations that they could do something legislatively, they could [do] something in the streets, 



28 
 

they could do stuff in terms of social outreach and shaping public opinion. So that progress is 

possible, so that the courts are really ultimately just one finger on the hand. That it's important to 

have that finger, and if you can do it with that, that's good, but you don't want to go into a fight with 

just one finger on your hand if you can. That you need the people to be active and involved and 

public and above the fold. You need a good media strategy and communication strategy, and you 

got to know your history, and you've got to have your historians and other people working with you. 

Got to have organizing, the outreach and all that, and so, to understand that, that if you start with the 

right group of people, and you got the right issue, then even if you don't win, you're going to have 

made some progress, and maybe you're laying the foundation for more progress to come.  

ARF: [01:17:09] Very well said. I'm just going to mention a couple more of the cases and if 

there's anything in particular that stands out in your memory about the case. People that you 

remember working with on those cases, anything like that.  

WQ: [01:17:27] I do have one thing I want to say. In addition to that last question, you said, 

"How do you calculate the chance that you're gonna lose, and what do you learn from losing?" One 

of the things that I've tried to do is have the lead plaintiffs be organizers in these cases. Like 

Barbara Major, who's been a lifelong welfare rights organizer and anti-racism trainer and medical 

organizer and that sort of stuff. The Chisom case, the Louisiana Supreme Court case, [Chisom v. 

State of Louisiana], Ron Chisom. He's a guy I worked with at Legal Services who's been a public 

housing tenant organizer for decades and has started this anti-racism issue. I have cases in there for 

Ted Quant who was an organizer, and so I think in terms of choosing a plaintiff, in public interest 

litigation, at least when I started, it was like, we just gotta get somebody who fits the profile, and if 

they're African American and they live in New Orleans, then they can be the plaintiff. That's true, 

but if you're really trying to do something with this other than just win or lose, you need to have 

people who are plaintiffs who are already invested in the issue, and they can make something of this 

for each time there's a public appearance. They can do outreach themselves, they don't have to wait 



29 
 

on the lawyer to do it, and win or lose, they can use this as a foundational thing for the next fight 

that they're in.  

ARF: [01:19:07] And it doesn't hurt that they're likely already well-practiced in speaking 

about the issue. Well versed in what is going on. So, it's a smart strategy. I haven't heard that one 

yet. 

WQ: [01:19:21] They probably told me to do it.  

ARF: [01:19:27] [Laughter] Perhaps. But speaking along those lines, you mentioned the 

importance of picking the right plaintiff. How did the specific people that you work with from LDF 

really impact that kind of team you create in following the strategy you just mentioned of, you 

know, getting the right experts, having the researchers, and having the right plaintiff, and all of 

those things? I know there was a lot of different folks from LDF that you worked with, but can you 

speak to maybe what their individual impacts might have been like?  

WQ: [01:20:13] You want me to talk collectively about their individual impact or you want 

me to talk about individuals?  

ARF: [01:20:18] If you can recall specific individuals, that's great.  

WQ: [01:20:24] So, for example, most recently working on the Chisom case. Leah Aden 

was really the lead from the Legal Defense Fund and she was an incredible leader. She's an 

incredible lawyer, being a smart lawyer who can read and write and do all that stuff, and being a 

leader, are not the same thing at all. And she is both. She knows the scholarship. She knows that's 

hers. But she also is a great leader in terms of being able to make sure everybody's voice is heard 

from. And not just the lawyers. But the clients and the clients' organizations, and at any point that 

there's any sort of fork in the road, to bring people in and make sure that everybody's on the same 

page and take as long as it takes. It takes a couple of meetings, whatever, to get everybody on the 

same page. She's a great example of the way that other lawyers from LDF have worked: clients 

aren't just names on a lawsuit, that you go forward and lawyers are in charge all the way, they have 

a role to play, an important role, we listen to them, hopefully they listen to us, that we have a 



30 
 

relationship. And again, it's not lawyering for, but it's lawyering with. And that is something that 

LDF has been really careful about doing and prioritizing in the 30 or 40 years that I've been 

working with them.  

ARF: [01:22:06] That's wonderful. So back to some of these cases. I have here the 

Louisiana House of Representatives v. Ashcroft. Again, intervention on behalf of African American 

voters. Anything particular about that?  

WQ: [01:22:27] That is one who was in north Louisiana. I was the Louisiana representative 

on the team, because they needed a Louisiana lawyer to do it. So, most of the work with the clients 

was done by LDF directly, because I wasn't as familiar with the people in north Louisiana. Over the 

years, Pam Karlan has been a great lawyer. Pam has done a couple of cases with us. She's now at 

Stanford; she was at the Justice Department for a while. She really would take the time to meet 

herself with all the plaintiffs and develop a relationship with them. Judith Reed who was involved 

in a couple of cases with us, same thing, just loved New Orleans, loved coming here, loved being 

involved with people. I think we are honestly pretty lucky to be in New Orleans too, because it's not 

such a hardship for people to come and spend some time doing depositions and working with 

groups and litigating. LDF has always been very generous with their people, and I think there's a 

clear mandate. I got to meet Julius Chambers on one of these cases once and he was such an 

incredibly hard worker and very brilliant person, but he came in for a hearing that he was going to 

take the lead on. I went down and met him downtown for a couple hours, answered questions for 

him, but he, in a short amount of time, really mastered everything that was going on. He knew the 

case, he knew all the other stuff, and just totally dedicated and really smart. I think that's, you know, 

totally dedicated and really smart. That's what LDF lawyers are, and a long tradition for that and 

they're carrying it on extremely well. Louisiana has really benefited from it, and I have benefited 

from it personally, it's taught me to become a better lawyer and helped me be a better teacher as 

well.  

ARF: [01:24:49] Can you speak to that a little more, how it's helped you be a better teacher?  



31 
 

WQ: [01:24:57] Well, in terms of teaching, we're all familiar with the brilliant teachers who 

just lecture, and LDF could do that. I mean, they have the expertise and the history and the 

resources and that. They could just come in and tell everybody what to do and go about their 

business. But they, despite their experience and history and resources, they really made it a working 

relationship, and I think that's what a good teacher does, too, is that it's not just, "I come in and 

spend an hour lecturing you about Social Security," but figuring a way that you can talk about your 

parents' Social Security or your grandparents' Social Security or what happens if your grandparents 

got divorced, who's Social Security gets what, and the like, and so to really set up a dialog, and try 

the best you can to have a relationship, and I think LDF does that. That, to me, is the essence of 

being a really good teacher, too. You know what's going on, but just telling that to people is a lot 

different than having people learn it, and [be] given the opportunity to learn. That's what they did 

with me, gave me an opportunity to learn a lot.  

ARF: [01:26:23] It's beautiful. Also, on my list I have, I don't know how to pronounce this 

one, Valteau?  

WQ: [01:26:35] Valteau, V-A-L-T-E-A-U. Valteau is a great case because it's a very 

unusual case. [Do] you have the year, what that was?  

ARF: [01:26:48] Yes, 1984.  

WQ: [01:26:50] In 1984, I forget who was running for president. Jesse Jackson was running 

for president, I forget who was the main candidate. What happened was because he was running, 

the Louisiana Democratic State Central Committee decided they weren't going to have a primary. 

They would have caucuses instead. Once he decided he was gonna run, he really had a chance to 

win in Louisiana if it was a go-to-the-polls thing, because it was a historic opportunity for people to 

vote. We filed a suit against the state, and the lead plaintiff was Paul Valteau, who was a civil 

sheriff at the time, and a number of other officials who were committed to Jesse Jackson, was just 

saying that it was a violation of the Voting Rights Act to change your way of voting once you have 

a legitimate African American candidate enter the race. And so, we filed suit and it was brought 



32 
 

before the federal courts here and federal court spent a couple of days trying to hammer out a 

decision. To try to get a compromise that was not really able to be a compromise, and the judge was 

actually pretty harsh on the plaintiffs and plaintiffs' counsel, going like, "How do you expect this," 

you know, "This is not really important enough for the Voting Rights Act," and that, and ultimately 

we were able to prevail. We had a primary and I think as it turns out that that was the only primary 

that Jesse Jackson won. It was a really important thing for us in the state and important for the idea 

of an African American candidate in a time when that was very unusual.  

ARF: [01:28:44] I'm sure it was inspiring.  

WQ: [01:28:46] Yeah, it was.  

ARF: [01:28:49] I also have here, this one is much more recent, from 2002. The New 

Orleans Campaign for a Living Wage v. The City of New Orleans.  

WQ: [01:29:03] Yeah, so that one was with the community group Acorn, and they gathered 

enough signatures to be able to put a charter change on the ballot in New Orleans, to raise the 

minimum wage in the city of New Orleans by one dollar. Just modest, but they wanted to show that 

the people could do that, and it was very popular. Because, you know, we are a poor city. We have 

a lot of working people who are working full-time and are still poor, and so the idea of a dollar 

minimum wage increase would be helpful for those who are making minimum wage, but it also 

[would] help as it went up through the ranks of the employed, and so we got all these signatures and 

brought them to the City Council and the City Council refused to hold an election. They said it was 

improper and et cetera, something like that. We had to sue them to get them to hold the election. We 

held the election, and won, and that was a terrific victory, and within days, the hotel and hospitality 

industries filed suit against the city, saying that this was unconstitutional under the Louisiana 

Constitution. [The] only body that could raise the minimum wage was the state legislature. It 

couldn't be done on a local basis. We had to fight that all the way through, and we ultimately lost 

that, but we did win the opportunity to get it on the ballot and have a victory. And I think that really 

made the idea of a living wage real for a lot of people, and subsequent to that, the city has adopted a 



33 
 

living wage ordinance for people who contract directly with the city. They're paying like $15 an 

hour to garbage workers, to contractor service workers, lots of people, who would be making far 

less than that without a living wage. We won a little part of the case; we lost a big part of case. 

Tried to do stuff in the Louisiana legislature, couldn't do it, and ended up getting something going 

here in New Orleans after all.  

ARF: [01:31:28] That's a really great example of what you were talking about earlier, the 

way that the strategy comes together, and even when you lose, you can still make progress.  

WQ: [01:31:38] That's right. I think we lost, but it was a clear message to the elected 

officials that this was not just some little specialty issue. This had wide appeal, and so even while 

they didn't support it directly at the time, their successors and other people working on the issue, 

they were able to make it happen.  

ARF: [01:32:02] Yeah, and it also impacts public opinion.  

WQ: [01:32:05] Absolutely.  

ARF: [01:32:06] Like you said. That's a great one. And on that, you worked with Robert 

Stroup and Elyse Bodie? 

WQ: [01:32:18] Yeah, I don't remember.  

ARF: [01:32:20] Alright then.  

WQ: [01:32:21] Also some of the people though, I just worked remotely with, they weren't 

on the ground.  

ARF: [01:32:29] And I forgot to mention this earlier, but the Valteau, that was Lani 

[Guinier] again?  

WQ: [01:32:39] Yes.  

ARF: [01:32:39] I'm glad you got to work with her again. You had such glowing comments 

before.  

WQ: [01:32:45] She ended up being a professor at Harvard Law School and all that, so she 

was a superstar.  



34 
 

ARF: [01:32:52] Wow, that's great. I think we already spoke to that one, and you already 

spoke a little bit about serving as Legal Director. You didn't speak about this, [you] served as the 

Legal Director for the Center of Constitutional Rights. Can you talk a little bit about that?  

WQ: [01:33:19] That was in 2009, 2010, and I had done quite a bit of work after Hurricane 

Katrina on housing and voting and FEMA work and just all kinds of stuff, and they recruited me to 

interview for the job of Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York at that 

time they were chest deep in Guantanamo stuff. They were representing essentially everybody in 

Guantanamo. [It was] part of my evolution as a lawyer to understand that people who co-counsel 

with them on all these cases, by and large, [are] gigantic law firms all over the country, and I had 

been pretty skeptical of the commitment of big law firms for social justice. I think, probably 

reasonably skeptical, but these folks really came on and put the pedal to the metal and really did 

incredible work for real people who are outcasts of society, and continue to do some work and the 

few people that are left and are going to have to do some more now because, you know, sending the 

undocumented people to Guantanamo, so they're going to gear all that back up. There was a lot of 

that going on, there was the war crimes stuff coming out of the Iraq war. They filed an international 

claim against the Catholic Church for putting up with the child abuse across the United States, at a 

time when that was pretty controversial that we were doing that. They're not a large group, they're 

15, 18 lawyers, something like that, but they did some really great work. I learned a lot about 

human rights work with them. Ultimately, we didn't see ourselves growing old in New York City, 

so my wife and I came back to Loyola, and stayed there for another 10 years.  

ARF: [01:35:34] Did you miss it?  

WQ: [01:35:35] Miss what?  

ARF: [01:35:36] Either New York or more specifically the Center for Constitutional Law? 

WQ: [01:35:40] I did miss it, it was just the fascinating work with tremendous people and 

just on the cutting edge, you know, we sued Obama over the targeted assassinations of al-Qaeda and 

stuff like that, and so it was really, really important, great work, high-level stuff, which I could not 



35 
 

have done in New Orleans, but life outside the office was much easier in New Orleans than New 

York City.  

ARF: [01:36:13] Yeah. Work-life balance is important. Your wife taught you that lesson 

early.  

WQ: [01:36:18] If you're doing this kind of work, you have to do it, because we have 

enough social justice cranks. You know, we don't need anybody else telling us, "Woe is me" stuff. 

Part of this, if you're going to do this work, you have to be centered in hope. You can't be centered 

in just negative stuff. You know, "This is bad, and this is wrong, and this oppression," and that's all 

true, but unless you have hope, you're not going to have the energy to do it. For lawyers, it's hard to 

get hope in the face of the continuing growth of conservatism in the courts. Where I get hope is 

from the people that I work with. These mothers in public housing, the people in Port-au-Prince, the 

people in prison, stuff like that, if they can still hope, who am I to give up hope? And so, that's 

really a critical part of doing this stuff. That's balance too, because when you start thinking, "Oh, 

woe is me," or "I'm the only one doing all this work," or "Why do I have to do all this stuff?" then, 

you know, it's time to just step back. Take care of yourself. Because we don't need anybody feeling 

sorry for themselves or feeling like they're the only ones working, because there's thousands of 

people that are doing this kind of work around the country and if you have any international 

experience, which I have a little bit, [I] went to Iraq, went to India, to Haiti. There's people working 

there. There's social justice lawyers working in these places that they would love to be doing what 

we're doing here in the United States. And the hardships that we think about are not hardships at all 

compared to what people are doing. Can you imagine being a human rights lawyer in Iraq? Or in 

Palestine or Egypt and these places, it's just beyond comprehension, and that there are people and 

they're doing great stuff. We need to be reminded of that when we think, "Oh, you know, things are 

tough."  



36 
 

ARF: [01:38:28] It’s true. I like what you said there about having a more global perspective. 

Yeah, I think that's really important to not be so laser focused on where you are and [with] your 

singular impact. Looking at it on a broader scale.  

WQ: [01:38:47] It's hard to do, whenever I would come back from Haiti, I would get back 

to Loyola and someone might be complaining vociferously about this fax machine wasn't working, 

it was out of toner and all that stuff, I'm like, "You know, people have much more serious problems 

than this," and I would be critical of them until about three weeks later and it wore off and I'm like, 

"Where's the damn fax machine stuff?" It takes work to be in touch with all the people who are 

struggling around the world, and try to situate your little part of it, in the broad tapestry of people 

struggling for justice everywhere.  

ARF: [01:39:38] Let me get back to my list, because we can talk about hope ad nauseam. I 

think this question is probably really fitting for right now. When you're thinking about that global 

perspective and how it impacts you and your day-to-day, I imagine it's very similar to what you 

were saying earlier about when you're teaching and giving your students more broad perspective 

and putting them in the shoes of others, so to speak. But I'm curious about law students today and 

what you think the interest is for this kind of law in the students that you're teaching today, 

compared to when you were a student.  

WQ: [01:40:31] I do think there's more interest than when I was in law school. I think it's 

even more challenging. The cost of going to law school it's not unusual for people to come out a 

quarter of a million dollars in debt. That really limits your ability to choose the kind of work that 

you would want to do, because a lot of the public interest work is low pay work. A lot of law 

schools have some loan forgiveness that they can do, but a lot don't. I think people are more aware 

of what's going on in the world and there are more people coming into law school with ideas about 

social justice. It's one of my pet peeves honestly that I think law school is, how do I say this? I don't 

just fear that law school pushes people out of social justice. I have seen it, and I know that it 

happens. If you take the number of people who enter law school who are interested in some kind of 



37 
 

social justice, whether it's elder law or hungry kids, or domestic violence or international human 

rights. There's a substantial number of people that have that as just this general interest. But I think 

the message of law school, and not just the message that's in the classes, but mixing with the other 

students, and the incredible cost of going to law school, just narrows everybody's perspective to 

think, "Well, look, I really can't do that. It's not viable." And it's a job, I think, of lawyers and 

organizations that do this work to tell people, "Look, it is possible." I mean, it's hard work. It's not 

that it's easy, it is hard work to do, but you can do it and hundreds, if not thousands, of people have 

done it. Nobody's [going to] do it for you. You have to do it for yourself, and that means you have 

to pick your clerkships. You have to pick the classes that you take, the max that you can, you have 

to pick your partner, your life partner. If you have a partner who is really interested in generational 

wealth, then, there's only so much you can do, because a lot of people would say, "Well, I kind of 

get this money and then I'll go back" they have the golden handcuffs thing, you know, once you get 

used to living [on] $250,000, $300,000 a year, you can't go back to a salary that you would think 

would be great if you were coming right out of law school, if you could get $50,000 or $60,000, 

$70,000 a year. You would be thrilled with that. Not after you're used to living on a lot more than 

that. So, there's more interest. The challenges are higher. There is, I think, a recognition that those 

challenges are there, so a lot of bar associations are doing loan forgiveness, and I think there is 

actually more interest than there are jobs, and so it takes special people to find that job for 

themselves, the first job. I think the first job is so important; if you get a good first job, you can 

build from there, if you get a bad first job, it may never come back to your dream. And for people to 

hold on to their dreams is a tough thing to do in the United States. It was a tough thing every place, 

but especially if your dreams are not well compensated. The other thing I'd try to remind people, it's 

hard to remind people who are $200,000 in debt. You know, what we think is a living wage for 

lawyers is not what a living wage is for everybody else. People would love to live on what a legal 

aid lawyer makes or a public defender makes. [It would] Be good money for most everybody in our 

city. If you're still paying off a house note and you don't have a house, that's a lot tougher.  



38 
 

ARF: [01:44:57] It's good to hear, though, that the interest is there.  

WQ: [01:45:00] It is.  

ARF: [01:45:01] So, when we first started talking about you developing your interest in 

becoming a lawyer, you had said it was because the lawyers you met, they were fine, but nothing to 

write home about, and that was in the [19]70s. I wonder if in the past and even now, you can speak 

to any circles, whether within the Civil Rights Movement or adjacent movements like Anti-war, 

Feminism, LGBTQ+, where you might have found other like-minded lawyers.  

WQ: [01:45:52] Well, they have this unflattering portrait of lawyers as ambulance chasers. I 

think public interest social justice lawyers should be crowd chasers. Where there is a crowd of 

people that are trying to do something, there's a role for you to play, and you're not just gonna go 

there and just help them. You're gonna go there and enter into a relationship with them, because 

they're [going to] help you as much, or more, as you help them. Everything from public housing, 

living wage, LGBTQ, trans rights, Gaza. The various things that Trump is up to and wrecking what 

fairness we have in society. These are all places that people are outraged, but they don't often know 

what to do about it other than just express their outrage. There's a thing that somebody taught me 

early on is that, as a guy, Augustine of Hippo, who was Saint Augustine. It's like year 600 or 

something like that, and he said, "Hope has two beautiful daughters. Anger at the way things are, 

and the courage to do something about it." And if you put anger and courage together, then you get 

hope. I think that's one of the things that lawyers need to do is that we could get angry fast and we 

see people are angry, but how do, and they may even have courage and not know what to do about 

it, and maybe there's something that we can help them brainstorm some ideas of what to do about it, 

and then we could join them in that. And then we have hope. You know, we have more hope. My 

experience over the decades is, there is a lot of hope of people on a grassroots level, who are really 

doing terrific work. I caution students, don't just get involved in issues, because the issues can 

strangle you and smother you because they're so complex and they're not always hopeful. What you 

need to do is that the issue, if you're interested in LGBTQ, is not just focus on what the court 



39 
 

decisions are. Go connect to the people at the grassroots level who are fighting for medical care, 

who are are fighting against discrimination, who are fighting. By connecting with them, you'll be 

inspired, and you will find hope. If you're just focusing on theory or intellect, it's going to defeat 

you. But if you focus on the people, who were there at the point of the sword, point of oppression. 

They're not just oppressed people. They are people who are fighting and courageous and inspiring 

and raising their kids and trying to make the world a better place. You'll be enriched by being with 

them and they'll be enriched by being with you.  

ARF: [01:49:07] So I take it, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your community and 

the people who are inspiring you and giving you hope, are not largely other lawyers.  

WQ: [01:49:22] Correct. [Laughter] There are some great other lawyers that I will follow 

anywhere, but there's not a lot of them. I believe that law follows justice, doesn't create justice, and 

so it's really the people that we need to be in touch with and I am in touch with a lot of people and 

I'm in touch with a lot lawyers and sometimes that's my role, is to connect lawyers who are really 

smart and know these things with people at the grassroots level who really need a lawyer and have 

some things going on, and then people are usually willing to do it, but they are usually not traveling 

in the circles where they're exposed to people. That's where you need not just people on the national 

level, but you need people on the local level who are doing that work too. Yes, I agree that the hope 

I see in the world and the inspiration I see in the world is not from the lawyers fighting, which I'm 

very appreciative of, but it is who the lawyers are fighting for, and even more important, who the 

lawyers are fighting with.  

ARF: [01:50:38] It's only two questions left. Then we will be out of your hair. The first is, 

when you came to New Orleans to do your [seminary] degree, that was back in 1971. Did you ever 

imagine you'd spend most of the rest of your life in the South, in New Orleans? 

WQ: [01:51:05] No, I had no idea that New Orleans would be my home, I had no idea that I 

would end up being a civil rights lawyer. I had no idea I would be married. My wife and I just 



40 
 

celebrate 50 years of marriage. So, we were very lucky to meet each other when we did. No, I had 

no idea.  

ARF: [01:51:31] It worked out.  

WQ: [01:51:32] Yeah, it did!  

ARF: [01:51:33] Can you speak a little bit to your neighborhood, your local community, 

and what it means to you now? You spoke a lot about that kind of community building back when 

you first started working in the housing development. What's the community like for you now?  

WQ: [01:52:00] I belong to quite a few communities. I have a religious community that I 

meet with every two weeks. Another religious community I meet with different times of the month. 

They're grassroots stuff, mostly social workers, pastors. One is half Black, half white, the other is 

mostly white. I do a lot of work with the community of formerly incarcerated people, which is 

overwhelmingly African American. I've represented them off and on for quite a few years and 

they're very inspiring people, and then, with communities up and down the river of mostly African 

American communities that have been on the land since slavery, and fighting [the] petrochemical 

industry that's being built right next door to them or right on top of them. Trying to move that stuff 

out. And then the Loyola community that I have gotten to be a part of over those 30 years. After 

Katrina, I did a big case on behalf of everybody in public housing in Louisiana and New Orleans, 

which was, I don't know, about 8,000 families, because HUD didn't want to let anybody back in 

their houses, their apartments, after Katrina, they wanted to level them all. The leaders came to me 

and said, "Look, Bill, we really need you to file a suit on this." I said, "I don't know how, how we 

can file a suit this, you know? They haven't actually evicted you yet, they just keep talking about it, 

and there's so many," and they said, "No, we really need you to file suit to help us organize 

ourselves around something, so even if you don't win. We want you to file suit." I put together a 

team of public interest lawyers and private firms and all that stuff, and so we've filed suit and fought 

it for a couple of years. [We] Lost, but the public housing folks felt it was a real chance for them to 

do a lot together, to find each other, to come together, because they were scattered all over the 



41 
 

place. Houses were not available to them. So that community continues. I was at a luncheon with 

them the week before last, and so there's a lot of different communities.  

ARF: [01:54:55] It's lovely. This question isn't on my list, but something about you 

describing the various demographics of the communities in which you're a part of reminded me of 

when you first mentioned going to Haiti, and the impact that your presence alone had, so I'm 

curious about the impact of race in the work that you've done and the relationships that you have 

built. Has it been a barrier? Has it been an aid, and in what ways maybe it's both or maybe it's 

neither?  

WQ: [01:55:42] Well, even before I was a white civil rights lawyer, even just being a white 

lawyer working with Black people and Black organizations, it was a hurdle. I got asked to step out 

of organizations, step out of meetings, because people objected, [an] all-Black meeting objected to 

somebody bringing in a white lawyer. Really hurt my feelings, and I felt angry about it and all that 

stuff. But after an hour or so, they brought me back in, and we've been partners ever since. It's 

something that people had to get over, and they had to make a conscious decision about. And I 

thought, you know, "Here I am, I'm offering, I'm doing this for free, it's volunteer work, it's after 

work, you people should be grateful." That's part of the white privilege of just thinking that if you 

show up, that people are going to be happy that you're there. To have a growing understanding of 

how important race is in everything that's in our society. Especially when you're dealing with 

poverty and voting rights, death penalty, living wage, environmental justice, all these, incarceration. 

They're all just steeped in race. As a white lawyer, there's suspicion of me coming in at the 

beginning, and I have to work through that, but after I have done it for x-number of years, people 

sort of know who I am and other people vouch for me, but it is an important thing and I play a 

symbolic role on a lot of cases still today, social justice cases, in fact, I'm working on one case with 

a bunch of women lawyers who are mostly white but some Latino and African American lawyers, 

they've been lawyers 10, 12 years, and they want me to be the person who interacts with the lawyers 

on the other side. Even though they're doing 90% of the work and most of the brain work and all 



42 
 

that stuff, they said, "Look, just for any continuance, or you know, scheduling something of that, 

they just drive us crazy and they're so paternalistic and all that stuff, so would you do it?" I get on 

the phone with them and like, "How's the Saints, you know, how's LSU football, et cetera, et cetera, 

NASCAR," whatever it needs to be, talking with them, and I said, "Look, we need an extra 30 days 

on this thing, and we'll give you 30 days to be able to respond to our 30 days, what do you think 

about that?" They say, "Oh sure Bill, that's not a problem whatsoever," hang up, and all the women 

are just like, "God! They would just make us go through hell to do that!" They gave me the name of 

"the white man whisperer," so whenever they have to deal with the lawyers on the other side, they 

have me do that, or deal with the old judge or something like that. So yes, white privilege. The 

profession is still overwhelmingly white and male. I mean, it's very diverse in law school in the first 

couple of years out, but in terms of the people who are out 20, 30, 40, 50 years. So, race is a very 

big part of it, and I'm aware of that. I do anti-racism trainings every three years or something like 

that, and I think I really know what I'm doing, and then three years later, I'm going, "God, I don't 

remember any of this," just fall back into the privilege that I have, and see in the world my way. I 

do believe, based on my experience with the cases, with legislation, with PR with international, 

local, state, whatever. You can't do any of this stuff if you don't at least understand that racism is a 

part of it. Not that we can overcome it by knowing what's a part of it. I mean, it's such a ridiculous 

thing with Trump and the anti-DEI stuff. I mean, we haven't really done anything with DEI, it’s not 

like it's changed our world, but anyway, people resent it, and so there's roles for a white civil rights 

lawyer, especially one that has been around for a while. And as you said, going into Haiti, the priest 

that I represented. He was convinced that he was alive because I had gone down there several times 

when he had to go to court, or going to visit him when he was in a particularly bad jail or prison, 

and he just felt that because they knew that there was somebody white from the United States who 

was paying attention and cared enough to go visit him, [they] couldn't treat him the way everybody 

else was treating him, and they kept him alive because they really wanted him dead.  

ARF: [02:00:47] Talk about using your privilege for good!  



43 
 

WQ: [02:00:52] Yeah!  

ARF: [02:00:52] Well, thanks for answering that question. My last question is, what do you 

think is the most important area of civil rights legislation today, if there is a "most important," and 

where do you see the most need for litigation and change?  

WQ: [02:01:15] I would have answered this differently a couple of months ago. Because 

there's a growing sense that the courts can't be the place where you're trying to achieve justice, 

because the courts have been so stacked with people who don't want to give justice. You know, 

we're talking here in the beginning of February, and the Trump-Musk-whirlwind has been doing so 

many things. And the legal community, which are union lawyers and public interest lawyers and of 

all kinds, are doing a really good job of trying to respond to those things and just stop them, slow 

them down enough, so that the people can get involved to do something about changing those 

things legislatively. So, I think just trying to keep our democracy in check is a really big thing. I 

think in terms of the United States, it seems to me that the people most at risk are those 10 million 

immigrants that we have in our country. The legal system is not set up to help them. They don't 

have a right to a lawyer, they can go from being picked up to being on a plane in days, and I think 

we're going to have to do a lot about that, and I don't know exactly what we do. I'm not an 

immigration specialist. I have worked with immigrant groups, immigrant laborers, and that sort of 

stuff. But that, I think, is one of the most scandalous things and most unjust things that's going on 

right now, seems to me. But on the other hand, all the other stuff they're doing is just knocking the 

foundation out of democracy itself, I think, I can't pick one thing. I would say if you had to help 

one, the group of people, the immigrants are in desperate need that they may not be here in a year or 

something, because they certainly will be hundreds of thousands if not a million less people here in 

a year. I don't know, there's plenty of work, and plenty of people who would appreciate the help. I 

know that and thank God for LDF and the other people who were standing up and doing good work 

about it.  



44 
 

ARF: [02:03:50] Well, thank you again so much for inviting us into your home and sharing 

your story with us. I really look forward to seeing the tape and getting to relive it because there's 

just so much good stuff in here. Thank you so much for sitting down for this interview. Is there 

anything else that you'd like to say for the record?  

WQ: [02:04:16] I can't think of anything now. Maybe I told stories I probably shouldn't 

have told, but! 

ARF: [02:04:22] No, no, these are great. [Laughter] 

[END OF INTERVIEW]