COUNSEL

COUNSEL FOR THE SITUATION: SHAPING THE LAW TO REALIZE AMERICA'S PROMISE (2010) by William T. Coleman, Jr. (with Donald T. Bliss) is an absorbing autobiography. Rich! It colors-in obscure crevices, creases, corners, of African American history and culture, as do slave narratives, and other personal narratives; with incidents and reflections that literally mesmerize, shock, delight, disquiet, inspire. Its shock value stuns right away. “'Someday, William, you will make a wonderful chauffeur.' My English teacher, Ms. Egge, had intended to compliment the poised oral presentation that I, one of the four tenth-graders of color at Germantown High, then one of Philadelphia's finest public high schools, had just given. “Yet somehow I didn't take it quite that way. So I answered, foolishly and from the gut, 'You'll probably end up as my driver, you [blank] white woman,' using epithets that I'd heard on the football field after an illegal block, which I am too embarrassed to repeat even to this day. “I was promptly kicked out of school. The next morning my parents arrived at the principal's office, promising to wash out my mouth with soap and teach me not to use such language—at least not in the classroom. Taken aback by their proper manner, dress, and presence, Ms. Egge quickly realized the folly of her comment. We hugged. She became a great friend, supporter, and inspiring teacher.” William Thaddeus Coleman, Jr.'s roots nourished the lawyer that he was and became, literally and figuratively, in law, politics, civil rights, his entire life. How could it ever have been otherwise? He writes: “Mother was strikingly beautiful and well read, with a knowledge of world history and a love of literature. She was always available to help with difficult homework and to enrich her children's school experience. “We shared with our parents and other Philadelphians pride in living in the birthplace of the American experiment, with its antecedents in Great Britain, France, Rome, and Greece. We also learned a lot about the allegorical history of Ethiopia, founded three thousand years ago by Menelik, the first son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, a woman of color. Menelik allegedly brought the Ark of the Covenant to Ethiopia and founded the Solomonic dynasty, of which Haile Selassie was the last reigning emperor. The young Coleman kids knew a lot more about the Queen of Sheba than about Queen Elizabeth I of England. My parents read with sadness and bitterness about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and the callous rejection by the League of Nations of Emperor Haile Selassie's passionate pleas for help.... “The Coleman children heard stories about the achievements of Hannibal, Francoise-Dominique Toussaint L'Ouverture, the Dumas (father and son), Alexander Pushkin, Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, and William Edward Burghardt DuBois, a friend of Mother's older sister. Mother introduced us to literature produced by colored Americans—Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, James Weldon Johnson—along with the German classics of Goethe, Kant, and Schiller that she so loved. Her favorite writers were Mark Twain, Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dickens, and Plutarch.” pp.7, 11-12. This small review's excisions are in no way as revealing as the much broader book's inclusions, thus far. Read it! Feast! Enjoy it, with me!