The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 9, No. 3, 1987, p. 24

Mine enemies are legion and I can barely remember when that was not the case. In a somewhat perverse manner, I find that comforting and suffer no reason to embrace popular, superficial mainstream conclusions I know to be wrong and misleading.

There are no American heroes in our relations to South and Central America, now or ever. The Iran/Contra mess is a foul, dangerous scandal and international disgrace.

For centuries, America, for rank, selfish economic reasons, helped to sustain oppression and misery throughout South and Central America. The CIA toppled an entire government on behalf of United Fruit Incorporated. Rich multi-national corporations owning thousands of acres have opposed every effort at land reform. The result of systematic exploitation blankets the pitiful people of South and Central America like a suffocating cloud.

Unspeakable conditions were maintained by a line of dictatorial despots as bad as any the world has known. They were kept in power for almost 150 years primarily by American military might and power. In turn, powerful American economic interests enjoyed a virtual license to plunder and exploit.

As a rule, neither people nor nations turn from true friends to embrace an unknown–much less to welcome the bloodsucking Russian Bear; communists are in South and Central America because we created a perfect opportunity for them.

A desperate father in South America struggles daily to feed his hungry children and he has little or no education, health care or land. His very existence has been ruled by governments so opressive [sic] they are difficult to describe. That father really doesn’t give a damn about Ronald Reagan or Mikhail Gorbachev. Would you?

The current administration in Washington invaded one Latin American neighbor, whose population is smaller than the City of Birmingham, and unlawfully mined the harbor and fomented civil war against another. All to halt the spread of communism and bring Jeffersonian democracy to that desperate land.

Hogwash!

Latin American is a place where the rich always got richer and the poor systematically poorer until the bottom fell out. Hard-disciplined work might forestall starvation, but little else. A handful of super rich owned the continent. American power was always there to back them up.

Communism, as distinguished from the governmental mechanisms through which it is promoted, is an ideology. Guns, tanks, marines and missiles, by definition are virtually useless in halting the spread of an idea. One would assume official minds in Washington would eventually come to recognize that obvious and fundamental truth. Fortunately, communism consistently proves to be its own worse enemy. It is a wholly unrealistic and impractical concept weighted down with enormous bureaucratic burdens and a myriad of imperialist manipulations in behalf of Mother Russia. Those considerations, more than anything else, have impeded the spread of communism.

Every nation in the world seems to understand except America and possibly England. Not a single Latin nation, including Mexico, favors the U.S. clandestine-military activity in South and Central America. Indeed, the U.S. had to ignore the Organization of American States and the vital mutual security pact to wrangle a bogus invitation to invade Granada and engage in the “no-win” resurrection of the Contras in Nicaragua. If we are to stop the spread of communism we had better get busy with genuine and innovative efforts to stop the spread of poverty, ignorance and racism. Fidel Castro was intimately acquainted with all three before he took to the mountains.

The self-righteous crap we hear in the Iran/Contra hearing about fighting for freedom and halting communism is in reality a catalogue of inappropriate, off-base policies which violate international law and are singularly ineffective. We have even undermined the Constitutional basis of our own government [sic] .

To date, our efforts in South and Central America are unworthy of a great nation and a good people.

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth: Wishing Justice for Bork

By J.L. Chestnut. Jr.

Vol. 9, No. 4, 1987, pp. 15-16

WASHINGTON-This unstable, political, kooky town is in an absolute frenzy, even if measured by its own unreal standards. My favorite Washington cab driver and political philosopher, Jack Curtis, who also happens to be black, was so busy denouncing “Tint? White Washington Establishment” he drove off with my luggage and left me standing on the airport curb. He had to turn around and come back.

Consistent with Jack’s extremely low opinion of lawyers, he angrily assumed my two recent visits are somehow connected with helping extricate “that black skunk” (the black mayor of Washington) from his legal problems. I don’t represent the mayor and barely know the man.

But, Jack’s immediate concern is the nomination of the man he viciously described as “Watergate Bork and his fascist sponsors.” I share Jack’s apprehensions not quite his intemperate language.

Bork, as a private individual, is as far right and racist as his chief sponsors-President Reagan, Edwin Meese and Brad Reynolds.

In a 1963 article in his favorite magazine, New Republic, Bork was outrageously wrong about the proposed public accommodations bill that would require hotels, restaurants and other publicly accessible establishments to serve blacks.

Such a law, Bork wrote, would cause “a loss in a vital area of personal liberty” because it would interfere with the freedom of individuals “to deal and associate with whom they pleased for whatever reasons appeal to them.” Apparently, Bork would deny that same freedom to black and white Americans who sought to associate together in these establishments.

In a 1968 article entitled “Why I Am For Nixon,” in his favorite magazine, Bork wrote that Nixon represented “classical liberalism” and the Democratic Party was “an encroachment” on that liberalism. The man has a unique facility for prostituting words and truth.

In 1971, Bork wrote in the Indiana Law Journal: “constitutional protection should be accorded only to speech that is explicitly political. There is no basis for judicial intervention to protect any form of expression, be it scientific, literary or that variety of expression we call obscene or pornographic.”

Such foolishness makes a mockery of the Constitution in general and the First Amendment in particular.

As expected, in a confirmation hearing as a District of Columbia appellate judge, Bork backtracked and explained his 1971 article was an “academic exercise…theoretical argument” written as a Yale law professor.

“As a judge,” he added, “what is relevant is what the Supreme Court has said, and not my theoretical writings in. 1971.” In a narrow sense, he was somewhat truthful in that assertion and I will look at a few of his rulings as a judge.

But first, a word or two on Bork. Nixon and Watergate.

In 1973, as U.S. Solicitor General, Bork bowed to Nixon and the ill fated criminal conspiracy commonly known as Watergate by firing Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox after Attorney General Elliott Richardson and his deputy, William D. Ruckelshaus, refused to do so.

Nine years later, Bork claimed he knew the Watergate investigation would continue without Cox. Bork also said Cox would have been fired in any event. That self-serving speculation diminishes in no way the fact that Bork fired Cox to please a criminally conspiring Nixon and to further Bork’s professional career.

Bork, however, deserves some credit, as Richardson said recently, for standing up to Nixon and telling him to appoint another special prosecutor-Leon Jaworski. We will never know what Bork actually told Nixon but you can be sure it was less than the whole truth.

On the other hand, Bork, as a District of Columbia appellate judge, has on occasion submerged his far right opinions, followed legal precedent and written with passion on subjects in a manner which surprised the left and startled the right. However, it must be also noted he was

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writing with the Supreme Court looking over his shoulder. That is different than sitting on that Court and writing precedents. Especially for one who would embrace Watergate to further his career.

On the District of Columbia appellate court, Bork ruled against conservative students who wanted to picket outside the embassies of Nicaragua and the Soviet Union. He decided in favor of an artist who sought to put a poster mocking Reagan in the Washington subways.

In backing the right of a free press, he went further than his liberal colleagues. Libel suits that would stifle vigorous journalism, he suggested, should be dismissed almost summarily. That is a world apart from what he wrote in the New Republic as a law professor.

In dismissing a lawsuit filed by a homosexual kicked out of the Navy for that reason, Bork curiously reasoned that the implied constitutional right to privacy does not cover homosexuality but somehow “is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her-pregnancy.” What hokum!

Incidentally, the Supreme Court last year adopted that same hokum in dismissing a challenge to a Georgia anti-sodomy law.

I do not wish Bork well in his bid to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

I wish him hell.

How about that, Mr. Jack Curtis?

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 9, No. 5, 1987, p. 40

This is the 200th year of the U.S. Constitution, but that document remains shrouded in fiction, misunderstanding and ignorance. Millions of Americans know so little about the Constitution, it is a miracle we have been able to hold on to it.

Speakers and writers, who should know better, continue to pay homage to the Founding Fathers for the “Bill of Rights”–the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The original constitution drafted at Philadelphia in 1787 did not include the “Bill of Rights.” Those amendments came later during the ratification process. That is why they are amendments.

Indeed, the fifty-five affluent white males who met in Philadelphia had no authority to write a constitution. They were only legally empowered to revise the old Articles of Confederation. They drafted a constitution anyway. The legal problems they created in doing so were probably resolved by the subsequent ratification of their unauthorized constitution.

In 1787, slaves were hardly considered people. The Founding Fathers reached a compromise at Philadelphia and upgraded each black to three-fifths of a person. Women were ignored. The new constitution reflected the culture. It also set certain forces into motion which finally led to The Civil War and the end of slavery as an institution.

The Civil War and emancipation of blacks had no effect on disfranchised white females. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments were added to the Constitution. These amendments, with the exception of the Fourteenth, were all pegged to color or “previous condition of servitude.” Gender or sex proscriptions were conspicuous by their loud absence.

Nevertheless, another century after the Civil War, the civil rights movement using those amendments spawned a whole new era regarding the status and rights of women. What had happened? Is the mere passage of time a sufficient explanation or is there something more?

I heard an interesting explanation at a women’s conference in Birmingham last week. Approximately half the 200 women present were white. One of the great loves of my life, sixty-two year old Shirley Chisholm, was keynote speaker. But the words of a white female friend, Ann Braden, really jarred my thinking.

Ann and I served as panelists during a workshop on racism and coalition-building. Years ago, Ann was a young reporter in Anniston and covered Bull Connor’s Birmingham. She later wrote an interesting, frank and truthful book and many in the South will never forgive her. She is unlikely to forgive them and now as a senior citizen remains outspoken and a self-described “unabashed radical.”

For the women delegates, Ann described racism as the “indefensible assumption that white males, by right, should rule all things and everything was created for their benefit.” She said that is why native Americans (Indians) were wiped out by the settlers without the slightest guilt or remorse. She also said that is why our foreign policy is so dangerous in a world three-fourths non-white.

Ann’s definition of racism reduces sexism to a component of racism. If her definition is correct, and I think it is, American history begins to make sense for the first time.

How else can one explain why intelligent, learned men would deny their own mothers, wives and daughters certain fundamental rights these men risked their lives to secure for themselves?

Ordinarily, one would not consider that racism, but it obviously was the exaltation of white males by white males at the expense of people they love and were closest to.

Women’s rights did not move to the front after the Civil War and black emancipation because these developments were aimed at the institution of slavery and not racism. Racism remained in vogue; only slavery was outlawed.

A century later, the civil rights movement aimed its attack directly at racism and the women’s movement caught fire.

The proof is in the pudding.

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut Jr. is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 10, No. 1, 1988, p. 16

A powerful white Southern politician who for years has helped many black people, including this writer, sought last week to end an outrageous debate with a brother-in-law by asking me if I thought he (the politician) was racist. My prompt response was, “Yes.”

The politician was flabbergasted.

Years ago, this same fella said to me, “Look, everyone knows this is a democracy and all people are supposed to be created equal, created by God and all that jazz, but do you blacks have to go around believing all that pie-in-the-sky? You’re pushing too hard for your equality and it will backlash. Knock it off before we are forced to really get rough with you.”

My politician friend reminded me that it was twenty-five years ago when he uttered that statement. I reminded him that twenty-five years ago he claimed he was not racist.

I did add, however, that my friend’s racism has always been more of the northern variety. In the North, there were almost no lynchings, church bombings and legalized segregation. Thus, northerners suffered from the delusion that they were less racist than the white South.

But, with the advent of the civil rights movement and blacks aggressively challenging white power, northern whites suddenly realized they didn’t like blacks any more than their white southern brothers.

Northern whites, however, had to find a convenient rationalization for their newly discovered bigotry. And, along came Governor George C. Wallace speaking forcefully and deliberately to what was really on white hearts in Milwaukee, Chicago, Indianapolis and other northern cities.

In effect, Wallace’s message was, “Look, I’m a white man and you’re white folks and if there is one thing on which we can agree, it is that we have to get together and atop these blacks before they take over our neighborhoods and marry our daughters.”

Thousands of northern whites said to each other: “Now here’s one white man who makes sense. Let’s go with Wallace and maybe he’ll stop these black radicals.”

Northern editorial writers wanted to say Wallace was right, but did not want to admit that northern whites were no different than their counterparts in the South. They s arched for a gimmick which would expiate long-hidden guilt feelings but permit them to openly indulge in racist politics.

The gimmick they invented was the ‘backlash.” By claiming a backlash they were saying they had never really disliked blacks and were simply reacting–or ‘recoiling’–to blacks being so pushy. If blacks stopped being so pushy, northern whites would atop reacting and voting for Wallace or Barry Goldwater.

Of course, that was not a backlash. It was a frontlash. The racism had been there all the time.

My politician friend is quite northern in his racism. I have always known that.

He fooled himself; not me.

Peace.

J.L. Chestnut Jr. is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 10, No. 2, 1988, p. 32

MOTHER: Child, I told you all your life that white folks is trouble. Treat them right but keep your distance.

DAUGHTER: But, Momma Jean, I didn’t do nothing wrong. I told the lady she didn’t give me the right change and she called me a liar. And, I told her she was one.

MOTHER: You didn’t have to say that! Did she, Lawyer Chestnut?

CHESTNUT: Well, maybe she thought she had to say it. In terms of why you came to see me, it hardly matters. Her generation feels compelled to say many things we felt compelled not to say. The world is somewhat different these days.

MOTHER: Yes, Jesus, the Bible says the world would grow weaker but wiser. And, I have seen it. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in voting, and the Lord knows I believed in Dr. King. But there is some crazy, mixed-up white folk who is dangerous. I want my child to be safe.

DAUGHTER: But, Momma, right is right. Why should I respect some fool who is going out of her way to disrespect me? If I do that, Momma Jean, I don’t respect me.

MOTHER: You shut your mouth, child! Don’t you be calling nobody a fool! You don’t know the world the way I do. It is better to go around trouble than go asking somebody for it. I have taken more abuse and suffered so long, only God understands. And, I did it, child, cause I wanted to stay in this world long enough to raise you right. I don’t want nobody to run over you or treat you wrong, but black folks is got to be careful. The world is not right. Justice is as white as them judges, big shot law people and fancy pants. But, you ain’t God, child, and it is not for you to set white folks right. I wonder about some black folks who are so mean to other black folks they think is beneath them. It is the devil! Child, it is not for you, by yourself, to attack the devil in his element. God said, “Vengeance is mine!” We need to be careful. It is better for that white woman to keep that little money than for us to get all mixed up with the police and have to come bothering Lawyer Chestnut.

DAUGHTER: We are not bothering Lawyer Chestnut. We are his clients. It is his business to straighten these things out.

MOTHER: I knowed Lawyer Chestnut when his Momma was carrying him. Don’t tell me nothing bout no client. Lawyer Chestnut got real business and no time to be bothered with a mess you didn’t even have to get yourself in.

CHESTNUT: Well, Mrs. (Blank), I want you to come see my anytime you think I can be helpful. I would be disappointed if you didn’t call or come by. Now, these things do happen. And, I quite understand everything you say and recognize the wisdom of your words. I think, however, because I have to deal with these young people all the time, I may understand somewhat the point your daughter is trying to make.

MOTHER: She ain’t got no point!

CHESTNUT: Well, maybe so and maybe not. Let’s look at it this way. The saleslady called your daughter a liar and your daughter returned the accusation. You and I can agree that at that point they were both wrong and not acting like decent people. The saleslady is grown and you and I can agree that being grown she had a Christian responsibility to act like a lady, especially in the presence of your daughter. Now, your daughter is certain the saleslady was motivated by racism. You and I would think that is probably the case, but wouldn’t draw that flat conclusion without knowing the lady or at least having witnessed the incident. But, let’s just suppose it was racism. In that case, your daughter was merely responding to Dr. King’s message about not becoming part of the problem and standing up to prejudice. That is what I meant about the world has changed. There are new things you and I now have to accept, just as we accepted the old things.

MOTHER: Glory be, Lawyer Chest! This is a dangerous world. But, you know more about it than I do. You take care of my child. And tell your Momma I will be to see her after the church revival ends. I have some talk for her.

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, p. 24

Phillip Henry Pitts is one helluva trial lawyer. The man is skilled, creative and deadly spontaneous. I have been aware of Henry’s trial abilities for years. He and I have battled almost from the day he was admitted to the Bar.

When Henry first joined his father’s law firm, the elder Pitts and I were locked in monumental legal struggles all over the Black Belt. I was trying to change every at-large elected government in the area. McLean Pitts was determined nothing would or should ever change. He was an unabashed segregationist and bragged about it.

McLean Pitts was a large, determined and physically powerful man whose influence permeated the Black Belt and reached into the State Capitol in Montgomery. In the early years Henry was a minor player but as much a segregationist as his father. In many ways, however, Henry was the classic example of the “good old boy.” His father would never have been mistaken for such.

In 1965, just before the tragic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a young Henry Pitts was assigned the difficult task of cross-examining Martin Luther King Jr. in federal court in Montgomery. That is one measure of what the elder Pitts thought of his son’s trial skills. Henry’s risk-taking style and spontaneous insights served him well. Both King and I were amused but wary of this brash, young segregationist.

Years later in a case where I was the opposing counsel, an older but still brash and risk-taking Henry Pitts said the following to a Perry County jury of eleven blacks and one white: “J. L. is not one of you. He is an outsider who teaches at Harvard. He is only interested in money and more money. My father and I have been coming over here for years protecting your interests. In the name of Martin Luther King, the Good Holy Book and all that is fair, don’t give J.L. and his client one red cent in damages. They don’t deserve it.”

I followed with the observation that Henry Pitts calling on the name of Martin Luther King was akin to my invoking the Confederate memory of Robert E. Lee. The jury returned a verdict of $75,000 against Henry’s client. Before the trial started, I had offered to settle the case with Henry for $75,000. The lone white juror later claimed she had been coerced by the eleven black jurors.

Henry later sent a check for the judgment and said, “You caught hell earning it!” Indeed, I had.

Like many white Southerners, Henry and his father were close to several blacks who worked for them for years. Walter Chambers, who is quite a character himself in black Selma, grew up following Henry around. It tickles the hell out of me that Walter calls Henry’s wife “Sister” because that is what Henry and everyone else calls her, but Walter always says “Mr. Henry.”

One day recently, Henry and I had to go by the District Attorney’s office. Henry gave Walter his briefcase and told him to take it over to the office. Walter grabbed my briefcase and carried it along also. He had a big grin on his face. He understood and I understood. Even Henry understood.

Over the years, Henry’s thinking has evolved in the manner the South is evolving. He remains Southern, proud of it, but more open-minded. He has been a television producer, business agent and lawyer for a superstar football player. He has negotiated for, socialized with and knows personally a number of major figures in American life.

Yet he remains essentially a “good old boy.” More importantly, he is one of the better trial lawyers anywhere.

I look forward to working with him again. I do not look forward to working against him.

Peace.

J.L. Chestnut, Jr., is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 10, No. 5, 1988, pp. 24, 23

In the fall and winter of 1984, fifty white FBI agents came bustling into five west Alabama black-majority counties. The feds visited more than 1,000 black voters, often late at night, and many of them elderly. Alabama State Troopers later joined the feds, and it was once again a time of rotten infamy in Alabama [Southern Changes, July-September 1985].

I have been black in Alabama for almost sixty years and I wee outraged. The feds announced they were investigating vote fraud in regards to absentee ballots. For twenty years, the feds had refused to investigate a single complaint by black voters of intimidation. I announced that the feds were frauds themselves and using federal criminal law to help the racist Republican administration in Washington.

As usual, I was accused by hypocritical whites and know-nothing blacks of overstating the case and seeing racism everywhere. As usual, some people felt the authorities were correct because they were the authorities–classic, circular logic. Also, there is another group who automatically supports the activities of the FBI.

I knew that from 1979 to 1981, federal agents had prowled almost daily through records of the Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Sumter County. The Federation was a training base for black political leaders in the Black Belt. For that reason, a really sad bunch in Alabama and Washington was upset with the Federation.

The feds, of course, found no wrong-doing, but they crippled the Federation and severely hampered fundraising for a very long time. That was the intent at the outset. U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (D-Ala.), then a Congressman, was a key force behind the bogus investigation. He knows I know. He was representing a few white, local political leaders and ignoring blacks.

As to the vote fraud probe, eight blacks and one white were indicted on 210 bogus charges that could have meant more than 1,000 years in prison. Elderly black people were saying, “I’ll never vote again.” Certain blacks, as always, were claiming the investigation was not racial and just a matter of enforcing the voting laws. I listened quietly and wondered how much of this black nonsense was ignorance, fear or opportunism. I still don’t know.

The federal election in 1984 was crucial in Alabama and Washington. At the time it was felt that black voters might make the difference in the re-election or defeat of U.S. Sen. Jeremiah Denton (R-Ala.), and Republican control of the Senate might hinge on whether Denton was successful (Demon was defeated in 1986 by Shelby). In addition, Ed Meese had a long history of helping his friends.

Not one of the 210 vote fraud charges held up in court. Recently, I filed a motion to vacate the remaining charges and a guilty verdict by an all-white jury against voting rights activist Spiver Gordon. The government eagerly joined the motion and the motion was granted on September 9, 1988.

The federal Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had said, “…Gordon has sufficiently established the essential elements of the selective prosecution test…” Thus, Gordon is entitled to “discovery of the relevant government documents relating to the local voting fraud cases the government has prosecuted and any voting fraud complaints which they have decided not to pursue.”

Rather than provide that information to defense lawyers and the public, the U.S. Attorney called and said if I filed a motion to dismiss all charges against Gordon, the govern-

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ment would join the motion. How about that for vote fraud? Was there racism here?

The appellate court took note that Gordon had “informed the district court that in two similar voting fraud prosecutions, the government had used five of six peremptory challenges to strike black jurors in one case and four of six to strike black jurors in the other. This proffer was sufficient under the circumstances to entitle Gordon to a hearing…” on that issue.

In the interim, however, Clarence Mitchell III, black legislator from Maryland who came to Alabama and helped us in the vote fraud mess, has been convicted in a bribery case investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the Justice Department. In 1984, Clarence went around the nation saying, “The Ku Klux Klan and White Citizens Council can close up shop, because the Justice Department is doing their work for them.”

Earlier this year, U.S. Rep. Mervyn Dymally placed in the Congressional record an affidavit by former FBI informant Hirah Friedman. In his sworn affidavit, Friedman stated that a program within the FBI named “Fruhmenachen” (German for “primitive man”) has been established to investigate black public officials without probable cause. Friedman said the FBI assumed “that black officials were intellectually and socially incapable of governing…”

I made a similar assumption about the FBI and the current Republican administration way back in 1984.

Recently, black FBI agent Donald Rochan charged white FBI agents with a constant campaign of racist harassment against him and other black agents. He said much more. The John Edgar Hoover legacy together with White House racism impact heavily on the FBI.

Black voters are not the only people harassed by that motley crowd in Washington. Activists in the peace, labor and civil liberties movements have had their problems. Two Congressional committees have documented the outrageous, unconstitutional activities of the FBI regarding people who oppose the Reagan-Bush Yankee nonsense in Central America.

Lord help us.

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 10, No. 6, 1988, pp. 24, 23

I do not expect George Bush to pursue the “kinder, gentler nation” announced in his campaign rhetoric. The mysterious “thousand points of light” about which he also spoke are more likely to turn out to be points of darkness. I was not born yesterday.

The Ku Klux Klan is as supportive of the budding Bush Administration as it has been of the old Reagan gang. And, for the same obvious reasons.

In happy anticipation, two local Republicans recently said to me, “It might come down to all the white people joining the Republican Party and black people staying with the Democratic Party. I really hope that doesn’t happen.”

But, the eyes and crooked smile of the two Republicans made their true opinion clear. They really wished that exact racist result on this nation. A nation, already in deep trouble at home and abroad, residing in a world where three-fifths of the population is non-white. Makes one wonder about some Americans.

A total racial realignment of the two parties won’t happen. Many thoughtful and decent white Americans would never buy such an arrangement. Many Americans understand and see through both the Republican and Democratic Party crap. They are unlikely to line up with either party. I don’t blame them.

Most white people, as conservatives, accept society as they find it. Few white Americans have been agitators for change in a philosophical sense. Those who have agitated were regarded, at best, as quixotic, odd, different and not quite normal. Some were suspected of being Communists.

National head shaking was joined by the numbers of white, respectable young people who joined radical groups in the 1960s and even identified with the Black Panthers. There wee consternation when Patricia Hearst was revealed as an armed member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, which was not only rebellious but criminal.

Black radicals or agitators, on the other hand, feel they understood the white mind set and what whites really think of them. These blacks have written off white society as impossible in regards to changing its attitude toward color. For many of these blacks, burglary, robbery and even worse have become the legitimate purpose of survival.

They are wrong, of course, but do not believe so and are not interested in such arguments. Some say that anything they can get away with is justified.

In the opposite direction and just as extreme, are blacks who think they have it made. Blacks who are secure in their token roles in their establishment, do not really regard themselves as tokens. They are well behaved and well rewarded.

These people might participate in the kind of march on Washington that is a non-violent picnic, to which they actually fly, or go to by train or chartered bus. They would, however, never dream of picketing a business for its failure to hire blacks or women. This is the group from which we get our black lawyers and judges.

Now to turn the coin just slightly. As I said, it is a most rare white person who will revolt against anything. After all, their color permits them to be the beneficiary of the American way of life. There has never been an example in America of the oppressed, when liberated, becoming the oppressor.

It is even more rare for a white person to consider his fellow man as just another person as opposed to a “colored” person, a “Negro friend” or a “black” one. This classification is an immediate indication that a “colored person” is not

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simply another citizen, but something less.

There have been genuine relationships of affection and mutual esteem between blacks and whites. Relationships in which each regarded the other as simply a good decent human being and not as “my black friend” or my “white friend.” But, that is rare.

All too often, white people of commendable sensitivity give up their zeal for a “kinder, gentler nation,” move to the white suburbs, and become occasional “moderates” or “liberals” with a black visitor now and then.

I understand.

Peace.

J. L Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 11, No. 1, 1989, pp. 24

My wife looked sternly across the dinner table one night recently and quietly reminded me of the flak I received 12 years ago from certain blacks and whites concerning the lawsuit that brought forth the election of three black county commissioners in Dallas County, Alabama, in January. Vivian has a long memory.

I simply nodded but wisely did not explain who paid for the litigation during the long interim the government “cooled its heels.” Initially, even the Carter Administration opposed that litigation and remained uninvolved for more than a year.

I did not file the lawsuit out of hatred or a jaded desire for revenge, though there was ample ground for both. But, I understood then and now that many white leaders have been reared in an atmosphere that is almost racially poisonous. That atmosphere has polluted and tainted generation after generation.

I have never known Dallas County to be without a double standard–one for blacks and another for whites. This has been the case 80 long that whites often don’t realize the extent of their insensitivity.

Respectable conservative whites have organized charitable projects to welcome Vietnamese orphans from this nation’s recent international disaster in Vietnam. But, you will not live long enough to see African refugees from the ravages of colonialism welcomed in America.

After the recent special election, a newspaper in Selma naively called for a “responsible” county commission to avoid a battle or “race war” over the chairmanship of that group. Meanwhile, some were meeting secretly trying to insure white control of a predominantly black commission.

Such actions are not regarded as racist because of the double standard in Dallas County. Black efforts, however, to counter these efforts are viewed as racist. In similar vein, I was told 12 years ago that the all-white make-up of the commission was not racist, but my efforts to add blacks was racist.

Naturally, certain low-profile, officious and undistinguished blacks agreed with that double standard and denounced me. One of those black critics has a large and beautiful pencil sketch of Martin Luther King hanging over her lovely fireplace. The picture cost more than some houses.

When Martin wee risking his life in the streets of Selma, this critic called him everything except a child of God and publicly invited him to go home to Atlanta. Now, after Martin is dead and buried, she hangs his picture in her home.

This black critic is also a member of the little group who secretly tells the white editor of the Selma newspaper how much they disapprove of my weekly column.

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.

The Cold Hard Truth

By J.L. Chestnut, Jr.

Vol. 11, No. 2, 1989, pp. 24, 22-23

I am proud of America and proud to be an American. Almost no other nation in the world would have waged a civil war to abolish slavery, enact the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and pass civil rights statutes in 1964 and 1965. America did these things solely because they were the right and proper things to do. We have quite a ways yet to go, but by golly we’re getting there!

Last issue, I wrote about the January installation–more than two decades after the protests that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act–of the first black commissioners in my home of Dallas County, Alabama. There are many good and decent people, black and white, in Selma, as there are across the country. There are honest, decent whites who are genuinely interested in fair, unfettered progress by black citizens.

On the other hand, there are whites who fraudulently claim an interest in our welfare and progress but don’t really mean it and are somewhat difficult to deal with. One can easily fight an enemy, but, pray tell, how does one fight an alleged friend whose subterfuge is both socially acceptable and institutionalized?

Many of us detest awards for “doing good” in the field of race relations. Once an elected official, business man, preacher or whatever gathers a roster of “human relations” citations, it is next to impossible to convince him–or the public–that he is really an insincere, foot-dragging impostor and that more often than not is the case.

Such people are examples of the “thinking man’s prejudice.” By definition, they think for themselves but often harbor a deeply seated and secret emotion that tells them they can’t really believe in honest equality for blacks. That feeling or emotion is irrational but real. Thus, many “do-gooders” (thinking people) are really ambivalent on most of matters of race.

And that is one of the reasons why some otherwise good people have half-heartedly and quietly accepted so many racist onslaughts by bigots against black people. It is also a tragedy in America generally and in Dallas County in particular. Of course there are always other social and business pressures working in the white community.

The white Dallas County School Board members are thinking people. They know it would take a miracle for the Supreme Court to even consider their silly eleventh hour appeal to forestall redistricting. They also know maintaining this legal charade is a gratuitous insult to the black people of this county; nevertheless’ they voted in a racial bloc to continue. They are victims of the thinking man’s prejudice. They are also politicians in the cheapest sense.

The white majority on the Selma City Council consistently votes in a racial bloc on all matters of substance. Councilman Edwin Moss is so frustrated he has questioned his own utility in conversations with this writer. He wouldn’t believe what I tried to tell him years ago. The white councilpeople are victims of the thinking man’s prejudice. In a very narrow sense, they even mean well.

As to the county commission, blacks have no doubts whatsoever concerning one of our white commissioners–they know who and what he is. They had the wrong idea about the other one because we endorsed him and black voters made the narrow margin for his victory.

However, some of us understood from the beginning that he is a thinking man. We also understood what that meant in terms of white bloc voting; the two white commissioners have yet to split their vote. Only one of the three black commissioners has been so blind; the other two have kept the faith.

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The Selma daily newspaper is unlikely to take editorial issue with white, bloc voting on the county school board, county commission, city council, or anywhere else. We can expect, however, a hypocritical editorial commending Erskine Minor for breaking up the only black majority in local government to favor a white majority. Thinking white people run the newspaper.

The local white establishment would, if they could, cower the new black county commissioners from doing anything for blacks out of fear of being called racist. No self-respecting black person should give a tinker’s damn about being called racist by such people.

Nevertheless, in response to the controversy about courthouse patronage following the recent election, two of the black commissioners said publicly that the replacement of two white employees with black employees was not racial. That is disappointing. I had hoped the race of the replacement employees’ was at least as important as their qualifications.

How else is equity to be done in a situation where blacks have been systematically discriminated against in terms of jobs for a century? Assigning two top-level jobs has nothing to do with “two wrongs making a right.” Rather it is a simple, direct attempt to reduce the discriminatory effects of long-standing white racism in the Dallas County courthouse.

Proposing a naked, “color blind” mentality to the black commissioners as the solution to centuries of white racism is contemptible, dishonest and morally bankrupt. It is the rough equivalent of confusing a method for preventing the spread of a disease with actual treatment of the festering effects of that disease.

I am told the black female replacement employee had helped train the now displaced white female who was her boss under an earlier (white) administration’s patronage. That is a familiar story all over Dixie. Racism is the primary reason more than a few whites became boss and their black counterparts didn’t. Qualifications are of course relevant but so is the fact that being black is often a permanent

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disqualification.

Whites have virtually all the top jobs at the courthouse and city hall. Both school boards are majority white and so is the city council. Most major jobs in both school systems are held by whites with one exception. The local court systems and support staff, with one exception, are white. Blacks are usually placed in second- and third-line positions. We became the assistant to the assistant who is somebody’s deputy.

But, in 1989 a black majority on the county commission replaces two top white employees with black people and that act is described as racist, contemptible and a few other names. That is white arrogance at its naked, disgusting worst.

The recent Selma newspaper editorial entitled “Appoint the Best” illustrates the point. The editor self-righteously pontificated that county commissioners should appoint the best” person to the office of county attorney regardless of race. Pompous and hypocritical issue was taken with a simple, realistic and truthful assessment by commissioner Perry Varner that most blacks expect the new majority black commission to appoint a black lawyer to that office.

Candor in matters of race is hardly the rule in Dallas County. Racist facts are systematically ignored or rationalized.

The white commission members who appointed the previous county attorney, a white, would not have even considered appointing this writer or any other black lawyer. No editorial appeared telling these white commissioners to be “color blind” and appoint “the best.” In vivid contrast to Varner’s candid assertion, the racist fog was so complete when the commission was all-white the appointment of the most competent black lawyer on the planet was unthinkable.

Lawyers for both local school boards are white. The lawyer for the City of Selma and every municipal board is white. The lawyer for the Craig Field Authority and everything else is white. These arrangements have nothing to do with these lawyers being “the best”; they are white and have connections. No editorial objection has or will be written in regard.

In like manner, the newspaper only belatedly objected to the fifteen-year litigation designed to keep blacks off the county commission, and the editor never really mustered the courage to flatly call that sordid legal effort racist. With the same jaundiced eye, the editor now sees danger if a black majority commission appoints a black county attorney.

It is hypocritically clear that when whites appoint whites, that it is simply seen as getting the best. When blacks pick blacks, that is racism. This crude double standard is a rather revealing example of white arrogance at its worst. Lord help us! A thinking man’s prejudice.

It is also clear that editorials on the importance of a color blind selection process are only written when blacks have the power to appoint. Whether dealing with a school principal, legal advisor or whatever, the admonition to “rise above color” is only heard when blacks have the power of appointment and white-e are on the receiving end. It is almost beyond hypocrisy when the Selma Times-Journal presumes to lecture Dallas County blacks on racism.

Little wonder my dear wife received four irate telephone calls about the editorial before breakfast. Rev. Charles P. Thrash came to the office to say he no longer wanted the newspaper in his home–not even the Sunday edition that carries my column. I will have to talk with him immediately. Believe me!

We are told we can’t move beyond the “dark past” (that phrase itself is unintentionally racist) if we become more polarized. The editorial writer was apparently too hypocritical to say racially polarized though that is what he obviously meant. It doesn’t matter because there is no way we can become more racially polarized.

Pregnancy, as they say, is not a matter of degree. Similarly, racial polarization is not a matter of degree. “You is or you ain’t, baby!”

Additional foolishness somewhat akin to the polarization nonsense is the claim that “. . . actions similar to those by the county commission will surely separate us further.” What a claim in the land of racially segregated churches, private schools and all that rest! My goodness. The separation is already complete.

Black people often say to each other how tired they are of phony discussions about racism and discrimination being ills of the past. Pick a black citizen at random and he or she can relate more than one contemporary racial horror story. Black Alabamians are filing as many complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as ever.

In any event, black people do not always share the non-questioning loyalty and blind respect some whites have for decisions made by white-dominated institutions. A century of unspeakable discrimination against blacks by these same institutions has imbued blacks with a necessary preference for realism over self-serving fantasy.

Peace.

J. L. Chestnut is an Alabama trial lawyer and writer.