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[melancholy music]
[Gary Duncan] We thought we'd have been all right on the boat,
which we was, you know?
'Cause when the water rise, the boat gonna rise.
[wind howling]
[man] It's one continuous blow.
I'm telling you, she's a-blowin' and she's a-shakin'.
[Gary] So we still on the boat.
[man] By midnight, Betsy's overwhelming the city.
Gusts are reaching 150 miles an hour,
and all the church bells in town are tolling wildly in the wind.
[bells clanging]
[Gary] And it's just the next day that we didn't have no communication.
We couldn't get in touch with our family, and we was worrying about them.
They had been bringing dead bodies up from out of the river.
My daddy, he cried.
Everybody cried.
We were all hugging, you know, so...
And he vowed, he said, no,
he said I'm never going out there, no more of that.
He's not gonna let any of his children stay on the boats during a hurricane.
He said, "The hell with the boats."
He said he always could get another boat.
You trust God that everything'll be all right.
Guess what? You got another hurricane coming at you.
There's eight of us, four boys and four girls,
and I'm the baby, [chuckles] and, uh...
and pretty much all of them to their twenties beat me.
[chuckles]
I used to trawl.
I would trawl for shrimps.
And my brother Calvin, he was a fisherman.
I started out, I don't know,
12 years old, I guess, foolin' with Calvin, going out,
and we'd put a net in the water and we'd drag it for a couple hours.
We'd pick up and...
put the catch on the deck of the boat and we...
we'd sort it out.
Throw the bad catch away, and we'd keep the shrimps.
My daddy, he was a boat captain.
They started...
harassing us.
When the boat was on the job,
and we'd come back to the dock, we had to sleep on 'em because...
they had set one of them afire.
Anything can happen to you, you know?
You could go to jail for, back then, eye-rape,
or, you know, you-- hey, you stay away in your Black community,
because you could get--
they just could trump any kind of-- put any kind of charges on you, you know?
For anything. So we stuck to ourselves.
Hey, you know, nobody want no trouble.
We couldn't afford no trouble, you know?
'Cause my mama always said, "Trouble's easy to get into,
but hard to get out of," you know?
And a Black person back when I was coming up,
he didn't stand a chance of having his...
We didn't have no rights. We didn't have no rights.
Well, I was working.
And I was married,
and my wife just had my first child,
and I had to go get her--
she was in Charity Hospital--
to pick her up from the hospital,
and I was driving south on Highway 23.
The school was just letting out, and children...
the ones that wasn't riding the school bus, they was walking.
That's when I seen-- I just passed by the school,
and a little further out from the school,
I seen my cousin and my nephew, one of my nephews,
with four white boys standing on the side of the road.
[boys arguing indistinctly]
But what really got my attention was a couple of white fellas.
They was watching,
so I stopped.
I told Harry, I said, "Something's going on." So I backed up.
I got out of the car. I said, "What's the problem? What's wrong?"
And they was just about in tears.
"They want to fight us."
I said, "Fight y'all? What?" You know, "Why do they want to fight y'all?"
And...
Bud Landry, said,
"We don't want to fight 'em. We just wanted to know their names."
You know?
So I told him, "Well, my name is Gary."
And I touched him on his arm.
Didn't hit him, just touched him, just from talking.
And that was it.
I said, "Y'all, come on, let's go. Get in the car."
[Richard Sobol] He touched him on...
he touched one of the boys on the elbow, kind of...
"Go on home."
And the father of one of the boys
was within eyesight of this.
And he reported that Duncan had slapped his son.
I don't know what time it was.
Early part of the night, I think it was, my mama called.
She said, "They got a warrant out for your arrest. Come back home."
So I came on back home, and the next day I turned myself in.
And they had the charges on me. Cruelty to a juvenile.
[Sobol] They claimed that by touchingthe white boy, he had committed a crime.
People talk about totalitarian regimes
as being so regimented and so predictable,
and that's the nature of their oppression.
But in fact, it's the exact opposite.
The arbitrary nature of the totalitarian regime's actions
is what makes it so oppressive.
You never know when you've crossed the line.
[Gary] Perez was making them do that.
Perez made Landry file charges on me
'cause they wanted to use me for an example for the rest of the Blacks.
[William F. Buckley] Have you been very wildly misquoted?
For instance, you're quoted as having said, quote,
"Yes, the Negro is inherently immoral. Yes, I think it's the brain capacity."
Is that a misquotation?
It's not a misquotation. It's the truth.
Because I know Negroes.
We have a number of Negroes in our community,
and I know that basically, fundamentally, they are immoral.
They're un-moral. I know that to be a fact.
-I-- -[Buckley] Yes.
-Why should I try to hide it? -[Buckley] Well--
I'd be untrue to myself if I tried to deny it out of cowardice.
Of course.
And I wouldn't-- I wouldn't plead guilty to that, could I?
It's been said of you that you have a--
that "you can grudgingly admire his blunt talk.
He is honest about his bigotry."
-And-- -I'm not a bigot, son.
-I'm not a bigot at all. -[audience laughs]
Well, look, whatever you are, Judge Perez,
and I'm sure you're a great many things,
what you don't have is sovereign power over the English language.
-[audience laughs] -I am just a good American.
[indistinct chanting]
[Sobol] Leander Perez fought like no one ever had before
against desegregating the public schools.
[screams and shouts]
[dogs barking]
[Dan Rather] A year ago, newspapers throughout America
front-paged a four-column picture of the protestors.
Prominent in the picture was the rural political boss
credited with making sure the school had no students,
Leander Henry Perez.
I'm not bragging, sir,
but I said we are not surrendering our schools
to anybody, and that means anyone.
[Gary] If it wouldn't have been Perez,there wouldn't have been a case.
I know there's, in one of the old Encyclopedia Britannicas,
they had an article on that by a British scientist.
He says that the Negro child will develop
until he gets to be about 11 years of age,
and then because of the thickness of this cranium,
and the limited size of the brain area,
he stops expanding.
He goes so far, and no further.
That's a pretty good 'un. A friend of mine wrote that.
-[indistinct remark] -Yeah.
-Glad you enjoyed it. -So long.
[man] I definitely think that he could be considered
as one of the natural resources of the parish.
[Dan Rather] Plaquemines Parishlies on both sides
of the mile-wide Mississippi,
on rich, marshy soil that has over the centuries
washed down the 2,350 miles of twisting river
to push its delta even farther into the Gulf of Mexico.
In the years when Leander Perez was growing up,
one of 13 children of a sugar and rice planter,
the flat prairie, the swamps and bayous of Plaquemines Parish
were the source of its chief industry, the trapping of muskrats.
Today all that has changed.
Oil, discovered in 1928,
has altered both the parish and Perez,
and neither have been the same since.
As the money began to roll in,
Leander Perez, through shrewd manipulation in the state legislature,
managed to siphon off a good deal of it for the parish.
There is only one Judge Perez. Let's not kid ourself.
There is only one Judge Perez,
and as I said, that man was a gift from God to us.
[man] To me, Judge Perez is a very egotistical sort of character.
He's arrogant, generally.
Self-righteous, but I think most of the time completely wrong.
Everybody in that parish better play ball with Leander Perez.
One way or another. They better.
'Cause there's too many ways that he can make it very obnoxious.
It is my personal opinion that...
Mr. Perez, over a period of years, has established a tighter dynasty,
and has a better setup, than Mr. Khrushchev has.
[Dan Rather] You now have as your enemies, your opponents,
at least the last four presidents of the United States,
President Kennedy, President Eisenhower,
President Truman, President Roosevelt.
The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren,
the other justices of the Supreme Court, the late Pope John.
You also have as your enemies, your sworn opponents,
such institutions as the United States government,
parts, at least, of the Roman Catholic Church,
the Departments of Justice, Interior,
to some extent the Department of Defense,
the United States Navy, United Nations.
This is a formidable list.
[Perez] What is the future of our country?
Why the communist conspiracy to deprive our white youth
of educational opportunities?
Does Mr. Kennedy see that, or does he give a damn?
-[man] No! -Did President Eisenhower see it,
surrounded by his Zionist advisors, Max Rabinowitz?
Goldfein and company?
Did Harry Truman see it? No.
[Gary] Well, he was a dictatorship. Perez was a dictatorship.
He wasn't elected into office. He took that position.
Then everybody called him a judge.
Oh, yeah. He was the man. He was in charge.
He ran this parish.
And at one time he was a judge. Yeah.
[Robert Collins] He didn't have any problem with Black folks
living in his parish as long as they were agricultural workers,
as long as they were working on farms,
as long as they were domestic servants.
He hated Jews for the same reason,
not only because they were active in the civil rights movement.
They didn't really fit into his view
of white Protestant family life
in white Protestant America.
Let's think about what Gary Duncan did.
He's attempting to break up a fight,
and he puts his hand on this white man.
He didn't punch this man.
He didn't engage in the fight. He's attempting to break up the fight.
That's illegal?
Under no circumstances are you supposed to see yourself
as being equal to this white man.
And, in fact, we will charge you legally
for this failure to understand the nature of your existence.
You know, and I thank God that I had parents that I had.
'Cause me, I probably would have just run on up there and pled guilty,
figure I'd pay a fine and go on about my business, you know?
He could have gone home that night, but he chose not to.
Uh...
I don't think there's one in a hundred people that would do that,
make that choice.
The guy is of steel about his rights,
and justice and what's fair, and...
and he still is.
[Gary] F.J. and Wilbur, the policemen,
stopped me and asked me what happened,
and they told me to get in the police car.
They brought me back to the scene.
That's where the four white boys were standing there, and...
one of them said I hit him.
And the rest of them didn't say anything.
They didn't. You know, that I didn't do anything.
Wilbur and FJ said, "Well, hey,
it don't matter much what any of them say because I know if he hit him,
we'll be able to tell."
They let me go,
and so I came home and I got my wife out of the hospital,
and my mama called me and said, "They got a warrant out for your arrest."
So I came on back and I turned myself in.
And they had me charged with cruelty to a juvenile.
I went and had an interview with Mr. Sobol,
and we talked, and he told me when I go to court
to plead not guilty, and that's what I did.
They had evidence, but they couldn't charge me
with cruelty to a juvenile.
Which you can't be without having authority over the child.
So they dropped the charge.
They let me go, but by the time I got home,
the police, FJ and Wilbur, were sitting at my house
waiting for me, to take me back to jail
to charge me with assault and battery.
Then I realized they was after me.
[Lolis Eric Elie] Any time white people would decide
that what you were doing was improper, you could be arrested for it.
And you see that in the Gary Duncan case.
What is impossible to enumerate is all the billions of times
when Black people were harassed for absolutely no reason
other than the fact that they were Black.
Or perhaps because white people needed to remind them that they were Black.
[Armand Derfner] Anything that put a Black person
out of the normal line of submissiveness
was a civil rights or Constitutional case. It became that.
Because here's the thing: If a Black person got out of line,
then they would often be arrested.
And they'd be arrested on some bogus charge.
I remember I was in...
in my office in Jackson, and...
somebody was arrested,
and I asked, I called the police station or whoever,
and I asked what the charge was,
and the charge was "using florid language."
Okay. Or, um...
I was representing somebody in Cleveland, Mississippi, once.
It was a Black person wearing a suit,
which was pretty suspicious to begin with,
wearing eyeglasses-- that was also suspicious.
And so they just arrested him.
Just to show people who's in charge.
The essence of the Southern system in those days was total control.
It was a totalitarian nation.
[indistinct shouting]
It was really viewed as a separate nation.
It was a totalitarian nation
in which total control was essential.
Control of Black people and white people.
So, if a white person thought differently,
they'd find the law on them, too.
In Gary Duncan's case, I don't know what he had done before,
but if he had been in marches, he's a marked man.
If he hadn't been, well, then he got to be a marked man that day.
And that also means that ca--
anything that involved him after that,
24 hours a day, seven days a week,
was a civil rights case.
Because a civil rights case
is one where something bad is gonna happen to you
out of proportion to or not related to anything you actually did.
So it was the white, quote, "power structure,"
whatever you want to call it, the white system, governmental system,
they were the ones who created civil rights cases
by what they did.
[chair scrapes]
[gavel banging]
[judge] Do you recall an incident that occurred on October 18th?
[Herman Landry] Well,
me and Wayne and this other boy, we was coming out of school,
and we got out on the road.
These two other boys was on the other side of the road.
We knew one of them had got in a fight at school,
and we asked him what happened, and he was telling us.
Then that boy right over there stopped in his car,
and he backed up, and he got out of his car
and he asked us what was going on, and we told him nothing.
We were just asking these boys their name.
He said, "You want to know mine?"
[Wayne Scarabin] And the two boys said we was lying.
[crowd murmurs]
So Gary Duncan, he asked us if we wanted to know his name.
And he had his name on his shirt.
He says, "Can you read?"
Herman told him yes.
And he said, "You still want to know my name?"
Herman said yes.
He told Herman he was a smart little punk.
[Herman] Then he told us he was gonna beat us all up.
And then I told that other boy, I said, "He thinks he's tough."
-That's when he slapped me. -[crowd murmurs]
[Darryl Bubrig] Was it a hard slap?
[Wayne] Pretty hard, yes.
[Bubrig] Wayne, do you know why the defendant, Gary Duncan, stopped?
[Wayne] I guess he thought we was trying to jump the boys or something.
-[crowd murmurs] -[gavel bangs]
[Gary] Mama, she asked me, she said, "Did you hit him?"
I said, "No. All I done was touch him on his arm.
I touched him on his arm. I didn't hit him. I touched him."
And she said, "Well, hey."
She said, "I'll walk the streets buck naked
before I see you spend one day in jail."
[Sobol] It was his mother that didn't want him to plead guilty
and pay a fine and have a criminal record
and let them get away with this.
She was the driving force.
When they sat down in my little room there, she did the talking.
I said, "What can I do for you?"
And she answered.
And Gary was right there.
I was working with the law firm Collins, Douglas & Elie,
which is the most important firm in civil rights law in Louisiana.
It was important that out-of-state lawyers
come to handle civil rights cases
because no lawyer in Louisiana
would handle civil rights cases.
He didn't have no license to practice law in the state of Louisiana,
so he was working through Collins, Douglas & Elie's office.
They was involved
in civil rights themselves, you know.
The right of the Black people.
[Lolis Elie] It was difficult for African-Americans to get lawyers
in a civil rights matter,
and of course in Plaquemines Parish to get anyone
to be involved in any case in opposition to Leander Perez
was a very dangerous thing.
[Lolis Eric Elie] My father and Bob Collins and Nils Douglas
accepted the responsibility of doing this work, in part because
so few other people were willing and able to do it.
My father grew up in a part of town called Nigger Town.
When you asked him where he was from,
he'd make a point of saying he was from Nigger Town.
It was important to him
that you understood the full meaning of that,
you understood that this man who went to law school
and tried these important cases
was from a part of town called Nigger Town.
[New Orleans jazz music plays]
When you talk about those people.
when you talked about niggers, you gotta realize
sometimes niggers go to Loyola Law School.
Sometimes niggers do great things.
[Lolis Elie] At what point, or when, is it possible
for white people to look at Black people as being human beings?
I don't mean an individual white person.
I mean as a whole.
I know not in my lifetime.
Let's face it.
You know, this is the 20th century.
We're talking about a people that has been on this continent
for over 400 years.
[New Orleans jazz music continues]
[Lolis Eric Elie] When people like Richard Sobol came here,
it allowed lawyers like Collins, Douglas & Elie to have some assistance.
Suddenly the forces of civil rights had allies.
[music fades]
Sobol, Richard Sobol, who had come to New Orleans
from the law firm of Arnold, Fortas & Porter,
and I think it would be fair to say that Sobol was something of a genius.
[Sobol] I'm outside. I'm gonna wave a cab down,
and down the street, a cab stops.
I look in. It's Fortas.
He said, "Get in."
I said, "Well, this is very nice."
I had never been alone with him after a year working there.
You had to make an appointment to see him,
and lots of times the appointment was denied. You couldn't see him.
And here I am sitting next to him, and I'm feeling, "This is great."
But on the way, he said, "What do you do at the firm?"
And I told him...
I told him, and he...
He said, "Well, where are you going now?
And I said...
proudly, because I'm talking to a guy who really is big-time
in good cause work,
I said, "I'm going...
It's my vacation.
It starts today,
and I'm gonna go down to Louisiana
to work on civil rights cases."
He said, "Well, I don't think you should go.
I think you should get out of the cab
and go inside and say you've changed your mind.
If you don't need a vacation, then we don't want to give you one."
Abe Fortas had just handled a very famous case in the Supreme Court
involving the right to counsel in state court criminal proceedings.
And I kinda got the mistaken, naive idea
there was gonna be a lot of that kind of thing at the law firm.
[Fortas] At the time of Gideon, I felt that every man--
the rich, the poor, and the poor as well as the rich,
was entitled to the benefit of counsel
when he was defending himself
against prosecution by the mighty forces of the state.
I thought, if this guy does that, I want to be in this firm.
And it didn't take more than...
a couple of weeks to realize that
they don't just sit around doing this good work.
This is a firm in the business of making money.
And I learned that the Arnold
of Arnold, Fortas & Porter
wouldn't allow the employment of Black secretaries.
Which, this horrified me. I mean, I couldn't hardly believe it.
But I said, okay, well, he's old, and he's gonna be gone soon--
which was true, he was old, and he did get gone.
And then there was Paul Porter,
who was a drunk.
So that leaves Fortas.
I asked him where he was going.
And he said
he's going to see Lyndon Johnson
about an appointment to the Supreme Court.
So I said, "Jesus."
Gave it a lot of thought, and I said, well, "Who do I want to be?"
And if necessary,
we must be willing to fill up the jails
all over the state of Georgia.
-[demonstrators singing] -[policeman] C'mon, get up!
[protesters] ♪ Turn me round ♪
♪ Turn me round, turn me round ♪
♪ Keep on a-walkin'... ♪
1964, two friends of mine,
colleagues at Arnold, Fortas & Porter,
young men like myself, told me about LCDC,
the Lawyer's Constitutional Defense Committee,
which was sending lawyers in the summer to the South,
to help with the arrests that essentially were resulting
from all the civil rights activity that was taking place.
I was told that I was going to be included, but I didn't know where.
And a letter came that said, "You're assigned to New Orleans, Louisiana."
Which was a big disappointment to me
because I wanted to go to Selma, Alabama,
or Jackson, Mississippi, or someplace that I had heard of,
where things were happening.
Of course, things were happening here, I just didn't know it.
[Bob Dylan] ♪ Far between sundown's finish ♪
[Sobol] That letter changed my life.
♪ And midnight's broken toll ♪
♪ We ducked inside the doorway As thunder went crashing ♪
♪ As the majestic bells of bolts ♪
[Sobol] I'd been there for eight days,
and I had gotten relief in the school desegregation case
in the face of the worst judge in the South.
And that was just one of several things I did during three weeks.
♪ Flashing for the warriors ♪
♪ Whose strength is not to fight ♪
♪ Flashing for the refugees ♪
[Sobol] I could just see the impact I could have.
♪ And for each and every underdog soldier in the night ♪
[Lolis Eric Elie] When you have few Black lawyers,
and even fewer Black lawyers willing to take these cases,
so it was crucial that folks came in and were serious.
The South was the battleground for the nation at that point,
and so it was, in a sense, fashionable for a lawyer
to come here for a couple of weeks or a couple of months.
A lot of the lawyers who were being sent down by LCDC
were also enjoying the life in New Orleans,
and bringing their wives and different things.
It seemed to me a little bit of a messy situation
in that I came away with the firm idea
that what they need is permanent lawyers down there.
and not people passing through.
While I cannot say why those lawyers would not stay longer or do more,
they absolutely had their other responsibilities--
for the people who stayed, for the people who were serious,
for the people who took this work to heart,
my father had infinite respect for them,
Richard Sobol perhaps chief among them
because he stayed.
It's one thing to say, "I'm gonna go down there and help those poor people,"
as opposed to actually taking the fight to heart
and realizing that this is an American struggle,
and not merely a Southern struggle.
♪ The chimes of freedom flashing ♪
[Angela Davis] I have an ambivalent relationship to the term "allies."
Because when it comes to...
challenging racism,
I think white people should know that they have
as much of a stake in purging this society of racism...
[audience clapping]
...as people who are the immediate targets.
[male reporter] Why do you want to go to this school?
[young girl] Well, I feel that I have a chance too,
to have an education... [sniffles]
...a good education.
And not allowed to stare at me.
And I'm goin' back, if I have-- they'll have to kill me.
I'm... I'm...
I'll die for my freedom.
[jazz playing]
[Sobol] He had been charged with simple battery.
We were giving, explicitly, notice by Judge Leon
that he could just plead to that,
he mentioned a small fine,
not the maximum fine in the statute,
and you could walk out of here today.
And uh, he and his mother didn't want to do that.
Which is pretty extraordinary, right there.
Because, to this day, all around the country...
people are having to plead guilty to things
they don't feel they're guilty about.
It's a crime.
[jazz blues continues]
The judge said to the lawyer, me,
"Anything else you want to add?"
And I will say, "Yes. I want to add a demand
for trial by jury."
And, uh, he kind of scoffed and said,
"I'm gonna deny that.
Let's proceed."
And that day...
[Sobol] We didn't just raise civil rights issues in cases...
...we proceeded.
We represent-- like any lawyer,
raised every issue we possibly could to help your client.
One of them was the, uh, Louisiana jury system at the time,
which did not allow for juries in any case
unless the punishment was more than two years.
So he was going to be tried before this judge
that Perez had appointed.
[court spectators chattering]
[gavel bangs]
[Sobol] Bert, how old are you?
[Bert] Fourteen.
And what school do you go to?
Boothville-Venice High.
When did you enter that school?
About the week the schools opened.
Do you recall an incident on October 18th, 1966,
involving the defendant, Mr. Duncan, and some boys on Route 23?
Yes, sir.
And me and my friend, we was walkin' home.
Who's your friend?
Bernard Ste. Ann.
Was there any reason to think they wanted to fight?
The way they was walkin' like.
You know, they-- they came on the side of the road where we was on.
They hollered at us, "What are y'all names?"
We kept walkin'. We didn't pay no attention to them.
They got in front of us, and they said,
"We asked you yo' names."
I said, "None of yo' business what my name is."
And that's when Gary saw we're standin' up there, backed up...
-Bernard. -...and got out of the car.
[Sobol] You stated that they wanted to fight?
Yes, sir.
And what made you think they wanted to fight?
Because... the way they was talking,
sayin', "Yo' name is Bert?"
And makin' fun of us.
Had you been in a fight in school with these boys,
or any of these boys who were on the road?
I had one that day, is all.
-You had a fight that day? -Yes, sir.
A boy hit me. He wanted to jump me in the bathroom.
Were these some of the same boys?
Yes, sir. Herman Landry and Wayne Scarabin, they were in there.
Gary said, "What's wrong, Bert?"
And I said, "These boys. They want to fight."
He said, "Why do all y'all want to fight, boy?"
And Herman Landry said, "We just want to know his name."
And Gary said, "Well, best ought for you just to go on home."
And he touch him on the elbow right there.
[Sobol] Touched him on the elbow?
[Bert] We got in the car and pulled off.
And Herman Landry said, "My people can put you in jail for that."
-[courtroom spectators chattering] -[gavel banging]
[Sobol] Did it look to you like Landry had been hurt?
[Bert] No, sir.
[Sobol] Did it look to you as though Gary was trying to hit him?
No.
[prosecutor] Could you see all of the motions of his hands?
[Bert] No, sir.
I saw when he touched him on the arm, that's all.
That's the only time he raised his hand.
[prosecutor] In other words, you're sittin' in a car,
and a man has his back to the car,
and you could see exactly how he handled himself,
through the man's back?
[Bert] I could see from the side, yes.
[prosecutor] And you could see through the man?
[Bert] I could see from the side of him.
[prosecutor] I have no further questions.
My mama, she wanted to speak her mind,
And Mr. Sobol-- I remember Mr. Sobol sayin',
"Well, I can't put you on the witness stand."
'Cause she had too much to say.
[prosecutor] Did you threaten the four white boys
that were on the side of the road?
[Gary] No.
[prosecutor] In other words, those boys were lyin' when they took the stand?
[Gary] They were lyin' when they said I threatened them,
and that I was meanin' to hurt the boy when I touched him on the arm.
If I wanted to hurt him, I could have hurt him.
[prosecutor] Uh-huh. And did he consent to your touchin' him on the arm?
[Gary] Did he consent?
[prosecutor] Did he say, "Go ahead and hit me?"
[Gary] No.
[prosecutor] And did you have contact with him in any way?
[Gary] Yes, I had contact with him.
I touched him with my hand.
[spectators chatter]
I think I made a pretty good case of...
why they hadn't carried their burden of proof.
But Judge Leon had his, uh, instructions,
and he wasn't gonna mess with Perez.
And we lost the case. We lost the case.
It was all fixed.
And so, I was just surprised-- I don't know, it's kind of silly.
I was...
I had a little bit of surprise about it,
although when I stopped to think, "What the hell did I expect?"
[blues music playing]
[Gary] I felt like I coulda just went through the floor.
You know? I mean... I would...
You know, I--
I don't know how I felt...
because...
And I looked around, and...
I seen...
I was seein' my mom, and my sisters, and everybody cryin'.
It was cryin', and uh...
I just felt like I was goin' through the floor
in that courthouse, you know? I said, damn. Yeah.
Oh, God, you know, I'm just not--
You know, what am I gon' do now, you know?
Mister Sobol, uh--
He told me, he said, uh,
"Don't worry about it," he say.
"We gonna, uh, we gonna get you outta here," he said.
"I got everything. We gonna appeal it."
[Lolis Eric Elie] Merely being Black in this country
is a political act.
Walking down the street as a Black person
subjects you to a kind of political scrutiny
that has nothing to do with your mission of going to buy a loaf of bread,
or even, for that matter, going to rob a liquor store.
Whatever it is you're doing has a kind of racial politics embedded in it.
And to understand what Gary Duncan did in the absence of race,
in the absence of an understanding of the civil rights movement of that era,
is to fundamentally misinterpret the nature of his arrest and trial.
The reason Gary Duncan is such an exceptional human being
is that his position was, "I have done nothing wrong,
yet I have been arrested and tried for it."
And there is, of course, the shame of this Land of the Free
boasting the largest prison population on the planet,
of which the descendants of the enslaved
make up the largest share."
There were a whole lot more people who were not like Gary Duncan
than there were people who were like him.
And that's why this case is so crucial.
The question: What happens when someone actually stands forward
to assert these rights?
And Leander Perez's example is that, well, when that happens,
we remind them that those rights do not pertain to him.
And Richard Sobol, of course, was saying, "Yes, they do."
According to the Constitution and the Amendments
and the recently-passed Civil Rights Act,
they do indeed pertain as much to Gary Duncan
as to anybody else in the United States of America.
[Sobol] The judge would sentence Duncan to prison.
Actually, 60 days in prison, um, and a fine.
I was intent on appealing, particularly on the jury issue.
He presented the case to the state of Louisiana,
Supreme Court, and they refused it.
[Sobol] Each time we lost a round of the case,
the motions, the trial, the appeal,
Duncan was rearrested, put in prison overnight.
And each time, I had to go down and get an order
to get him out of prison while the case was pending.
I had come to the courthouse in Plaquemines Parish,
to get the bond that was already in effect extended.
I called Judge Leon first.
I said, "Judge Leon, I want to present to you
an order for a stay pending appeal."
And I said, "When can I come?"
He said, "Well, how 'bout in two hours?"
He was waiting for me. He said, "What do you want me to sign?"
I gave him the piece of paper, he looked at it, he signed it,
he said, "There you are." And so I'm leaving his office,
easy as pie, "Thank you, judge."
And six steps away,
there's a sheriff there...
and behind him was Leander Perez.
To make sure the sheriff did the job.
They asked me if I was Sobol, and I said yes.
And he said, "You're under arrest."
And I was mystified. I didn't know what in the world--
I'd been in the court, I'd gotten stays millions of times.
Why are they arresting me?
I don't know if it was 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock in the day,
and they asked, "What y'all-- What's wrong with your--"
He said, "We're waitin'." I'm waitin' for my lawyer. I gotta see my--
He said, "Man, your lawyer locked up in jail back there!"
I was afraid 'cause I, uh...
I didn't want to be in a jail overnight.
They put him in jail. They put him in jail.
For practicing law without a license.
[Sobol] I was in the jail with the white prisoners,
and some guy started telling me the story about another LCDC lawyer--
I knew this LCDC lawyer--
in Alabama, who had been arrested for the same reason.
I got one phone call, and I made it to my colleagues in New Orleans,
and before I knew it, there was Juno.
Big as life.
[Gary] Juno came down.
And he raised some hell up in that--
You could hear him hollerin' all through that--
the courthouse, man, you know, he say,
"We gonna sue every damn body in here,
from the trusty on up."
I'm in front of the Plaquemines Parish Jailhouse,
it's gettin' dark, and I said, "Look, if you'll bend down
and look under the car, and see that there's no devices visible..."
They didn't take my belt. As I recall, they took his belt away
when they put him in jail, which is standard procedure with prisoners.
they didn't take my belt away.
And the thing is, I was never scared.
I just-- If it was Plaquemines Parish, I might have been scared.
Because if I went anywhere, somebody in the office
always knew where I was.
And the rule was, if somebody--
and this dates back to the killing
of the three civil rights workers in Neshoba County--
but the rule was, if you didn't know where somebody was,
and they didn't turn up for say, an hour,
you called the FBI right away.
It showed how dangerous it was.
I drove to Neshoba County a few times,
and I remember knowing, and being told
that from the moment I entered the county
till the time I left, the police and the sheriffs also knew
exactly where I was, who I was, and what I was doing.
We came to this country after a series of escapes.
My mother and father escaped from Poland
to France in the 1930s on forged Swedish passports,
and then we left Paris the night that Hitler came in.
We escaped on the last train out of Paris.
And I remember asking my mother one time
while I was in Mississippi, to say,
"Well, Ma, when you were escaping across Europe,
were you scared?"
She said, "Scared? Every minute of every day!
But what difference does that make?
You don't have a choice."
I guess I theoretically had a choice.
In the most turbulent times-- not always--
we went with a convoy of three vehicles:
a car in front, with guns,
me in the middle,
and a car behind us with guns.
Because we knew there was a chance
that there'd be guns waiting for us somewhere along the way.
Yeah, I think I did a wonderful thing.
I really-- I'm proud, and happy, and it's a high point of my life.
But it's not so courageous.
We were outsiders, and so it was easy enough
'cause you know, I could have gotten on a plane any time, and moved.
Even if I felt shielded from some of the risks,
I knew that was not true of the people...
of the people who lived there, especially Black, but also white.
The people with whom and for whom we worked,
they took real risks.
[jazz music playing]
[Robert Collins] My father used to tell a story of the case
that he was handling with his law partner, Lolis Elie,
over in rural Alabama.,
They were driving back to New Orleans.
The car started to overheat on the road.
Dad said, "We probably should pull over into a gas station
and see if we can get some help."
Lolis said, "Bob, after we won that case,
the people over there look so angry at us,
I think it's really dangerous to try and pull over.
I think people are following us.
We're just gonna take our chances
and drive all the way home to Louisiana in the overheated car."
[jazz music playing]
[Collins] It was very dangerous. Every civil rights lawyer
practicing in the South during those days
was at risk, white or Black.
Even if you're a white lawyer,
once you walk into a courtroom with a Black lawyer,
you're going to be seen as a troublemaker just like them.
[Lolis Eric Elie] A friend of mine, he asked my father,
"Well, you know, if the police arrest you,
what should you say, what should you do?"
My father said, "You should say, 'Yes, sir, officer.'"
They meant it as kind of a joke, but the underlying truth was there,
which is that, in the context of that interaction with a police officer,
you have no civil rights.
Your best bet is to submit in that circumstance,
and attempt to fight it later, where you can then call a lawyer.
My father would often refer to the lesson from the Dred Scott case,
which is, "A Black man has no rights
that a white man is bound to respect."
It does not say that a Black man has no rights,
it says that a Black man has no rights that a white man is bound to respect.
It has now become somewhat fashionable
for Black men to talk about having "The Talk" with their sons,
or having had The Talk with their fathers.
I never remember having "The Talk."
We were having that talk all the time.
It was the atmosphere.
How often do you talk to your parents about humidity?
Well, it's always there.
[Sobol] I could tell you every dirty little thing they did,
but each time, it wound up with Gary going to jail.
[Gary] I was working offshore.
[Randy Newman] ♪ What has happened down here ♪
♪ The wind has changed ♪
[Gary] And they call our Danny, told him to send me in.
♪ Clouds roll in from the North And it started to rain ♪
[Gary] They're, uh...
♪ It rained real hard. It rained for a real long time ♪
They said, uh...
♪ Six feet of water in the streets of Evangeline ♪
that they was comin' to take me to jail.
So... I said well,
I'm not goin' to jail.
I'm tired.
So, uh...
we're opening up the can.
They came there 'bout an hour later, and Calvin said, "Well, he's inside."
They said, "Well, we come to take him to jail."
"He say he not goin' to jail, so y'all have to wait,
but y'all not comin' in my house."
The Sheriff Department kep' callin'.
"Hey, where that nigger's at? Where that nigger is at?"
So...
♪ They're tryin' to wash us away ♪
That night I... gave up.
I said, Well, you know, I'm not going-- I was ready to die.
I want to say, "Well, y'all not gon' handcuff me."
I got in the car.
Got out of the car, and, uh, Wilbur and them just said...
"Man," he say, "I don't know what they gonna do to you."
He said, "We never experienced nothin' like this."
He said, "We've took people that have killed people,
and they never did this."
They was holdin' the ferry up. It was in the early mornin', now.
'Bout 3:00 in the mornin'.
And, uh,
had the ferry runnin' just to take me across the river.
So when we get across the river, the deal was,
I was gonna get out of F.J. and Wilbur's car
and get in with the warden.
Wilbur say, "I don't know what they gonna do with you,"
he said, "but we gonna lock you up."
He said, "I know we gon' lock you, but after that, I'm not responsible."
I really figured their intention was onto killin' me.
I said, well, hey, to myself, I say if somethin' gonna happen,
I'm gonna die defending myself.
♪ Louisiana ♪
[John F. Kennedy] Your children can't have the chance
to develop whatever talents they have.
The only way that they're going to get their rights
is to go in the street and demonstrate.
♪ Louisiana ♪
[girl] They'll have to kill me. I'll die for my freedom.
♪ They're tryin' to wash us away ♪
♪ Louisiana ♪
[Lolis Eric Elie] Claude McKay wrote: "If we must die,
let it not be like hogs pinned in an inglorious spot."
In other words, we're gonna fight like men.
♪ They're tryin' to wash us away ♪
[Derfner] We all think, well, you have a right to a trial by jury.
The Bill of Rights gives you a right to a jury trial,
but for many years,
that only applied to the Federal Government,
and it didn't apply to the States.
I could never quite understand, myself,
why applying the Bill of Rights,
which we think is our fundamental American liberty--
why applying it to the States is such a crazy idea.
I mean, it seems to me that the opposite is the crazy idea.
We have 51 legal systems in this country.
There's one legal system for Federal courts,
and there's 50 separate legal systems for the State courts.
Only lawyers and judges could figure out some way to make that logical.
You still read in Supreme Court cases today,
"Oh, this is trenching on the states' prerogatives."
You know, the states' prerogatives, states' rights.
We, more than, I think, any other country in the world,
have decided that that the states
retain some great autonomy or power--
"States' rights," you know?
States' rights has usually been, in our history,
a cover for states doing bad things.
Taking the right to jury trial,
until the Gary Duncan case came along,
the rule was, if you're charged in a federal court,
you have a right to a jury trial,
and if you're charged in a state court, you do or you don't
depending on whatever the state wants to do,
all because of the idiot notion we have
that the states are one world
and the federal government is some different planet.
[Sobol] And then it went to Supreme Court.
They're very strict about it.
The don't want to be just a regular appellate court.
They're the final court.
And so, I was expecting it would take a long time, actually.
But to my surprise, they granted it quickly.
I went to the Supreme Court Library in New Orleans,
which was a place I liked to go a lot because it was quiet,
and I worked on that almost constantly.
[Dixieland jazz music playing]
[Sobol] I wrote my head off, and so did others,
mostly Nils Douglas.
We would talk late into the night
in the bar of a Black hotel nearby.
We were, like in the trenches, is how we felt.
I used to run with Nils. We were both runners at the time,
and we'd run together to his house.
We'd run next to each other.
And we'd talk, going out.
And we got to his house, he'd say, "Come on.
Come on in, Bessie's going to want to feed you."
First time I ever flew in a plane, a jet!
First time I ever left out of the State of Louisiana.
So...
Me and my wife-- I felt pretty good, you know?
And I met Mr. Sobol and his wife, and his two kids,
and we went to the Supreme Court,
and that was very interesting,
seein' the nine justices, you know?
[Derfner] In the Gary Duncan case, Sobol was arguing
that the right to a jury trial applies to cases in state court
just as much as it does in federal court.
And that was revolutionary, believe it or not.
[Chief Justice Earl Warren] Number 410.
Gary Duncan, appellant, versus Louisiana.
Mr. Sobol?
I was, uh, 29.
[Sobol] Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court,
this case is here on appeal from the Supreme Court of Louisiana,
and it raises the issue that was to a large extent assumed
in the case immediately preceding--
namely, whether the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment
secures the right to trial by jury in state criminal proceedings.
That category includes such serious crimes
as aggravated battery resulting from a breach of the peace,
which is punishable by 10 years,
simple battery, the crime in this case, punishable by two years,
and aggravated assault, punishable by two years.
[Earl Warren] What did you say about ten years?
Is it possible it would be possible
to send a man to jail for ten years without a jury trial?
Yes, sir. There was no right to trial by jury under Louisiana law
on the charge against the appellant.
But notwithstanding...
It was a friendly Supreme Court.
And, uh...
not that I think Fortas would give us any break,
but the Supreme Court had been recognizing
one of these rights after another.
There was a period there that we didn't, uh--
"we," I mean the civil rights advocates,
didn't lose a single case.
[Dorothy Wolbrette] The test under due process is whether a jury
is essential to a fair trial.
Contrary to appellants' arguments, recent decisions of this court--
[Warren] What kind of trials would that be, Miss Wolbrette?
For a jury trial that's essential to a fair trial?
[Dorothy Wolbrette] What kind of trial would it be? Oh, it's--
[Warren] You say it's only-- it's only applicable to...
to, uh... to cases where a fair trial would be... would, uh...
-[Wolbrette] No, no, no, I'm saying-- -...require a jury.
No, sir, I'm saying that the only test under due process
is whether, uh, a jury trial is essential to a fair trial.
[Warren] When would that be?
[Wolbrette] Oh, it-- you mean in-- in any--
I-I don't think it would be necessary in any case,
as far as a fair trial is concerned.
I believe that a judge certainly can try any defendant fairly.
There is no rational basis for declaring that a judge cannot dispense justice
with the same fairness and impartiality
which could be expected of a jury acting under a judge's instructions,
both as to the law and the facts...
-Certainly it cannot be-- -[Stewart] We're not talking about...
dispensing justice as a generality, we're talking about the particular
function that a jury has in finding the facts
that 12 of a defendant's peers
are perhaps better equipped as fact finders than a single judge.
[Fortas] Isn't there something in the Magna Carta about juries?
[Wolbrette laughs] Your Honor,
Magna Carta did not guarantee jury trial to anybody.
-[Fortas] I think I have a very--
pretty-pretty good idea what the Magna Carta says.
-[Wolbrette] The English tradition of the general right of jury trial...
[Fortas] Yes, ma'am, that does indicate that at least there were some old fellas,
uh, in the 13th century who thought that the jury
was an important institution in a man's search for freedom and fairness--
[Wolbrette] It's valuable! We don't deny!
They just laughed.
Laughed them and Perez right on out of there, you know?
It was just the most remarkable thing, and people were looking around,
and I'm looking back at Mike.
It was a comical moment, for me certainly,
and for I think everybody.
It was kind of tittering.
[Sobol] We won in the Supreme Court.
What's now a very famous decision called Duncan against Louisiana
ruled that the right to trial by jury does apply in state courts.
[Gary] Mr. Sobol called me on the phone
and told me about the case, and that we won the case.
We had the right for the six-man jury.
I feel good about it. You know?
I can hold my head up, stick my chest out. You know?
Duncan vs. Louisiana was a case
that could have come along anywhere, in any state.
It was part of a process that was going on throughout the country.
Sobol vs. Perez was...
a case about bringing the Constitution to play
in the Deep South states,
and in overthrowing complete white supremacy,
that sort of thing.
[Sobol] I filed suit against Perez
right after I was arrested in the first place.
Even by Leander Perez's standards,
that was a pretty outrageous act.
[Collins] If he went and arrested him himself,
he wanted the symbolism and the press to cover it.
That was just the ultimate personification
of his white supremacy, his anti-Semitism,
his hatred of Jews, hatred of Blacks.
That was as much trying to neutralize Richard Sobol as a warning
to other lawyers to "stay out of my parish
if you're going to challenge the natural order of things,
and the natural order of things is whatever I say it is."
[vocalist] ♪ Fear no danger! Shun no labor! ♪
♪ Lift up rifle, pike, and saber! ♪
-♪ To arms! ♪ -♪ To arms! ♪
♪ To arms in Dixie! ♪
♪ Shoulder pressing Close to shoulder... ♪
Perez was enough Klan himself.
You know, he didn't have to put no sheet on, he--
he got on national television and said,
you know, if the Federal Government
would, uh, send people down here,
or Martin Luther King would come down, what he would do,
or the NAACP, what he was going to do.
He had put fences around Fort St. Philip on the east bank of the river.
He thought, "Hey, those niggers come down here, we gonna take 'em,
put 'em over there, let the snakes and the mosquitoes eat 'em up."
-♪ To arms! ♪ -♪ To arms! ♪
♪ And conquer peace For Dixie! ♪
[newsman] The only way to reach Fort St. Philip is by boat, helicopter,
or on foot through the swamps, if you don't mind the snakes.
[man] Perez built a jail on an alligator-infested island
in the middle of the Mississippi River, where he was going to put anybody
involved with civil rights activities. [chuckles]
[Perez] We are building strong fences around it, which--
the top of which will be electrified, so as to prevent any attempt at escapes.
[Sobol] Being arrested was one thing,
but I didn't want to spend the night on that island.
[newsman] Plans call for putting the demonstrators
in the old powder magazines beneath the concrete gun emplacements.
No snakes were in evidence, but Perez says they're there,
and the the mosquitoes are almost a year-round problem.
How many people do you think you could accommodate in here?
How many could you incarcerate?
Well, now, that depends on how many people come into Plaquemines Parish
to try and break down our local government and cause trouble.
There's no limit in number.
If they choose to come in tens and twenties, we'll take care of them.
-What about--? -If they choose to come in hundreds...
we'll pack 'em in here just the same.
[newsman] There's never been a racial demonstration
in Perez's Plaquemines Parish, but if they come, officials are ready.
Two cattle boats are even now standing by at Fort Jackson across the river
ready to haul the demonstrators to the Fort St. Philip stockade.
It was a very persuasive thing,
but not-- not so persuasive that...
I didn't come.
[Derfner] When I was growing up, everybody that I knew
was in favor of civil rights.
When I was a kid, I knew that
Jackie Robinson was good, and the South was bad,
except Alabama, which was worse.
[Rabbi Prinz] I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin
under the Hitler regime.
I learned many things.
The most important thing that I learned in my life
is that bigotry and hatred
are not the most urgent problems.
The most shameful and the most tragic problem
is silence.
Jews who survived the Holocaust,
and close descendants of them
I think there's a feeling about
helping Black people who
kinda have a bad situation going.
[Elie] Most of the lawyers that have been willing to help us
have been Jewish lawyers.
And we feel very close to Jews. Certainly I do.
And the reason is because these people see
that the Negro is nothing more than a buffer for Jewish people.
[Elie] The mere fact that there were so many Jewish lawyers
who are able to come down and be a part of this,
and there were so few Black lawyers
makes clear the differences in how Jews were treated by white gentiles,
and how Blacks were treated by white gentiles.
So while there may be some connections, and indeed there have been Jews
lynched in this country for being Jewish,
the truth is that our struggles have been very, very different.
Jews were allowed to do things that Black people couldn't even think about doing.
We're talking about in the '60s here, so when we say the Holocaust,
we may be talking about maybe 20 years earlier,
so the memory of the Holocaust was still fresh.
You get into a dangerous area when you start saying,
" OK, well my pain's worse
than your pain, you know.
Let's compare pain and let's see whose pain is worse."
It's-- it's different. It's-- it's different.
We were there helping tear down
their system of government and society.
So, the civil rights workers were doing it,
but we were helping them make the destruction work, that we--
we were the ones going to the courts and getting the court orders,
and the court orders were telling the-- the segregationists
or the government what they had to do and couldn't do,
so of course they wanted to get rid of us.
And that's why the Shakespeare quote, let's kill all the lawyers.
The first thing we do let's kill all the lawyers... yeah.
Any system knows that the lawyers
are integral with making the system work or not work.
So if you control the system, you want to make sure you control the legal system.
It was a system of-- of pretend law in Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, other states,
and that system of pretend law, which they could keep up as long as
they weren't scrutinized by the outside world and the Federal courts,
we were bringing an outside source of greater authority
called the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal courts
and the U.S. Constitution, bringing that to bear
on the systems of pretend law
that were prevailing in the Southern states.
And that's what Sobol vs. Perez, that case, was about.
[Sobol] We filed a case in Federal court New Orleans
to enjoin my prosecution and to declare any prohibition
on the activities of outside civil rights lawyers
unconstitutional as violating not only the lawyers' rights...
If we lost, I'd be in jail the next day.
Me and Duncan were the plaintiffs, and this defendant was Perez.
There was a trial, and the trial lasted for three weeks.
And every day, there was a story in the Times-Picayune
about what was going on in the courtroom.
We were all jealous of Sobol 'cause he got all the headlines,
and all he had to do was spend a couple of hours in jail. [chuckles]
-[courtroom chatter, footsteps] -[bailiff] All rise.
-[courtroom chatter continues] -[gavel bangs]
[Bronstein] I would now like to call Mr. Sobol to the stand.
State your name and address for the record.
[Sobol] Richard B. Sobol. Six-oh-five Common Street, New Orleans.
[Bronstein] Where did you serve as a volunteer,
and with whom were you associated?
[Sobol] I was working with the law firm of Collins, Douglas, and Eli.
[Dowling] There is no doubt about it in your mind that you informed
Judge Leon very early in the proceedings that you were an out-of-state attorney?
[Sobol] At the very first minute when we sat down at the table,
that was the first thing Mr. Collins said.
A small part of the testimony had to do with me and Duncan
and what happened, yeah.
Ninety percent had to do with, how does a Black person get a lawyer
in this state if he wants to assert rights under Federal law?
And it was very interesting.
[Bronstein] Would you briefly describe the duties of the volunteer lawyers?
[Sobol] The volunteer lawyers would come down for a three-week period only,
usually on their vacations,
and do whatever it was that Mr. Douglas and...
[Sobol] The one thing that Negro leadership in the South
is rightly disinclined to accept is white people telling them
any further what to do and what not to do,
even well-meaning and committed white liberal Northerners.
[Sobol] The leadership is theirs, and so are the choices,
including the option not to work with any white lawyers at all.
[Provensal] How is the Duncan case a civil rights case?
[Sobol] The Duncan case is a civil rights case because this court ordered
the desegregation of the Plaquemines Parish schools,
and the officials of the parish were contemptuous of that court order
and encouraged violations of that court order.
[woman] When I answered the phone, it was a woman's voice.
She said, "If you take those Negroes into our new white school,
it will be blown to pieces, with you in it."
[Sobol] ...lawlessness in Plaquemines Parish
by encouraging students not to go to school.
But then, the first criminal prosecution
arising out of all this was not Mr. Perez, nor the parents,
who were encouraging their boys to stay out of school,
but Gary Duncan, who had stopped by the side of the road
where his cousin and nephew were about to be attacked
for attending the desegregated school.
And the forces of law and order were brought to bear
not on those who are trying to prevent...
[Sobol] Solely by virtue of being Negro children
who had transferred to a white school under the court order.
[Provensal] The integration of the schools was carried out very peacefully.
-Isn't that true? -[Sobol] I don't think that
the district attorney saying that these orders of this court
was a disaster like Hurricane Betsy
is a peaceful carrying-out of the orders of this court.
[Bronstein] Would you speak into the microphone so that everyone can hear you?
[Gary] Gary Duncan. I live at Boothville, Louisiana.
-[Bronstein] How old are you, Mr. Duncan? -[Gary] 20.
[Bronstein] Why did you go to New Orleans to get a lawyer?
[Gary] Well, I never had any intention of getting a lawyer in Plaquemines Parish
because I figured all they were going to do for me was to plead guilty.
[Bronstein] Would you have trusted any lawyer
in Plaquemines Parish to take your case?
No,
because the majority of the lawyers are in politics.
[Bronstein] Before the battery case went to trial, did Mr. Sobol talk to you
-about requesting a jury trial? -[Gary] Yes.
I told him I believe I would stand a better chance at winning the case,
you know, with a jury trial.
[Bronstein] We would like to call Mr. Lolis Elie.
State your full name and address for the record, please.
[Elie] My name is Lolis Edward Elie.
I live at 1035 Short Street, New Orleans, Louisiana.
[Bronstein] What kind of work do you do, Mr. Elie?
[Elie] I am an attorney-at-law.
[Bronstein] Mr. Elie, have you any experience in handling civil rights cases?
[Elie] Yes, I've handled civil rights cases since the year 1960.
My best estimate is that we have handled between 500 and 600 civil rights...
[Elie] My office was involved in the Duncan case
that was in the United States Supreme Court and argued last week.
[Bronstein] Mr. Elie, do you have an opinion as to whether local Negroes
active in civil rights have trust or confidence in local lawyers?
[Elie] Civil rights workers and other people involved
have no confidence whatsoever in white attorneys
in the state of Louisiana.
[Bronstein] Have you ever attempted to enlist the assistance of local counsel?
[Elie] No, I have not because I talked to local counsel,
and their attitude was clearly antagonistic.
They talked about what would happen to them if they attempted to help us.
The lawyers for Perez keep talking about all these white lawyers of good will
who, if they had only been asked, would have been glad to come forward.
"And, Mr. Eli, did you not even bother to ask these lawyers?"
But of course, the whole time they're asking this,
they got to know they're lying.
[Elie] The white attorneys realized that we were not making money.
You would talk to people about taking these cases,
and they would think you were crazy.
[Bronstein] Realizing this increased need,
did you or the members of your firm do anything?
[Elie] Yes, we did.
Since the beginning of 1960, we have been in contact
with C.O.R.E. and the NAACP.
It was within a month that the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee,
LCDC, came into existence.
[Bronstein] Would it have been possible for you to have handled these cases
without the out-of-state counsel?
[Elie] Absolutely not.
[Bronstein] Mr. Eli, had you or any member of your firm
been subjected to hostility?
[vocalist] ♪ Yes, we'll rally round the flag ♪
[Elie] Our office was bombed.
[vocalist] ♪ Rally once again ♪
♪ Shouting the battle cry of freedom ♪
He talked to the point about the segregated bathrooms
in criminal district court in New Orleans.
He talked about being given a court date that was on a holiday,
but, of course, as a lawyer, you can't defy the court date,
but you show up and nobody's there.
[Elie] Cases would be fixed on holidays.
We would drive up there, and no one would be in the courtroom.
They would also segregate our clients in the courtroom.
Who else would you do that to
but a lawyer for whom you had contempt
and who you thought was beneath you?
But mind you, as an officer of the court,
you also have to embody a respect for the institution
because if you go there and tell the judge
or tell the district attorney, you know, "Fuck you.
You gave me this bullshit-ass date. You knew you was doing this."
You can't do that.
[Elie] Judge Rarick said to me,
"I didn't know they let coons practice law."
He pointed to a tree outside and said,
"Once there was a Negro sheriff in Clinton,
and he had been removed and hanged on the tree outside this window."
Another time I went up to a place called Arcadia with two LCDC lawyers.
We were intercepted by some police.
They brought out cattle prods.
They put them where we could see them.
We decided that since I was the only Louisiana lawyer present,
I should do the talking.
We went in and the sheriff, he said, "Nigger, shut up your mouth."
And I was not permitted to open my mouth in that room.
It was said to me, "Nigger, don't you come back here again.
Let these white people take care of this."
How do you talk about the tone of the clerk of court
or someone like that when that's not something that you can prove,
but it's something you know?
Something you know not only because of that moment,
but because of the years
and decades you have spent in this life,
and because of the lessons that your parents have taught you
about the kind of deference you must show to white people
if you want to live into adulthood.
How do you prove that this system is racist at its very core?
[Derfner] Sobol v. Perez was about
the transformation of the South into part of America.
It was a huge global issue.
What we dreamed of then, we have not come close to.
I remember when Barack Obama was elected president.
People kept saying, "I never dreamed this would happen."
We dreamed it would happen.
[Derfner] The outside world started really paying attention
in 1964 and 1965.
In 1964, the three civil rights workers
were murdered in Neshoba County.
It really shook a lot of people
because one of the ways that segregation and white supremacy worked
is that there was a sympathy for it in the rest of the country.
So in '64 and '65, you had major events,
the murder of the civil rights workers and the Selma march,
and you had major laws, Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
And those two things changed things irrevocably.
...as a registered voter can we in any way start on the road to freedom.
And I hope you'll all help us.
[Derfner] In '62 and '63, it really was enemy territory.
It was a foreign country.
By '67 and '68, we were in enemy territory,
but it was enemy territory that was being occupied
by the United States of America, slowly but surely.
[Lolis Eric Elie] There's been an awakening among Americans
about how very precarious our rights are.
We find folks rallying to defend those things
which we thought were emblazoned not only in our Constitution,
our great documents, but also in the hearts of Americans.
Police used to shoot Black kids all the time.
All the time.
What's different is now,
when it happens, it's a big deal.
Before, it used to happen, and nobody cared.
And it happened much more.
[Lolis Eric Elie] Frederick Douglass used to talk about the abolitionists
caring a great deal about slavery but not so much about the slave.
For Richard Sobol to effectively argue in Gary Duncan's case,
he had to see it as a case about a human being
and not a case about a civil right.
[Sobol] So then they wanted to give Duncan a jury trial,
and we brought a case, saying the only reason
they could possibly try the man at this point after all this
was just intimidation and vengeance.
And we filed a case called Duncan v. Perez.
Your boys done that to me. I learned my lesson.
[Sobol] That went to trial, where the judge ruled in our favor,
and he issued a nice opinion,
saying that there was malicious prosecution,
and they enjoined them from trying Duncan.
And so it was kind of a trifecta, I guess.
[Gary] You're a changed man, huh?
[Sobol] He grew and turned out to be an important leader in the parish.
He was the head of the shrimpers' association
and became an important figure after that.
And he's still my friend.
[man] I never came to Louisiana again without seeing Gary.
I was feeling very sick
and reluctantly decided that we had to put off meeting with Gary.
We wrote to him and said, "Don't come this week.
Richard's not feeling well,
and we'll reschedule it later."
He wrote back and said, "I don't care what his condition is.
I wanna see him. I wanna be there."
So, uh, he came.
Mr. Sobol became part of my family.
I'm part of his family.
[vocalist] ♪ I just wanna talk about it ♪
♪ Just a little bit ♪
♪ Just for a while ♪
♪ We will win this race ♪
♪ I still believe we can ♪
♪ Oh, don't be misled ♪
♪ I won't let no one ♪
♪ Destroy my path ♪
♪ I stood around in ice-cold blood ♪
♪ Livin' in fear for everyone I love ♪
♪ Segregation is all I can see ♪
♪ There's no fine line ♪
♪ They're starin' off of me ♪
♪ Yes, I'll embrace these strangers ♪
♪ Face to face ♪
♪ North and South ♪
♪ I won't let no one destroy my house ♪
♪ Take this road by myself ♪
♪ If I have to ♪
♪ No, I have friends ♪
♪ I won't let no one destroy my path ♪
♪ The heroes I've read about ♪
♪ Wouldn't take a life like a thug ♪
♪ Look in my eyes ♪
♪ You'll see the flow of love ♪
♪ What do y'all hear? ♪
♪ Does anyone hear me? ♪
♪ Should I write a letter? ♪
♪ Talk to a mayor? ♪
♪ Become a politician? ♪
♪ Provide a speech? ♪
♪ Choices I make ♪
♪ I like them to be my own ♪
♪ Oh, this feels so wrong ♪
♪ But I won't let no one destroy my ♪
♪ I've been down some weird streets sometimes ♪
♪ But I know that ♪
♪ I won't let no one destroy my ♪
♪ I won't let no one ♪
♪ We're gonna get better ♪
♪ We need a change of weather ♪
♪ The world needs a change ♪
♪ We can't stay this way forever ♪
♪ We gotta get better ♪
♪ We need a change of weather ♪
♪ The world needs a change ♪
♪ We can't stay this way forever ♪
♪ We've gotta get clever ♪
♪ More clever than ever ♪
♪ The world needs a change ♪
♪ We can't stay this way forever ♪
[vocalizing]