THINGS HAVE A WAY OF WORKING OUT
Things have a way of working out.
As I read where Charles Hamilton Houston, Howard Law School dean, in 1933, had led a NAACP legal team of Howard lawyers, that had defended a black man, George Crawford , who was accused in Loudon County, Virginia, of capital murder, at a preliminary hearing, had had the temerity to call the very Virginia state court judge who had compiled the jury list, that had unconstitutionally excluded black people as jurors: "Silence froze the courtroom as a clerk swore a judge onto a witness stand." That event that is described in ROOT AND BRANCH: CHARLES HAMILTON HOUSTON, THURGOOD MARSHAL , AND THE STRUGGLE TO END SEGREGATION (2010) by Rawn James , Jr. , p. 6, reminded me of my own federal civil rights trial in St. Louis, Missouri, with co-counsel, Elbert Walton, that had unsuccessfully challenged the federal constitutionality of the Missouri Nonpartisan Court plan.
Not only did we call a sitting Circuit Court Judge to the stand to testify and then President of the Missouri Bar, as another witness; but we also introduced the deposition testimony of retired Circuit Judge Lewis W. Clymer, the first black Circuit judge in Jackson County, Missouri, in our case in chief. Despite all of that and more, the federal judge who heard our case, ruled against our black plaintiffs in a 55-page, UNPUBLISHED OPINION!
But, like Charles Hamilton Houston, et al, Elbert Walton, jr. and I, did have this much in common with our historical legal forbears: neither group of us were paid anything by anyone for services or expenses for our public service, and status as private attorneys general, in 1933-- nor in 1997, when retired federal St. Louis Judge Filippine finally ruled against us .
One benefit of our lawsuit was that the first black Supreme Court judge in Missouri was appointed while our decision pended for two years in court. That judge, a graduate of the University of Missouri at Kansas City School of Law, (UMKC) was a student before whom I spoke in the 1980s, when I was the only black Assistant United States Attorney. He is now a St. Louis federal judge himself, after sitting several years on the Missouri Supreme Court; he is the Honorable Ronnie White. By the way, Judge Ronnie White was followed by another black Missouri Supreme Court judge, a Howard University School of Law man, ('77), one year behind me, the Hon. George W. Draper, another wise, fair jurist.
So, some things have a way of working themselves out for do -gooders like me and Elbert, as far as payment. History and equity adequately pay what mankind may often begrudge! Deferred payments do spend and may carry legal public interest.
