00:00:39.915 --> 00:00:43.545
and I'm the baby,
(chuckles) and, uh...

00:02:15.428 --> 00:02:17.222
(Gary Duncan) We thought
we'd have been all right on the boat,

00:02:17.347 --> 00:02:18.515
which we was, you know?

00:02:18.640 --> 00:02:22.143
'Cause when the water rise,
the boat gonna rise.

00:02:22.268 --> 00:02:24.395
(wind howling)

00:02:31.402 --> 00:02:33.613
(Man) It's one
continuous blow.

00:02:33.738 --> 00:02:36.157
I'm telling you, she's
a-blowin' and she's a-shakin'.

00:02:39.535 --> 00:02:41.287
(Gary) So we still
on the boat.

00:02:56.385 --> 00:02:59.347
(Man) By midnight,
Betsy's overwhelming the city.

00:02:59.472 --> 00:03:02.267
Gusts are reaching 150
miles an hour,

00:03:02.392 --> 00:03:05.185
and all the church bells in
town are tolling wildly in the wind.

00:03:05.310 --> 00:03:07.855
(bells clanging)

00:03:13.318 --> 00:03:17.407
(Gary) And it's just the next day
that we didn't have no communication.

00:03:18.365 --> 00:03:23.245
We couldn't get in touch with our
family, and we was worrying about them.

00:03:26.415 --> 00:03:29.377
They had been bringing dead
bodies up from out of the river.

00:03:35.925 --> 00:03:37.677
My daddy, he cried.

00:03:38.385 --> 00:03:40.053
Everybody cried.

00:03:41.305 --> 00:03:45.225
We were all hugging, you know,
so...

00:03:45.350 --> 00:03:46.685
And he vowed, he said, no,

00:03:46.810 --> 00:03:49.397
he said I'm never going out
there, no more of that.

00:03:49.605 --> 00:03:53.400
He's not gonna let any of his children
stay on the boats during a hurricane.

00:03:53.400 --> 00:03:55.362
He said, "The hell
with the boats."

00:03:55.487 --> 00:03:57.280
He said he always could
get another boat.

00:04:05.622 --> 00:04:08.457
You trust God that
everything'll be all right.

00:04:09.917 --> 00:04:12.337
Guess what? You got another
hurricane coming at you.

00:04:16.798 --> 00:04:19.343
There's eight of us,
four boys and four girls,

00:04:19.468 --> 00:04:24.307
and I'm the baby,
(chuckles) and, uh...

00:04:24.432 --> 00:04:27.435
and pretty much all of them
to their twenties beat me.

00:04:27.560 --> 00:04:29.103
(chuckles)

00:04:34.442 --> 00:04:36.027
I used to trawl.

00:04:36.902 --> 00:04:38.487
I would trawl for shrimps.

00:04:39.530 --> 00:04:41.740
And my brother Calvin,
he was a fisherman.

00:04:42.658 --> 00:04:45.453
I started out, I don't know,

00:04:45.578 --> 00:04:48.372
12 years old, I guess,
foolin' with Calvin, going out,

00:04:48.580 --> 00:04:52.418
and we'd put a net in the water
and we'd drag it for a couple hours.

00:04:52.627 --> 00:04:54.128
We'd pick up and...

00:04:55.045 --> 00:04:57.465
put the catch on the deck
of the boat and we...

00:04:57.590 --> 00:04:59.007
we'd sort it out.

00:04:59.132 --> 00:05:01.468
Throw the bad catch away,
and we'd keep the shrimps.

00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:11.520
My daddy, he was a
boat captain.

00:05:11.645 --> 00:05:13.355
They started...

00:05:15.483 --> 00:05:16.858
harassing us.

00:05:22.490 --> 00:05:24.367
When the boat was on the job,

00:05:24.575 --> 00:05:27.453
and we'd come back to the dock,
we had to sleep on 'em because...

00:05:28.788 --> 00:05:30.832
they had set one of
them afire.

00:05:31.790 --> 00:05:34.918
Anything can happen to you,
you know?

00:05:35.043 --> 00:05:38.338
You could go to jail for,
back then, eye-rape,

00:05:38.463 --> 00:05:42.552
or, you know, you-- hey, you
stay away in your Black community,

00:05:42.677 --> 00:05:45.053
because you could get--

00:05:45.262 --> 00:05:48.975
they just could trump any kind of-- put
any kind of charges on you, you know?

00:05:49.183 --> 00:05:51.602
For anything.
So we stuck to ourselves.

00:05:51.727 --> 00:05:53.478
Hey, you know, nobody
want no trouble.

00:05:53.603 --> 00:05:55.565
We couldn't afford no trouble,
you know?

00:05:55.690 --> 00:05:59.485
'Cause my mama always said,
"Trouble's easy to get into,

00:05:59.610 --> 00:06:01.570
but hard to get out of,"
you know?

00:06:01.695 --> 00:06:04.240
And a Black person
back when I was coming up,

00:06:04.365 --> 00:06:09.995
he didn't stand a chance
of having his...

00:06:10.120 --> 00:06:13.540
We didn't have no rights.
We didn't have no rights.

00:07:01.838 --> 00:07:03.590
Well, I was working.

00:07:03.715 --> 00:07:04.717
And I was married,

00:07:04.842 --> 00:07:08.303
and my wife just had
my first child,

00:07:08.428 --> 00:07:10.598
and I had to go get her--

00:07:10.723 --> 00:07:11.598
she was in Charity Hospital--

00:07:11.723 --> 00:07:13.893
to pick her up from
the hospital,

00:07:14.018 --> 00:07:17.522
and I was driving south
on Highway 23.

00:07:33.578 --> 00:07:37.123
The school was just letting
out, and children...

00:07:37.333 --> 00:07:40.503
the ones that wasn't riding
the school bus, they was walking.

00:07:40.628 --> 00:07:43.297
That's when I seen--
I just passed by the school,

00:07:43.422 --> 00:07:45.132
and a little further out
from the school,

00:07:45.340 --> 00:07:48.468
I seen my cousin and my
nephew, one of my nephews,

00:07:48.677 --> 00:07:51.472
with four white boys
standing on the side of the road.

00:07:54.517 --> 00:07:58.103
(boys arguing indistinctly)

00:07:58.562 --> 00:08:01.273
But what really got my
attention was a couple of white fellas.

00:08:01.482 --> 00:08:03.108
They was watching,

00:08:03.233 --> 00:08:04.610
so I stopped.

00:08:05.360 --> 00:08:08.072
I told Harry, I said,
"Something's going on." So I backed up.

00:08:08.113 --> 00:08:11.908
I got out of the car. I said,
"What's the problem? What's wrong?"

00:08:12.033 --> 00:08:14.912
And they was just
about in tears.

00:08:15.037 --> 00:08:16.038
"They want to fight us."

00:08:17.998 --> 00:08:19.750
I said, "Fight y'all? What?" You know,
"Why do they want to fight y'all?"

00:08:19.958 --> 00:08:21.460
And...

00:08:22.085 --> 00:08:23.712
Bud Landry, said,

00:08:23.837 --> 00:08:26.257
"We don't want to fight 'em.
We just wanted to know their names."

00:08:26.382 --> 00:08:27.550
You know?

00:08:27.675 --> 00:08:29.552
So I told him,
"Well, my name is Gary."

00:08:29.677 --> 00:08:32.178
And I touched him on his arm.

00:08:32.388 --> 00:08:35.348
Didn't hit him, just touched
him, just from talking.

00:08:35.557 --> 00:08:36.517
And that was it.

00:08:36.725 --> 00:08:39.270
I said, "Y'all, come on, let's
go. Get in the car."

00:08:54.410 --> 00:08:56.745
(Richard Sobol)
He touched him on...

00:08:56.870 --> 00:09:00.540
he touched one of the boys
on the elbow, kind of...

00:09:02.585 --> 00:09:03.793
"Go on home."

00:09:04.712 --> 00:09:08.173
And the father of
one of the boys

00:09:08.298 --> 00:09:10.760
was within eyesight of this.

00:09:10.885 --> 00:09:13.930
And he reported that Duncan
had slapped his son.

00:09:14.055 --> 00:09:15.388
I don't know what time it was.

00:09:17.098 --> 00:09:18.100
Early part of the night,
I think it was, my mama called.

00:09:20.018 --> 00:09:22.397
She said, "They got a warrant
out for your arrest. Come back home."

00:09:22.605 --> 00:09:26.733
So I came on back home, and
the next day I turned myself in.

00:09:26.733 --> 00:09:30.237
And they had the charges on
me. Cruelty to a juvenile.

00:09:32.948 --> 00:09:36.660
(Sobol) They claimed that by touching
the white boy, he had committed a crime.

00:09:41.707 --> 00:09:44.752
People talk about
totalitarian regimes

00:09:44.877 --> 00:09:46.920
as being so regimented
and so predictable,

00:09:47.045 --> 00:09:49.423
and that's the nature
of their oppression.

00:09:50.257 --> 00:09:52.760
But in fact, it's the
exact opposite.

00:09:52.885 --> 00:09:58.557
The arbitrary nature
of the totalitarian regime's actions

00:09:58.682 --> 00:10:00.810
is what makes it so
oppressive.

00:10:01.393 --> 00:10:04.188
You never know
when you've crossed the line.

00:10:10.693 --> 00:10:12.613
(Gary) Perez was
making them do that.

00:10:12.738 --> 00:10:17.242
Perez made Landry
file charges on me

00:10:17.452 --> 00:10:21.455
'cause they wanted to use me for an
example for the rest of the Blacks.

00:10:21.955 --> 00:10:23.623
(William F. Buckley) Have you
been very wildly misquoted?

00:10:23.832 --> 00:10:26.793
For instance, you're quoted
as having said, quote,

00:10:26.793 --> 00:10:31.257
"Yes, the Negro is inherently immoral.
Yes, I think it's the brain capacity."

00:10:31.465 --> 00:10:32.717
Is that a misquotation?

00:10:32.842 --> 00:10:34.843
It's not a misquotation.
It's the truth.

00:10:34.968 --> 00:10:36.512
Because I know Negroes.

00:10:36.637 --> 00:10:40.015
We have a number of Negroes
in our community,

00:10:40.140 --> 00:10:43.352
and I know that basically,
fundamentally, they are immoral.

00:10:43.477 --> 00:10:45.645
They're un-moral.
I know that to be a fact.

00:10:45.770 --> 00:10:47.145
-I--
-(Buckley) Yes.

00:10:47.187 --> 00:10:48.857
-Why should I try to hide it?
-(Buckley) Well--

00:10:48.898 --> 00:10:52.653
I'd be untrue to myself if I
tried to deny it out of cowardice.

00:10:52.862 --> 00:10:53.945
Of course.

00:10:55.528 --> 00:10:56.740
And I wouldn't-- I wouldn't
plead guilty to that, could I?

00:10:56.865 --> 00:11:00.327
It's been said of you
that you have a--

00:11:00.535 --> 00:11:02.328
that "you can grudgingly
admire his blunt talk.

00:11:02.538 --> 00:11:04.832
He is honest about
his bigotry."

00:11:04.957 --> 00:11:07.083
-And--
-I'm not a bigot, son.

00:11:07.208 --> 00:11:10.045
-I'm not a bigot at all.
-(audience laughs)

00:11:10.170 --> 00:11:12.465
Well, look, whatever you are,
Judge Perez,

00:11:12.590 --> 00:11:14.383
and I'm sure you're a
great many things,

00:11:14.425 --> 00:11:16.260
what you don't have is sovereign
power over the English language.

00:11:16.302 --> 00:11:18.345
-(audience laughs)
-I am just a good American.

00:11:18.470 --> 00:11:20.555
(indistinct chanting)

00:11:20.680 --> 00:11:23.808
(Sobol) Leander Perez fought
like no one ever had before

00:11:23.933 --> 00:11:26.145
against desegregating the
public schools.

00:12:07.687 --> 00:12:10.898
(screams and shouts)

00:12:11.023 --> 00:12:12.900
(dogs barking)

00:12:33.295 --> 00:12:35.380
(Dan Rather) A year ago,
newspapers throughout America

00:12:35.505 --> 00:12:38.508
front-paged a four-column
picture of the protestors.

00:12:38.633 --> 00:12:41.303
Prominent in the picture
was the rural political boss

00:12:41.428 --> 00:12:44.390
credited with making sure
the school had no students,

00:12:44.515 --> 00:12:46.808
Leander Henry Perez.

00:12:46.933 --> 00:12:48.935
I'm not bragging, sir,

00:12:49.060 --> 00:12:52.773
but I said we are not
surrendering our schools

00:12:52.898 --> 00:12:55.275
to anybody, and that
means anyone.

00:12:56.735 --> 00:12:59.655
(Gary) If it wouldn't have been Perez,
there wouldn't have been a case.

00:12:59.863 --> 00:13:02.742
I know there's, in one of
the old Encyclopedia Britannicas,

00:13:02.867 --> 00:13:05.410
they had an article on that
by a British scientist.

00:13:05.995 --> 00:13:08.247
He says that the Negro child
will develop

00:13:08.372 --> 00:13:10.623
until he gets to be
about 11 years of age,

00:13:10.832 --> 00:13:13.835
and then because of the
thickness of this cranium,

00:13:14.043 --> 00:13:19.383
and the limited size
of the brain area,

00:13:19.508 --> 00:13:21.052
he stops expanding.

00:13:21.760 --> 00:13:24.888
He goes so far, and
no further.

00:13:25.013 --> 00:13:26.848
That's a pretty good 'un.
A friend of mine wrote that.

00:13:26.973 --> 00:13:28.683
-(indistinct remark)
-Yeah.

00:13:28.808 --> 00:13:30.227
-Glad you enjoyed it.
-So long.

00:13:31.145 --> 00:13:33.272
(Man) I definitely think
that he could be considered

00:13:33.397 --> 00:13:35.690
as one of the natural
resources of the parish.

00:13:37.233 --> 00:13:39.403
(Dan Rather) Plaquemines
Parishlies on both sides

00:13:39.612 --> 00:13:41.613
of the mile-wide Mississippi,

00:13:41.738 --> 00:13:45.075
on rich, marshy soil
that has over the centuries

00:13:45.200 --> 00:13:49.872
washed down the 2,350 miles
of twisting river

00:13:49.997 --> 00:13:53.833
to push its delta even farther
into the Gulf of Mexico.

00:13:54.042 --> 00:13:56.712
In the years when Leander
Perez was growing up,

00:13:56.920 --> 00:14:00.215
one of 13 children
of a sugar and rice planter,

00:14:00.423 --> 00:14:04.845
the flat prairie, the swamps
and bayous of Plaquemines Parish

00:14:05.053 --> 00:14:07.848
were the source of its chief
industry, the trapping of muskrats.

00:14:09.182 --> 00:14:11.018
Today all that has changed.

00:14:11.477 --> 00:14:14.272
Oil, discovered in 1928,

00:14:14.397 --> 00:14:17.023
has altered both the
parish and Perez,

00:14:17.148 --> 00:14:18.858
and neither have been
the same since.

00:14:21.362 --> 00:14:23.530
As the money began to roll in,

00:14:23.655 --> 00:14:28.202
Leander Perez, through shrewd
manipulation in the state legislature,

00:14:28.327 --> 00:14:31.872
managed to siphon off
a good deal of it for the parish.

00:14:33.915 --> 00:14:36.960
There is only one Judge Perez.
Let's not kid ourself.

00:14:37.460 --> 00:14:39.087
There is only one Judge Perez,

00:14:39.295 --> 00:14:41.965
and as I said, that man
was a gift from God to us.

00:14:42.173 --> 00:14:45.885
(Man) To me, Judge Perez
is a very egotistical sort of character.

00:14:46.803 --> 00:14:48.847
He's arrogant, generally.

00:14:48.972 --> 00:14:54.603
Self-righteous, but I think
most of the time completely wrong.

00:14:54.728 --> 00:14:57.898
Everybody in that parish
better play ball with Leander Perez.

00:14:58.023 --> 00:15:00.985
One way or another.
They better.

00:15:02.110 --> 00:15:04.947
'Cause there's too many ways
that he can make it very obnoxious.

00:15:05.738 --> 00:15:08.117
It is my personal
opinion that...

00:15:08.325 --> 00:15:13.955
Mr. Perez, over a period of years,
has established a tighter dynasty,

00:15:15.790 --> 00:15:19.085
and has a better setup,
than Mr. Khrushchev has.

00:15:19.210 --> 00:15:24.007
(Dan Rather) You now have
as your enemies, your opponents,

00:15:24.132 --> 00:15:27.135
at least the last four
presidents of the United States,

00:15:27.260 --> 00:15:28.970
President Kennedy,
President Eisenhower,

00:15:29.095 --> 00:15:31.473
President Truman,
President Roosevelt.

00:15:31.598 --> 00:15:34.393
The Chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, Earl Warren,

00:15:34.518 --> 00:15:38.647
the other justices of the
Supreme Court, the late Pope John.

00:15:38.772 --> 00:15:42.108
You also have as your enemies,
your sworn opponents,

00:15:42.233 --> 00:15:44.945
such institutions
as the United States government,

00:15:45.070 --> 00:15:47.823
parts, at least,
of the Roman Catholic Church,

00:15:47.948 --> 00:15:50.742
the Departments of Justice,
Interior,

00:15:50.867 --> 00:15:53.370
to some extent
the Department of Defense,

00:15:53.495 --> 00:15:56.373
the United States Navy,
United Nations.

00:15:56.498 --> 00:15:58.000
This is a formidable list.

00:15:58.125 --> 00:16:00.377
(Perez) What is the future
of our country?

00:16:00.502 --> 00:16:05.215
Why the communist conspiracy
to deprive our white youth

00:16:05.340 --> 00:16:07.677
of educational opportunities?

00:16:08.385 --> 00:16:11.638
Does Mr. Kennedy see that,
or does he give a damn?

00:16:11.763 --> 00:16:13.848
-(Man) No!
-Did President Eisenhower see it,

00:16:13.973 --> 00:16:17.560
surrounded by his Zionist
advisors, Max Rabinowitz?

00:16:17.685 --> 00:16:19.813
Goldfein and company?

00:16:19.938 --> 00:16:23.025
Did Harry Truman see it? No.

00:16:23.150 --> 00:16:25.652
(Gary) Well, he was a
dictatorship. Perez was a dictatorship.

00:16:25.777 --> 00:16:29.615
He wasn't elected into office.
He took that position.

00:16:29.740 --> 00:16:31.033
Then everybody called
him a judge.

00:16:31.158 --> 00:16:33.243
Oh, yeah. He was the man.
He was in charge.

00:16:33.368 --> 00:16:35.078
He ran this parish.

00:16:35.203 --> 00:16:37.622
And at one time he was
a judge. Yeah.

00:16:38.623 --> 00:16:40.833
(Robert Collins) He didn't
have any problem with Black folks

00:16:41.042 --> 00:16:44.003
living in his parish as long
as they were agricultural workers,

00:16:44.212 --> 00:16:46.090
as long as they were
working on farms,

00:16:46.215 --> 00:16:48.967
as long as they were
domestic servants.

00:16:49.092 --> 00:16:51.595
He hated Jews for the
same reason,

00:16:51.803 --> 00:16:54.180
not only because they were
active in the civil rights movement.

00:16:54.180 --> 00:16:57.433
They didn't really fit
into his view

00:16:57.558 --> 00:17:00.603
of white Protestant
family life

00:17:00.728 --> 00:17:03.273
in white Protestant America.

00:17:26.630 --> 00:17:29.508
Let's think about what
Gary Duncan did.

00:17:29.633 --> 00:17:32.135
He's attempting to
break up a fight,

00:17:32.260 --> 00:17:34.555
and he puts his hand on
this white man.

00:17:34.680 --> 00:17:36.307
He didn't punch this man.

00:17:36.432 --> 00:17:39.518
He didn't engage in the fight.
He's attempting to break up the fight.

00:17:40.602 --> 00:17:42.187
That's illegal?

00:17:42.897 --> 00:17:47.442
Under no circumstances
are you supposed to see yourself

00:17:47.567 --> 00:17:49.445
as being equal to
this white man.

00:17:49.570 --> 00:17:53.157
And, in fact, we will
charge you legally

00:17:53.282 --> 00:17:58.662
for this failure to understand
the nature of your existence.

00:17:58.787 --> 00:18:01.748
You know, and I thank God
that I had parents that I had.

00:18:01.957 --> 00:18:07.170
'Cause me, I probably would have
just run on up there and pled guilty,

00:18:07.378 --> 00:18:10.298
figure I'd pay a fine and go
on about my business, you know?

00:18:10.507 --> 00:18:14.887
He could have gone home that
night, but he chose not to.

00:18:15.095 --> 00:18:16.430
Uh...

00:18:18.432 --> 00:18:20.808
I don't think there's one in a
hundred people that would do that,

00:18:21.058 --> 00:18:22.227
make that choice.

00:18:25.522 --> 00:18:31.320
The guy is of steel
about his rights,

00:18:31.445 --> 00:18:34.948
and justice and what's fair,
and...

00:18:35.532 --> 00:18:37.283
and he still is.

00:18:43.290 --> 00:18:45.917
(Gary) F.J. and Wilbur,
the policemen,

00:18:46.042 --> 00:18:47.962
stopped me and asked me
what happened,

00:18:48.087 --> 00:18:50.005
and they told me
to get in the police car.

00:18:50.130 --> 00:18:52.132
They brought me back
to the scene.

00:18:52.340 --> 00:18:55.510
That's where the four white
boys were standing there, and...

00:18:56.387 --> 00:18:57.803
one of them said I hit him.

00:18:58.805 --> 00:19:00.265
And the rest of them
didn't say anything.

00:19:00.265 --> 00:19:02.350
They didn't. You know,
that I didn't do anything.

00:19:02.475 --> 00:19:04.310
Wilbur and FJ said, "Well, hey,

00:19:04.435 --> 00:19:07.522
it don't matter much what any of
them say because I know if he hit him,

00:19:07.647 --> 00:19:09.148
we'll be able to tell."

00:19:09.273 --> 00:19:10.233
They let me go,

00:19:11.817 --> 00:19:13.195
and so I came home and I got
my wife out of the hospital,

00:19:13.320 --> 00:19:16.823
and my mama called me and said,
"They got a warrant out for your arrest."

00:19:16.948 --> 00:19:19.325
So I came on back and I
turned myself in.

00:19:19.450 --> 00:19:23.247
And they had me charged
with cruelty to a juvenile.

00:19:23.372 --> 00:19:25.248
I went and had an interview
with Mr. Sobol,

00:19:25.373 --> 00:19:28.168
and we talked, and he told me
when I go to court

00:19:28.293 --> 00:19:32.172
to plead not guilty,
and that's what I did.

00:19:32.297 --> 00:19:34.382
They had evidence,
but they couldn't charge me

00:19:34.507 --> 00:19:35.842
with cruelty to a juvenile.

00:19:35.967 --> 00:19:41.180
Which you can't be without
having authority over the child.

00:19:41.305 --> 00:19:42.765
So they dropped the charge.

00:19:43.392 --> 00:19:46.228
They let me go,
but by the time I got home,

00:19:46.353 --> 00:19:48.730
the police, FJ and Wilbur,
were sitting at my house

00:19:48.855 --> 00:19:50.315
waiting for me,
to take me back to jail

00:19:50.440 --> 00:19:51.775
to charge me with
assault and battery.

00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:54.820
Then I realized they
was after me.

00:19:55.487 --> 00:19:58.032
(Lolis Eric Elie) Any time
white people would decide

00:19:58.157 --> 00:20:00.950
that what you were doing was
improper, you could be arrested for it.

00:20:01.410 --> 00:20:03.620
And you see that
in the Gary Duncan case.

00:20:03.745 --> 00:20:08.500
What is impossible to
enumerate is all the billions of times

00:20:08.625 --> 00:20:11.587
when Black people were
harassed for absolutely no reason

00:20:11.712 --> 00:20:14.380
other than the fact that
they were Black.

00:20:14.505 --> 00:20:19.010
Or perhaps because white people
needed to remind them that they were Black.

00:20:47.788 --> 00:20:50.250
(Armand Derfner)
Anything that put a Black person

00:20:50.375 --> 00:20:53.295
out of the normal line of
submissiveness

00:20:53.795 --> 00:20:57.132
was a civil rights or
Constitutional case. It became that.

00:20:57.257 --> 00:21:01.470
Because here's the thing:
If a Black person got out of line,

00:21:01.595 --> 00:21:03.305
then they would often
be arrested.

00:21:03.430 --> 00:21:05.515
And they'd be arrested
on some bogus charge.

00:21:05.640 --> 00:21:07.933
I remember I was in...

00:21:08.058 --> 00:21:10.853
in my office in Jackson,
and...

00:21:12.480 --> 00:21:14.900
somebody was arrested,

00:21:15.025 --> 00:21:19.487
and I asked, I called
the police station or whoever,

00:21:19.612 --> 00:21:21.030
and I asked what
the charge was,

00:21:21.155 --> 00:21:24.325
and the charge was
"using florid language."

00:21:24.450 --> 00:21:27.120
Okay. Or, um...

00:21:27.245 --> 00:21:30.290
I was representing somebody
in Cleveland, Mississippi, once.

00:21:30.415 --> 00:21:32.458
It was a Black person
wearing a suit,

00:21:32.583 --> 00:21:34.502
which was pretty suspicious
to begin with,

00:21:34.627 --> 00:21:37.672
wearing eyeglasses--
that was also suspicious.

00:21:37.797 --> 00:21:39.758
And so they just arrested him.

00:21:39.883 --> 00:21:42.302
Just to show people
who's in charge.

00:21:44.512 --> 00:21:49.475
The essence of the Southern system
in those days was total control.

00:21:49.600 --> 00:21:53.188
It was a totalitarian nation.

00:21:53.313 --> 00:21:55.607
(indistinct shouting)

00:21:57.983 --> 00:22:00.070
It was really viewed
as a separate nation.

00:22:00.195 --> 00:22:01.363
It was a totalitarian nation

00:22:01.488 --> 00:22:05.200
in which total control
was essential.

00:22:07.743 --> 00:22:10.538
Control of Black people
and white people.

00:22:10.663 --> 00:22:14.375
So, if a white person
thought differently,

00:22:14.500 --> 00:22:16.587
they'd find the law on them,
too.

00:22:17.545 --> 00:22:20.382
In Gary Duncan's case, I don't
know what he had done before,

00:22:20.507 --> 00:22:24.468
but if he had been in marches,
he's a marked man.

00:22:24.593 --> 00:22:28.140
If he hadn't been, well, then he got
to be a marked man that day.

00:22:28.848 --> 00:22:31.518
And that also means that ca--

00:22:31.643 --> 00:22:34.980
anything that involved
him after that,

00:22:35.105 --> 00:22:36.940
24 hours a day, seven
days a week,

00:22:37.065 --> 00:22:38.567
was a civil rights case.

00:22:39.608 --> 00:22:41.737
Because a civil rights case

00:22:41.862 --> 00:22:45.573
is one where something bad
is gonna happen to you

00:22:45.698 --> 00:22:49.912
out of proportion to or not
related to anything you actually did.

00:22:50.912 --> 00:22:56.167
So it was the white,
quote, "power structure,"

00:22:56.292 --> 00:22:58.878
whatever you want to call it,
the white system, governmental system,

00:22:59.003 --> 00:23:01.548
they were the ones
who created civil rights cases

00:23:01.673 --> 00:23:03.175
by what they did.

00:23:03.967 --> 00:23:06.052
(chair scrapes)

00:23:06.637 --> 00:23:12.017
(gavel banging)

00:23:12.142 --> 00:23:15.562
(Judge) Do you recall an incident
that occurred on October 18th?

00:23:15.687 --> 00:23:16.647
(Herman Landry) Well,

00:23:18.440 --> 00:23:19.942
me and Wayne and this other boy,
we was coming out of school,

00:23:20.067 --> 00:23:22.360
and we got out on the road.

00:23:22.485 --> 00:23:24.737
These two other boys was on
the other side of the road.

00:23:24.862 --> 00:23:27.490
We knew one of them
had got in a fight at school,

00:23:27.615 --> 00:23:31.537
and we asked him
what happened, and he was telling us.

00:23:31.662 --> 00:23:34.663
Then that boy right over there
stopped in his car,

00:23:34.788 --> 00:23:37.417
and he backed up,
and he got out of his car

00:23:37.542 --> 00:23:39.543
and he asked us what was going
on, and we told him nothing.

00:23:39.668 --> 00:23:41.420
We were just asking these boys
their name.

00:23:41.545 --> 00:23:43.465
He said, "You want
to know mine?"

00:23:43.507 --> 00:23:44.967
(Wayne Scarabin)
And the two boys said we was lying.

00:23:45.008 --> 00:23:46.510
(crowd murmurs)

00:23:46.635 --> 00:23:51.097
So Gary Duncan, he asked us
if we wanted to know his name.

00:23:51.222 --> 00:23:53.642
And he had his name
on his shirt.

00:23:53.767 --> 00:23:56.352
He says, "Can you read?"

00:23:56.477 --> 00:23:58.522
Herman told him yes.

00:23:58.647 --> 00:24:02.608
And he said, "You still want
to know my name?"

00:24:02.733 --> 00:24:04.862
Herman said yes.

00:24:04.987 --> 00:24:07.447
He told Herman
he was a smart little punk.

00:24:07.572 --> 00:24:09.490
(Herman) Then he told us
he was gonna beat us all up.

00:24:09.615 --> 00:24:12.202
And then I told that other
boy, I said, "He thinks he's tough."

00:24:12.327 --> 00:24:13.912
-That's when he slapped me.
-(crowd murmurs)

00:24:14.037 --> 00:24:15.622
(Darryl Bubrig)
Was it a hard slap?

00:24:15.747 --> 00:24:16.998
(Wayne)
Pretty hard, yes.

00:24:19.083 --> 00:24:20.877
(Bubrig) Wayne, do you know why
the defendant, Gary Duncan, stopped?

00:24:21.002 --> 00:24:23.630
(Wayne) I guess he thought we was
trying to jump the boys or something.

00:24:23.755 --> 00:24:26.675
-(crowd murmurs)
-(gavel bangs)

00:24:26.800 --> 00:24:29.468
(Gary) Mama, she asked me,
she said, "Did you hit him?"

00:24:29.593 --> 00:24:32.347
I said, "No. All I done
was touch him on his arm.

00:24:32.472 --> 00:24:35.683
I touched him on his arm.
I didn't hit him. I touched him."

00:24:35.808 --> 00:24:37.643
And she said, "Well, hey."

00:24:37.768 --> 00:24:40.272
She said, "I'll walk the
streets buck naked

00:24:40.397 --> 00:24:42.565
before I see you spend
one day in jail."

00:24:42.690 --> 00:24:45.902
(Sobol) It was his mother that
didn't want him to plead guilty

00:24:46.027 --> 00:24:49.280
and pay a fine
and have a criminal record

00:24:49.405 --> 00:24:52.325
and let them get
away with this.

00:24:52.450 --> 00:24:54.410
She was the driving force.

00:24:54.535 --> 00:25:00.125
When they sat down in my
little room there, she did the talking.

00:25:00.250 --> 00:25:02.293
I said, "What can I
do for you?"

00:25:02.418 --> 00:25:03.545
And she answered.

00:25:04.670 --> 00:25:06.798
And Gary was right there.

00:25:08.048 --> 00:25:11.302
I was working with the law
firm Collins, Douglas & Elie,

00:25:11.427 --> 00:25:16.725
which is the most important
firm in civil rights law in Louisiana.

00:25:16.850 --> 00:25:19.185
It was important
that out-of-state lawyers

00:25:19.310 --> 00:25:21.688
come to handle civil
rights cases

00:25:21.813 --> 00:25:24.732
because no lawyer in Louisiana

00:25:24.857 --> 00:25:27.568
would handle civil
rights cases.

00:25:28.320 --> 00:25:31.990
He didn't have no license to
practice law in the state of Louisiana,

00:25:32.115 --> 00:25:35.785
so he was working through
Collins, Douglas & Elie's office.

00:25:37.745 --> 00:25:39.080
They was involved

00:25:39.205 --> 00:25:41.750
in civil rights themselves,
you know.

00:25:41.875 --> 00:25:43.752
The right of the Black people.

00:25:46.128 --> 00:25:50.133
(Lolis Elie) It was difficult
for African-Americans to get lawyers

00:25:50.258 --> 00:25:52.385
in a civil rights matter,

00:25:52.510 --> 00:25:55.222
and of course in Plaquemines
Parish to get anyone

00:25:55.347 --> 00:25:59.392
to be involved in any case
in opposition to Leander Perez

00:25:59.517 --> 00:26:01.770
was a very dangerous thing.

00:26:01.895 --> 00:26:04.688
(Lolis Eric Elie) My father
and Bob Collins and Nils Douglas

00:26:04.813 --> 00:26:09.735
accepted the responsibility
of doing this work, in part because

00:26:09.860 --> 00:26:13.113
so few other people were
willing and able to do it.

00:26:13.823 --> 00:26:16.743
My father grew up in a part of
town called Nigger Town.

00:26:16.868 --> 00:26:18.412
When you asked him
where he was from,

00:26:18.537 --> 00:26:20.580
he'd make a point of saying
he was from Nigger Town.

00:26:22.165 --> 00:26:24.417
It was important to him

00:26:24.542 --> 00:26:26.377
that you understood
the full meaning of that,

00:26:26.502 --> 00:26:28.630
you understood that this man
who went to law school

00:26:28.755 --> 00:26:30.798
and tried these
important cases

00:26:30.923 --> 00:26:33.385
was from a part of town
called Nigger Town.

00:26:33.510 --> 00:26:37.388
(New Orleans jazz music plays)

00:26:44.687 --> 00:26:46.313
When you talk about
those people.

00:26:46.438 --> 00:26:48.483
when you talked about niggers,
you gotta realize

00:26:48.608 --> 00:26:51.527
sometimes niggers
go to Loyola Law School.

00:26:51.652 --> 00:26:53.738
Sometimes niggers do
great things.

00:27:04.457 --> 00:27:09.795
(Lolis Elie) At what point,
or when, is it possible

00:27:09.920 --> 00:27:13.717
for white people to look at
Black people as being human beings?

00:27:13.842 --> 00:27:16.845
I don't mean
an individual white person.

00:27:16.970 --> 00:27:18.972
I mean as a whole.

00:27:19.097 --> 00:27:21.598
I know not in my lifetime.

00:27:21.723 --> 00:27:22.642
Let's face it.

00:27:22.767 --> 00:27:24.768
You know, this is the
20th century.

00:27:24.893 --> 00:27:28.857
We're talking about a people
that has been on this continent

00:27:28.982 --> 00:27:31.233
for over 400 years.

00:27:32.860 --> 00:27:35.405
(New Orleans jazz
music continues)

00:27:51.880 --> 00:27:54.757
(Lolis Eric Elie) When people
like Richard Sobol came here,

00:27:54.882 --> 00:27:59.762
it allowed lawyers like Collins, Douglas
& Elie to have some assistance.

00:27:59.887 --> 00:28:03.808
Suddenly the forces
of civil rights had allies.

00:28:03.933 --> 00:28:04.683
(music fades)

00:28:06.142 --> 00:28:08.688
Sobol, Richard Sobol,
who had come to New Orleans

00:28:08.813 --> 00:28:13.067
from the law firm of Arnold,
Fortas & Porter,

00:28:13.192 --> 00:28:17.197
and I think it would be fair to say
that Sobol was something of a genius.

00:28:31.335 --> 00:28:35.715
(Sobol) I'm outside.
I'm gonna wave a cab down,

00:28:35.840 --> 00:28:40.178
and down the street,
a cab stops.

00:28:41.678 --> 00:28:44.223
I look in. It's Fortas.

00:28:45.892 --> 00:28:47.602
He said, "Get in."

00:28:47.727 --> 00:28:48.728
I said, "Well, this
is very nice."

00:28:50.438 --> 00:28:52.898
I had never been alone with
him after a year working there.

00:28:54.025 --> 00:28:56.360
You had to make an appointment
to see him,

00:28:56.485 --> 00:29:00.615
and lots of times the appointment
was denied. You couldn't see him.

00:29:00.740 --> 00:29:03.993
And here I am sitting next to him,
and I'm feeling, "This is great."

00:29:05.912 --> 00:29:10.292
But on the way, he said,
"What do you do at the firm?"

00:29:10.417 --> 00:29:12.543
And I told him...

00:29:14.628 --> 00:29:18.132
I told him, and he...

00:29:19.383 --> 00:29:22.387
He said, "Well, where
are you going now?

00:29:22.512 --> 00:29:23.972
And I said...

00:29:24.972 --> 00:29:29.060
proudly, because I'm talking
to a guy who really is big-time

00:29:29.185 --> 00:29:31.187
in good cause work,

00:29:31.312 --> 00:29:33.565
I said, "I'm going...

00:29:34.357 --> 00:29:36.150
It's my vacation.

00:29:36.275 --> 00:29:38.027
It starts today,

00:29:38.152 --> 00:29:43.992
and I'm gonna go down
to Louisiana

00:29:44.117 --> 00:29:45.868
to work on civil
rights cases."

00:29:45.993 --> 00:29:48.997
He said, "Well, I don't think
you should go.

00:29:49.122 --> 00:29:50.790
I think you should get
out of the cab

00:29:50.915 --> 00:29:54.877
and go inside and say
you've changed your mind.

00:29:55.002 --> 00:29:59.507
If you don't need a vacation,
then we don't want to give you one."

00:30:01.175 --> 00:30:05.430
Abe Fortas had just handled a
very famous case in the Supreme Court

00:30:05.555 --> 00:30:09.808
involving the right to counsel
in state court criminal proceedings.

00:30:11.060 --> 00:30:14.188
And I kinda got the mistaken,
naive idea

00:30:14.313 --> 00:30:16.815
there was gonna be a lot
of that kind of thing at the law firm.

00:30:18.442 --> 00:30:22.238
(Fortas) At the time of
Gideon, I felt that every man--

00:30:22.363 --> 00:30:27.618
the rich, the poor, and the
poor as well as the rich,

00:30:27.743 --> 00:30:30.747
was entitled to the
benefit of counsel

00:30:30.872 --> 00:30:32.998
when he was defending himself

00:30:33.123 --> 00:30:37.878
against prosecution by the
mighty forces of the state.

00:30:38.253 --> 00:30:43.508
I thought, if this guy does
that, I want to be in this firm.

00:30:45.428 --> 00:30:47.930
And it didn't take
more than...

00:30:49.265 --> 00:30:51.100
a couple of weeks to
realize that

00:30:51.225 --> 00:30:54.020
they don't just sit around
doing this good work.

00:30:54.145 --> 00:30:58.523
This is a firm in the business
of making money.

00:30:58.648 --> 00:31:02.070
And I learned that the Arnold

00:31:02.862 --> 00:31:05.823
of Arnold, Fortas & Porter

00:31:05.948 --> 00:31:09.952
wouldn't allow the employment
of Black secretaries.

00:31:11.370 --> 00:31:15.040
Which, this horrified me.
I mean, I couldn't hardly believe it.

00:31:15.165 --> 00:31:18.795
But I said, okay, well, he's old
and he's gonna be gone soon--

00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:22.298
which was true, he was old,
and he did get gone.

00:31:22.423 --> 00:31:24.925
And then there was
Paul Porter,

00:31:25.050 --> 00:31:26.552
who was a drunk.

00:31:28.262 --> 00:31:29.930
So that leaves Fortas.

00:31:31.140 --> 00:31:35.143
I asked him where
he was going.

00:31:35.268 --> 00:31:37.897
And he said

00:31:38.022 --> 00:31:40.775
he's going to see
Lyndon Johnson

00:31:42.985 --> 00:31:45.988
about an appointment
to the Supreme Court.

00:31:47.532 --> 00:31:49.075
So I said, "Jesus."

00:32:08.970 --> 00:32:11.930
Gave it a lot of thought, and
I said, well, "Who do I want to be?"

00:32:12.055 --> 00:32:14.475
And if necessary,

00:32:14.600 --> 00:32:17.937
we must be willing to
fill up the jails

00:32:18.062 --> 00:32:19.938
all over the state of Georgia.

00:32:20.063 --> 00:32:22.525
-(demonstrators singing)
-(Policeman) C'mon, get up!

00:32:23.525 --> 00:32:24.985
(protesters)
♪ Turn me round ♪

00:32:25.110 --> 00:32:29.115
♪ Turn me round,
turn me round ♪

00:32:29.240 --> 00:32:31.033
♪ Keep on a-walkin'... ♪

00:32:31.158 --> 00:32:33.912
1964, two friends of mine,

00:32:34.037 --> 00:32:35.538
colleagues at Arnold,
Fortas & Porter,

00:32:35.663 --> 00:32:39.375
young men like myself,
told me about LCDC,

00:32:39.500 --> 00:32:41.210
the Lawyer's Constitutional
Defense Committee,

00:32:41.335 --> 00:32:44.797
which was sending lawyers
in the summer to the South,

00:32:44.922 --> 00:32:47.633
to help with the arrests that
essentially were resulting

00:32:47.758 --> 00:32:50.803
from all the civil rights
activity that was taking place.

00:32:50.928 --> 00:32:53.973
I was told that I was going to
be included, but I didn't know where.

00:32:54.098 --> 00:32:57.810
And a letter came that said, "You're
assigned to New Orleans, Louisiana."

00:32:57.935 --> 00:32:58.978
Which was a big
disappointment to me

00:32:59.103 --> 00:33:01.230
because I wanted
to go to Selma, Alabama,

00:33:01.355 --> 00:33:04.067
or Jackson, Mississippi, or
someplace that I had heard of,

00:33:04.192 --> 00:33:05.777
where things were happening.

00:33:05.902 --> 00:33:07.612
Of course, things were happening
here, I just didn't know it.

00:33:07.737 --> 00:33:10.407
(Bob Dylan)
♪ Far between sundown's finish ♪

00:33:10.532 --> 00:33:11.865
(Sobol)
That letter changed my life.

00:33:11.990 --> 00:33:15.745
♪ And midnight's broken toll ♪

00:33:15.870 --> 00:33:20.123
♪ We ducked inside the doorway
As thunder went crashing ♪

00:33:23.252 --> 00:33:26.672
♪ As the majestic
bells of bolts ♪

00:33:27.298 --> 00:33:29.008
(Sobol) I'd been there
for eight days,

00:33:29.133 --> 00:33:32.303
and I had gotten relief in the
school desegregation case

00:33:32.428 --> 00:33:35.013
in the face of
the worst judge in the South.

00:33:35.807 --> 00:33:38.308
And that was just one of several
things I did during three weeks.

00:33:39.602 --> 00:33:42.272
♪ Flashing for the warriors ♪

00:33:43.313 --> 00:33:46.067
♪ Whose strength is
not to fight ♪

00:33:47.693 --> 00:33:49.070
♪ Flashing for the refugees ♪

00:33:50.320 --> 00:33:52.157
(Sobol) I could just see
the impact I could have.

00:33:55.242 --> 00:34:01.248
♪ And for each and every
underdog soldier in the night ♪

00:34:01.248 --> 00:34:03.960
(Lolis Eric Elie)
When you have few Black lawyers,

00:34:04.085 --> 00:34:07.422
and even fewer Black lawyers
willing to take these cases,

00:34:07.547 --> 00:34:10.842
so it was crucial that folks
came in and were serious.

00:34:12.008 --> 00:34:15.345
The South was the battleground
for the nation at that point,

00:34:15.470 --> 00:34:17.890
and so it was, in a sense,
fashionable for a lawyer

00:34:18.015 --> 00:34:19.975
to come here for a couple of
weeks or a couple of months.

00:34:20.100 --> 00:34:23.562
A lot of the lawyers who were
being sent down by LCDC

00:34:23.687 --> 00:34:25.940
were also enjoying
the life in New Orleans,

00:34:26.065 --> 00:34:28.108
and bringing their wives
and different things.

00:34:28.233 --> 00:34:31.237
It seemed to me a little bit
of a messy situation

00:34:31.362 --> 00:34:35.032
in that I came away
with the firm idea

00:34:35.157 --> 00:34:37.160
that what they need is
permanent lawyers down there.

00:34:37.285 --> 00:34:39.203
and not people
passing through.

00:34:39.745 --> 00:34:43.582
While I cannot say why those lawyers
would not stay longer or do more,

00:34:43.707 --> 00:34:46.127
they absolutely had
their other responsibilities--

00:34:46.252 --> 00:34:49.088
for the people who stayed,
for the people who were serious,

00:34:49.213 --> 00:34:51.673
for the people
who took this work to heart,

00:34:51.798 --> 00:34:53.885
my father had infinite
respect for them,

00:34:54.010 --> 00:34:56.387
Richard Sobol
perhaps chief among them

00:34:56.512 --> 00:34:58.722
because he stayed.

00:34:58.847 --> 00:35:02.935
It's one thing to say, "I'm gonna go
down there and help those poor people,"

00:35:03.060 --> 00:35:05.938
as opposed to actually
taking the fight to heart

00:35:06.063 --> 00:35:08.565
and realizing that this
is an American struggle,

00:35:08.690 --> 00:35:10.777
and not merely a
Southern struggle.

00:35:10.902 --> 00:35:12.820
♪ The chimes of
freedom flashing ♪

00:35:12.945 --> 00:35:16.323
(Angela Davis) I have an ambivalent
relationship to the term "allies."

00:35:18.283 --> 00:35:21.828
Because when it comes to...

00:35:21.953 --> 00:35:24.123
challenging racism,

00:35:24.248 --> 00:35:27.418
I think white people
should know that they have

00:35:27.543 --> 00:35:33.382
as much of a stake
in purging this society of racism...

00:35:33.507 --> 00:35:35.092
(audience clapping)

00:35:35.217 --> 00:35:38.803
...as people who are
the immediate targets.

00:35:39.805 --> 00:35:41.973
(Male Reporter)
Why do you want to go to this school?

00:35:42.098 --> 00:35:44.602
(Young Girl) Well, I feel
that I have a chance too,

00:35:44.727 --> 00:35:47.188
to have an education...
(sniffles)

00:35:47.313 --> 00:35:48.813
...a good education.

00:35:48.938 --> 00:35:51.192
And not allowed to
stare at me.

00:35:52.943 --> 00:35:56.405
And I'm goin' back, if I
have-- they'll have to kill me.

00:35:56.530 --> 00:35:57.573
I'm... I'm...

00:35:57.698 --> 00:35:59.658
I'll die for my freedom.

00:36:03.537 --> 00:36:05.832
(jazz playing)

00:36:05.957 --> 00:36:09.252
(Sobol) He had been charged
with simple battery.

00:36:09.377 --> 00:36:13.380
We were giving, explicitly,
notice by Judge Leon

00:36:13.505 --> 00:36:15.215
that he could just
plead to that,

00:36:15.340 --> 00:36:16.425
he mentioned a small fine,

00:36:17.885 --> 00:36:22.180
not the maximum fine
in the statute,

00:36:22.305 --> 00:36:24.017
and you could walk out
of here today.

00:36:25.308 --> 00:36:30.063
And uh, he and his mother
didn't want to do that.

00:36:32.148 --> 00:36:34.193
Which is pretty extraordinary,
right there.

00:36:34.318 --> 00:36:38.155
Because, to this day,
all around the country...

00:36:39.282 --> 00:36:41.075
people are having to plead
guilty to things

00:36:41.200 --> 00:36:43.243
they don't feel they're
guilty about.

00:36:45.578 --> 00:36:46.830
It's a crime.

00:36:48.457 --> 00:36:51.585
(jazz blues continues)

00:36:58.883 --> 00:37:02.220
The judge said to the lawyer, me,

00:37:02.345 --> 00:37:04.307
"Anything else you
want to add?"

00:37:04.432 --> 00:37:07.435
And I will say,
"Yes. I want to add a demand

00:37:07.560 --> 00:37:10.103
for trial by jury."

00:37:10.228 --> 00:37:13.315
And, uh, he kind of scoffed
and said,

00:37:13.440 --> 00:37:15.985
"I'm gonna deny that.

00:37:18.028 --> 00:37:19.238
Let's proceed."

00:37:20.405 --> 00:37:21.865
And that day...

00:37:21.907 --> 00:37:23.575
(Sobol) We didn't just raise
civil rights issues in cases...

00:37:23.617 --> 00:37:24.618
...we proceeded.

00:37:24.743 --> 00:37:26.912
We represent-- like
any lawyer,

00:37:27.037 --> 00:37:30.207
raised every issue we possibly
could to help your client.

00:37:30.332 --> 00:37:34.670
One of them was the, uh,
Louisiana jury system at the time,

00:37:34.795 --> 00:37:39.300
which did not allow for juries
in any case

00:37:39.425 --> 00:37:42.010
unless the punishment
was more than two years.

00:37:42.887 --> 00:37:44.597
So he was going to be tried
before this judge

00:37:44.722 --> 00:37:46.473
that Perez had appointed.

00:37:47.725 --> 00:37:50.102
(court spectators chattering)

00:37:50.227 --> 00:37:52.270
(gavel bangs)

00:37:54.857 --> 00:37:56.483
(Sobol)
Bert, how old are you?

00:37:56.608 --> 00:37:58.235
(Bert) Fourteen.

00:37:58.360 --> 00:37:59.903
And what school do you go to?

00:38:00.028 --> 00:38:01.322
Boothville-Venice High.

00:38:01.447 --> 00:38:03.532
When did you enter
that school?

00:38:03.657 --> 00:38:06.243
About the week the
schools opened.

00:38:06.368 --> 00:38:09.497
Do you recall an incident
on October 18th, 1966,

00:38:09.622 --> 00:38:13.500
involving the defendant, Mr. Duncan,
and some boys on Route 23?

00:38:13.625 --> 00:38:14.918
Yes, sir.

00:38:15.043 --> 00:38:17.672
And me and my friend,
we was walkin' home.

00:38:17.797 --> 00:38:18.922
Who's your friend?

00:38:19.047 --> 00:38:20.340
Bernard Ste. Ann.

00:38:20.465 --> 00:38:22.677
Was there any reason to think
they wanted to fight?

00:38:24.428 --> 00:38:26.097
The way they was walkin' like.

00:38:26.222 --> 00:38:28.473
You know, they-- they came on the
side of the road where we was on.

00:38:28.598 --> 00:38:31.268
They hollered at us,
"What are y'all names?"

00:38:31.393 --> 00:38:34.397
We kept walkin'. We didn't
pay no attention to them.

00:38:34.522 --> 00:38:36.773
They got in front of us,
and they said,

00:38:36.898 --> 00:38:38.733
"We asked you yo' names."

00:38:38.858 --> 00:38:41.195
I said, "None of yo' business
what my name is."

00:38:41.570 --> 00:38:44.365
And that's when Gary saw
we're standin' up there, backed up...

00:38:44.490 --> 00:38:45.782
-Bernard.
-...and got out of the car.

00:38:45.823 --> 00:38:47.577
(Sobol) You stated
that they wanted to fight?

00:38:47.618 --> 00:38:48.660
Yes, sir.

00:38:48.785 --> 00:38:51.205
And what made you think
they wanted to fight?

00:38:51.330 --> 00:38:54.042
Because... the way
they was talking,

00:38:54.167 --> 00:38:56.585
sayin', "Yo' name is Bert?"

00:38:56.710 --> 00:38:58.795
And makin' fun of us.

00:38:58.920 --> 00:39:01.257
Had you been in a fight
in school with these boys,

00:39:01.382 --> 00:39:04.302
or any of these boys
who were on the road?

00:39:04.427 --> 00:39:06.470
I had one that day, is all.

00:39:06.595 --> 00:39:08.513
-You had a fight that day?
-Yes, sir.

00:39:09.140 --> 00:39:12.393
A boy hit me. He wanted
to jump me in the bathroom.

00:39:12.518 --> 00:39:14.145
Were these some of
the same boys?

00:39:14.270 --> 00:39:18.732
Yes, sir. Herman Landry and
Wayne Scarabin, they were in there.

00:39:18.857 --> 00:39:20.735
Gary said, "What's wrong, Bert?"

00:39:20.860 --> 00:39:24.238
And I said, "These boys.
They want to fight."

00:39:24.363 --> 00:39:26.990
He said, "Why do all y'all
want to fight, boy?"

00:39:27.115 --> 00:39:30.035
And Herman Landry said,
"We just want to know his name."

00:39:30.160 --> 00:39:33.705
And Gary said, "Well, best
ought for you just to go on home."

00:39:33.830 --> 00:39:35.707
And he touch him
on the elbow right there.

00:39:35.832 --> 00:39:37.292
(Sobol)
Touched him on the elbow?

00:39:37.417 --> 00:39:40.212
(Bert) We got in the car
and pulled off.

00:39:40.337 --> 00:39:44.133
And Herman Landry said, "My
people can put you in jail for that."

00:39:44.258 --> 00:39:46.802
-(courtroom spectators chattering)
-(gavel banging)

00:39:46.927 --> 00:39:49.555
(Sobol) Did it look to you
like Landry had been hurt?

00:39:49.680 --> 00:39:51.473
(Bert) No, sir.

00:39:51.515 --> 00:39:53.392
(Sobol) Did it look to you
as though Gary was trying to hit him?

00:39:53.433 --> 00:39:55.102
No.

00:39:55.143 --> 00:39:57.437
(Prosecutor) Could you see
all of the motions of his hands?

00:39:57.478 --> 00:39:58.855
(Bert) No, sir.

00:39:58.980 --> 00:40:02.568
I saw when he touched
him on the arm, that's all.

00:40:02.693 --> 00:40:05.612
That's the only time he
raised his hand.

00:40:05.737 --> 00:40:07.615
(Prosecutor) In other words,
you're sittin' in a car,

00:40:07.740 --> 00:40:09.742
and a man has his
back to the car,

00:40:09.867 --> 00:40:11.660
and you could see exactly
how he handled himself,

00:40:11.785 --> 00:40:13.203
through the man's back?

00:40:13.328 --> 00:40:15.622
(Bert) I could see from the
side, yes.

00:40:15.747 --> 00:40:17.750
(Prosecutor) And you could see
through the man?

00:40:17.875 --> 00:40:19.585
(Bert) I could see from the
side of him.

00:40:19.710 --> 00:40:21.378
(Prosecutor)
I have no further questions.

00:40:21.503 --> 00:40:24.005
My mama, she wanted
to speak her mind,

00:40:24.130 --> 00:40:26.592
And Mr. Sobol-- I remember
Mr. Sobol sayin',

00:40:26.717 --> 00:40:29.093
"Well, I can't put you
on the witness stand."

00:40:29.218 --> 00:40:30.972
'Cause she had too
much to say.

00:40:31.097 --> 00:40:32.473
(Prosecutor) Did you
threaten the four white boys

00:40:32.598 --> 00:40:34.475
that were on the side
of the road?

00:40:34.600 --> 00:40:36.643
(Gary) No.

00:40:36.685 --> 00:40:38.978
(Prosecutor) In other words, those boys
were lyin' when they took the stand?

00:40:39.020 --> 00:40:41.315
(Gary) They were lyin' when
they said I threatened them,

00:40:41.440 --> 00:40:44.610
and that I was meanin' to hurt
the boy when I touched him on the arm.

00:40:44.735 --> 00:40:47.613
If I wanted to hurt him,
I could have hurt him.

00:40:47.738 --> 00:40:50.657
(Prosecutor) Uh-huh. And did he
consent to your touchin' him on the arm?

00:40:50.782 --> 00:40:52.242
(Gary) Did he consent?

00:40:52.367 --> 00:40:54.453
(Prosecutor) Did he say, "Go
ahead and hit me?"

00:40:54.578 --> 00:40:55.662
(Gary) No.

00:40:57.287 --> 00:40:58.457
(Prosecutor) And did you have
contact with him in any way?

00:40:58.582 --> 00:41:00.458
(Gary)
Yes, I had contact with him.

00:41:00.583 --> 00:41:02.252
I touched him with my hand.

00:41:02.377 --> 00:41:04.045
(spectators chatter)

00:41:04.170 --> 00:41:07.842
I think I made a pretty
good case of...

00:41:07.967 --> 00:41:10.302
why they hadn't carried
their burden of proof.

00:41:10.928 --> 00:41:14.557
But Judge Leon had his,
uh, instructions,

00:41:14.682 --> 00:41:16.475
and he wasn't gonna
mess with Perez.

00:41:16.600 --> 00:41:19.060
And we lost the case.
We lost the case.

00:41:19.185 --> 00:41:21.313
It was all fixed.

00:41:21.438 --> 00:41:24.358
And so, I was just surprised--
I don't know, it's kind of silly.

00:41:24.483 --> 00:41:26.068
I was...

00:41:28.778 --> 00:41:30.530
I had a little bit of
surprise about it,

00:41:30.655 --> 00:41:33.867
although when I stopped to
think, "What the hell did I expect?"

00:41:33.992 --> 00:41:36.703
(blues music playing)

00:41:36.828 --> 00:41:39.582
(Gary) I felt like I coulda
just went through the floor.

00:41:39.707 --> 00:41:42.627
You know? I mean... I would...

00:41:42.752 --> 00:41:44.628
You know, I--

00:41:44.753 --> 00:41:46.672
I don't know how I felt...

00:41:47.673 --> 00:41:48.673
because...

00:41:52.093 --> 00:41:53.928
And I looked around, and...

00:41:58.725 --> 00:42:00.268
I seen...

00:42:07.025 --> 00:42:10.570
I was seein' my mom, and my
sisters, and everybody cryin'.

00:42:13.782 --> 00:42:16.118
It was cryin', and uh...

00:42:16.993 --> 00:42:18.995
I just felt like
I was goin' through the floor

00:42:19.120 --> 00:42:21.248
in that courthouse, you know?
I said, damn. Yeah.

00:42:23.417 --> 00:42:25.168
Oh, God, you know,
I'm just not--

00:42:25.293 --> 00:42:28.588
You know, what am I
gon' do now, you know?

00:42:28.713 --> 00:42:29.882
Mister Sobol, uh--

00:42:30.007 --> 00:42:31.675
He told me, he said, uh,

00:42:31.800 --> 00:42:33.218
"Don't worry about it," he say.

00:42:34.637 --> 00:42:37.723
"We gonna, uh, we gonna get
you outta here," he said.

00:42:37.848 --> 00:42:39.850
"I got everything.
We gonna appeal it."

00:42:39.975 --> 00:42:43.020
(Lolis Eric Elie) Merely being
Black in this country

00:42:43.145 --> 00:42:45.563
is a political act.

00:42:45.688 --> 00:42:48.567
Walking down the street
as a Black person

00:42:48.692 --> 00:42:51.778
subjects you to a kind of
political scrutiny

00:42:51.903 --> 00:42:55.448
that has nothing to do with your
mission of going to buy a loaf of bread,

00:42:55.573 --> 00:42:58.160
or even, for that matter,
going to rob a liquor store.

00:42:58.285 --> 00:43:01.788
Whatever it is you're doing has a
kind of racial politics embedded in it.

00:43:03.415 --> 00:43:07.585
And to understand what Gary
Duncan did in the absence of race,

00:43:07.710 --> 00:43:11.465
in the absence of an understanding of
the civil rights movement of that era,

00:43:11.590 --> 00:43:16.262
is to fundamentally misinterpret
the nature of his arrest and trial.

00:43:16.887 --> 00:43:20.473
The reason Gary Duncan is such
an exceptional human being

00:43:20.598 --> 00:43:23.560
is that his position was,
"I have done nothing wrong,

00:43:23.685 --> 00:43:26.397
yet I have been arrested
and tried for it."

00:43:27.898 --> 00:43:30.692
And there is, of course, the
shame of this Land of the Free

00:43:30.817 --> 00:43:33.653
boasting the largest prison
population on the planet,

00:43:33.778 --> 00:43:36.740
of which the descendants
of the enslaved

00:43:36.865 --> 00:43:38.658
make up the largest share."

00:43:39.117 --> 00:43:43.830
There were a whole lot more
people who were not like Gary Duncan

00:43:43.955 --> 00:43:46.750
than there were people
who were like him.

00:43:46.875 --> 00:43:48.668
And that's why this case
is so crucial.

00:43:48.793 --> 00:43:51.463
The question: What happens
when someone actually stands forward

00:43:51.588 --> 00:43:53.298
to assert these rights?

00:43:53.548 --> 00:43:57.302
And Leander Perez's example
is that, well, when that happens,

00:43:57.427 --> 00:44:00.513
we remind them that those
rights do not pertain to him.

00:44:01.265 --> 00:44:04.685
And Richard Sobol, of course,
was saying, "Yes, they do."

00:44:05.435 --> 00:44:07.688
According to the Constitution
and the Amendments

00:44:07.813 --> 00:44:10.273
and the recently-passed
Civil Rights Act,

00:44:10.398 --> 00:44:12.735
they do indeed pertain
as much to Gary Duncan

00:44:13.735 --> 00:44:16.697
as to anybody else in the
United States of America.

00:44:16.822 --> 00:44:19.867
(Sobol) The judge would
sentence Duncan to prison.

00:44:19.992 --> 00:44:23.787
Actually, 60 days in prison,
um, and a fine.

00:44:23.912 --> 00:44:27.248
I was intent on appealing,
particularly on the jury issue.

00:44:27.373 --> 00:44:31.837
He presented the case
to the state of Louisiana,

00:44:31.962 --> 00:44:33.922
Supreme Court, and
they refused it.

00:44:34.047 --> 00:44:36.800
(Sobol) Each time we lost
a round of the case,

00:44:36.925 --> 00:44:38.593
the motions, the trial,
the appeal,

00:44:38.718 --> 00:44:42.013
Duncan was rearrested,
put in prison overnight.

00:44:42.138 --> 00:44:44.140
And each time, I had to go
down and get an order

00:44:44.265 --> 00:44:46.852
to get him out of prison
while the case was pending.

00:44:47.853 --> 00:44:51.940
I had come to the courthouse
in Plaquemines Parish,

00:44:52.065 --> 00:44:55.735
to get the bond that was
already in effect extended.

00:44:55.860 --> 00:44:58.905
I called Judge Leon first.

00:44:59.030 --> 00:45:01.867
I said, "Judge Leon,
I want to present to you

00:45:01.992 --> 00:45:04.953
an order for a stay
pending appeal."

00:45:05.953 --> 00:45:08.748
And I said, "When can I come?"

00:45:08.873 --> 00:45:11.710
He said, "Well, how 'bout
in two hours?"

00:45:11.835 --> 00:45:14.630
He was waiting for me. He said,
"What do you want me to sign?"

00:45:14.755 --> 00:45:17.967
I gave him the piece of paper,
he looked at it, he signed it,

00:45:18.092 --> 00:45:20.718
he said, "There you are."
And so I'm leaving his office,

00:45:20.843 --> 00:45:22.553
easy as pie, "Thank you, judge."

00:45:22.678 --> 00:45:25.515
And six steps away,

00:45:26.892 --> 00:45:29.185
there's a sheriff there...

00:45:30.187 --> 00:45:32.147
and behind him was
Leander Perez.

00:45:33.607 --> 00:45:35.400
To make sure
the sheriff did the job.

00:45:36.318 --> 00:45:40.947
They asked me if I was Sobol,
and I said yes.

00:45:41.072 --> 00:45:43.325
And he said,
"You're under arrest."

00:45:44.743 --> 00:45:47.370
And I was mystified. I didn't
know what in the world--

00:45:48.038 --> 00:45:51.833
I'd been in the court, I'd
gotten stays millions of times.

00:45:51.958 --> 00:45:53.418
Why are they arresting me?

00:45:53.543 --> 00:45:55.128
I don't know if it was 2:00 or
3:00 o'clock in the day,

00:45:55.253 --> 00:45:57.213
and they asked, "What y'all--
What's wrong with your--"

00:45:57.338 --> 00:45:59.800
He said, "We're waitin'." I'm
waitin' for my lawyer. I gotta see my--

00:45:59.925 --> 00:46:02.970
He said, "Man, your lawyer
locked up in jail back there!"

00:46:03.970 --> 00:46:07.975
I was afraid 'cause I, uh...

00:46:10.185 --> 00:46:12.813
I didn't want to be in a
jail overnight.

00:46:12.938 --> 00:46:16.400
They put him in jail.
They put him in jail.

00:46:16.525 --> 00:46:20.028
For practicing law
without a license.

00:46:20.153 --> 00:46:21.780
(Sobol) I was in the jail
with the white prisoners,

00:46:21.905 --> 00:46:25.408
and some guy started telling
me the story about another LCDC lawyer--

00:46:25.533 --> 00:46:26.992
I knew this LCDC lawyer--

00:46:27.118 --> 00:46:30.205
in Alabama, who had been
arrested for the same reason.

00:46:31.163 --> 00:46:34.793
I got one phone call, and I made
it to my colleagues in New Orleans,

00:46:34.918 --> 00:46:37.170
and before I knew it,
there was Juno.

00:46:37.295 --> 00:46:38.672
Big as life.

00:46:39.923 --> 00:46:41.717
(Gary) Juno came down.

00:46:41.842 --> 00:46:43.718
And he raised some hell
up in that--

00:46:43.843 --> 00:46:45.887
You could hear him hollerin'
all through that--

00:46:46.012 --> 00:46:47.513
the courthouse, man,
you know, he say,

00:46:47.638 --> 00:46:49.390
"We gonna sue every
damn body in here,

00:46:49.515 --> 00:46:51.518
from the trusty on up."

00:46:51.643 --> 00:46:56.190
I'm in front of the
Plaquemines Parish Jailhouse,

00:46:56.315 --> 00:46:59.902
it's gettin' dark, and I said,
"Look, if you'll bend down

00:47:00.027 --> 00:47:04.197
and look under the car, and
see that there's no devices visible..."

00:47:04.322 --> 00:47:06.867
They didn't take my belt.
As I recall, they took his belt away

00:47:06.992 --> 00:47:09.493
when they put him in jail, which
is standard procedure with prisoners.

00:47:09.618 --> 00:47:11.037
they didn't take my belt away.

00:47:11.162 --> 00:47:12.957
And the thing is,
I was never scared.

00:47:13.707 --> 00:47:15.833
I just-- If it was Plaquemines
Parish, I might have been scared.

00:47:15.958 --> 00:47:19.713
Because if I went anywhere,
somebody in the office

00:47:19.838 --> 00:47:21.840
always knew where I was.

00:47:21.965 --> 00:47:26.428
And the rule was,
if somebody--

00:47:26.553 --> 00:47:28.430
and this dates back
to the killing

00:47:28.555 --> 00:47:30.890
of the three civil rights
workers in Neshoba County--

00:47:31.015 --> 00:47:33.935
but the rule was, if you
didn't know where somebody was,

00:47:34.060 --> 00:47:36.480
and they didn't turn up
for say, an hour,

00:47:36.605 --> 00:47:38.107
you called the FBI right away.

00:47:38.232 --> 00:47:40.733
It showed how
dangerous it was.

00:47:42.152 --> 00:47:44.195
I drove to Neshoba County
a few times,

00:47:44.320 --> 00:47:47.740
and I remember knowing,
and being told

00:47:47.865 --> 00:47:51.578
that from the moment
I entered the county

00:47:51.703 --> 00:47:54.538
till the time I left, the
police and the sheriffs also knew

00:47:54.663 --> 00:47:57.250
exactly where I was, who I
was, and what I was doing.

00:48:01.128 --> 00:48:04.842
We came to this country
after a series of escapes.

00:48:04.967 --> 00:48:07.677
My mother and father
escaped from Poland

00:48:07.802 --> 00:48:11.890
to France in the 1930s
on forged Swedish passports,

00:48:12.015 --> 00:48:15.768
and then we left Paris
the night that Hitler came in.

00:48:15.893 --> 00:48:18.105
We escaped on the last train
out of Paris.

00:48:18.230 --> 00:48:20.773
And I remember asking
my mother one time

00:48:20.898 --> 00:48:22.067
while I was in Mississippi,
to say,

00:48:22.192 --> 00:48:26.322
"Well, Ma, when you were
escaping across Europe,

00:48:26.447 --> 00:48:28.198
were you scared?"

00:48:28.323 --> 00:48:32.452
She said, "Scared?
Every minute of every day!

00:48:32.577 --> 00:48:34.578
But what difference
does that make?

00:48:34.703 --> 00:48:36.290
You don't have a choice."

00:48:36.415 --> 00:48:38.708
I guess I theoretically
had a choice.

00:48:39.458 --> 00:48:42.712
In the most turbulent times--
not always--

00:48:42.837 --> 00:48:47.008
we went with a convoy
of three vehicles:

00:48:47.133 --> 00:48:49.593
a car in front, with guns,

00:48:49.718 --> 00:48:50.970
me in the middle,

00:48:51.095 --> 00:48:53.390
and a car behind us with guns.

00:48:54.933 --> 00:48:57.935
Because we knew
there was a chance

00:48:58.060 --> 00:49:01.857
that there'd be guns waiting
for us somewhere along the way.

00:49:01.982 --> 00:49:03.192
Yeah, I think I did a
wonderful thing.

00:49:05.110 --> 00:49:08.155
I really-- I'm proud, and happy,
and it's a high point of my life.

00:49:08.280 --> 00:49:09.530
But it's not so courageous.

00:49:09.655 --> 00:49:12.950
We were outsiders,
and so it was easy enough

00:49:13.075 --> 00:49:15.995
'cause you know, I could have
gotten on a plane any time, and moved.

00:49:16.120 --> 00:49:20.583
Even if I felt shielded
from some of the risks,

00:49:20.708 --> 00:49:22.960
I knew that was not true
of the people...

00:49:24.337 --> 00:49:27.132
of the people who lived there,
especially Black, but also white.

00:49:27.257 --> 00:49:30.177
The people with whom
and for whom we worked,

00:49:30.302 --> 00:49:31.970
they took real risks.

00:49:32.095 --> 00:49:36.558
(jazz music playing)

00:49:36.683 --> 00:49:39.143
(Robert Collins) My father
used to tell a story of the case

00:49:39.268 --> 00:49:42.480
that he was handling with his
law partner, Lolis Elie,

00:49:42.605 --> 00:49:44.023
over in rural Alabama.,

00:49:44.775 --> 00:49:47.152
They were driving
back to New Orleans.

00:49:47.277 --> 00:49:50.155
The car started to overheat
on the road.

00:49:50.280 --> 00:49:53.242
Dad said, "We probably should
pull over into a gas station

00:49:53.367 --> 00:49:55.160
and see if we can
get some help."

00:49:55.285 --> 00:49:57.662
Lolis said,
"Bob, after we won that case,

00:49:57.787 --> 00:49:59.538
the people over there
look so angry at us,

00:49:59.663 --> 00:50:02.042
I think it's really dangerous
to try and pull over.

00:50:02.167 --> 00:50:03.668
I think people are
following us.

00:50:03.793 --> 00:50:05.378
We're just gonna
take our chances

00:50:05.503 --> 00:50:08.882
and drive all the way home
to Louisiana in the overheated car."

00:50:10.675 --> 00:50:11.677
(jazz music playing)

00:50:13.428 --> 00:50:15.763
(Collins) It was very dangerous.
Every civil rights lawyer

00:50:15.888 --> 00:50:18.142
practicing in the South
during those days

00:50:18.267 --> 00:50:20.185
was at risk, white or Black.

00:50:20.310 --> 00:50:22.020
Even if you're a white lawyer,

00:50:22.145 --> 00:50:25.065
once you walk into a courtroom
with a Black lawyer,

00:50:25.190 --> 00:50:28.402
you're going to be seen as a
troublemaker just like them.

00:50:32.072 --> 00:50:34.157
(Lolis Eric Elie) A friend of
mine, he asked my father,

00:50:34.282 --> 00:50:35.783
"Well, you know,
if the police arrest you,

00:50:35.908 --> 00:50:38.203
what should you say,
what should you do?"

00:50:38.328 --> 00:50:41.457
My father said,
"You should say, 'Yes, sir, officer.'"

00:50:41.582 --> 00:50:44.125
They meant it as kind of a joke,
but the underlying truth was there,

00:50:44.250 --> 00:50:48.755
which is that, in the context of
that interaction with a police officer,

00:50:48.880 --> 00:50:50.923
you have no civil rights.

00:50:51.048 --> 00:50:54.302
Your best bet is to submit
in that circumstance,

00:50:54.427 --> 00:50:57.138
and attempt to fight it later,
where you can then call a lawyer.

00:51:00.267 --> 00:51:04.312
My father would often refer to
the lesson from the Dred Scott case,

00:51:04.437 --> 00:51:06.440
which is, "A Black man has no rights

00:51:06.565 --> 00:51:08.900
that a white man
is bound to respect."

00:51:09.025 --> 00:51:12.278
It does not say that
a Black man has no rights,

00:51:12.403 --> 00:51:15.490
it says that a Black man has no rights
that a white man is bound to respect.

00:51:17.283 --> 00:51:19.743
It has now become
somewhat fashionable

00:51:19.868 --> 00:51:22.997
for Black men to talk about
having "The Talk" with their sons,

00:51:23.122 --> 00:51:26.460
or having had The Talk
with their fathers.

00:51:26.585 --> 00:51:29.503
I never remember
having "The Talk."

00:51:29.628 --> 00:51:32.965
We were having that
talk all the time.

00:51:33.090 --> 00:51:34.092
It was the atmosphere.

00:51:34.217 --> 00:51:37.095
How often do you talk to your
parents about humidity?

00:51:37.220 --> 00:51:39.055
Well, it's always there.

00:51:47.397 --> 00:51:50.358
(Sobol) I could tell you every
dirty little thing they did,

00:51:51.317 --> 00:51:55.697
but each time, it wound up
with Gary going to jail.

00:52:01.368 --> 00:52:02.995
(Gary) I was working offshore.

00:52:04.288 --> 00:52:05.873
(Randy Newman)
♪ What has happened down here ♪

00:52:05.998 --> 00:52:07.500
♪ The wind has changed ♪

00:52:07.625 --> 00:52:11.128
(Gary) And they call our
Danny, told him to send me in.

00:52:11.253 --> 00:52:13.965
♪ Clouds roll in from the
North And it started to rain ♪

00:52:15.592 --> 00:52:17.677
(Gary)
They're, uh...

00:52:17.802 --> 00:52:21.222
♪ It rained real hard. It
rained for a real long time ♪

00:52:21.347 --> 00:52:23.140
They said, uh...

00:52:24.558 --> 00:52:27.187
♪ Six feet of water
in the streets of Evangeline ♪

00:52:30.232 --> 00:52:32.233
that they was comin'
to take me to jail.

00:52:32.358 --> 00:52:35.278
So... I said well,

00:52:36.070 --> 00:52:37.488
I'm not goin' to jail.

00:52:37.613 --> 00:52:39.282
I'm tired.

00:52:39.407 --> 00:52:40.367
So, uh...

00:52:41.575 --> 00:52:43.828
we're opening up the can.

00:52:45.330 --> 00:52:49.458
They came there 'bout an hour later,
and Calvin said, "Well, he's inside."

00:52:49.583 --> 00:52:51.920
They said, "Well, we come
to take him to jail."

00:52:52.045 --> 00:52:54.923
"He say he not goin' to jail,
so y'all have to wait,

00:52:55.048 --> 00:52:57.300
but y'all not comin'
in my house."

00:52:57.425 --> 00:52:59.343
The Sheriff Department kep'
callin'.

00:52:59.468 --> 00:53:02.388
"Hey, where that nigger's at?
Where that nigger is at?"

00:53:02.513 --> 00:53:04.307
So...

00:53:04.432 --> 00:53:07.310
♪ They're tryin' to
wash us away ♪

00:53:08.687 --> 00:53:10.397
That night I... gave up.

00:53:10.522 --> 00:53:14.233
I said, Well, you know,
I'm not going-- I was ready to die.

00:53:14.775 --> 00:53:16.945
I want to say, "Well,
y'all not gon' handcuff me."

00:53:17.070 --> 00:53:18.280
I got in the car.

00:53:19.447 --> 00:53:21.448
Got out of the car, and, uh,
Wilbur and them just said...

00:53:22.867 --> 00:53:26.328
"Man," he say, "I don't know
what they gonna do to you."

00:53:26.453 --> 00:53:28.248
He said, "We never experienced
nothin' like this."

00:53:28.373 --> 00:53:30.208
He said, "We've took people
that have killed people,

00:53:30.333 --> 00:53:31.292
and they never did this."

00:53:34.462 --> 00:53:38.300
They was holdin' the ferry up.
It was in the early mornin', now.

00:53:38.425 --> 00:53:39.800
'Bout 3:00 in the mornin'.

00:53:40.593 --> 00:53:42.428
And, uh,

00:53:42.553 --> 00:53:45.057
had the ferry runnin' just to
take me across the river.

00:53:45.182 --> 00:53:47.267
So when we get across the
river, the deal was,

00:53:47.392 --> 00:53:50.562
I was gonna get out of
F.J. and Wilbur's car

00:53:50.687 --> 00:53:52.647
and get in with the warden.

00:53:52.772 --> 00:53:54.273
Wilbur say, "I don't know
what they gonna do with you,"

00:53:54.398 --> 00:53:56.275
he said, "but we gonna
lock you up."

00:53:56.400 --> 00:54:00.322
He said, "I know we gon' lock you,
but after that, I'm not responsible."

00:54:00.863 --> 00:54:03.825
I really figured their
intention was onto killin' me.

00:54:03.950 --> 00:54:07.328
I said, well, hey, to myself,
I say if somethin' gonna happen,

00:54:07.453 --> 00:54:10.123
I'm gonna die
defending myself.

00:54:12.042 --> 00:54:14.377
♪ Louisiana ♪

00:54:15.045 --> 00:54:16.545
(John F. Kennedy) Your
children can't have the chance

00:54:16.670 --> 00:54:19.048
to develop whatever
talents they have.

00:54:19.173 --> 00:54:21.467
The only way that they're
going to get their rights

00:54:21.592 --> 00:54:23.345
is to go in the street
and demonstrate.

00:54:26.097 --> 00:54:27.307
♪ Louisiana ♪

00:54:28.558 --> 00:54:32.062
(Girl) They'll have to kill me.
I'll die for my freedom.

00:54:33.353 --> 00:54:36.440
♪ They're tryin' to
wash us away ♪

00:54:37.025 --> 00:54:38.652
♪ Louisiana ♪

00:54:40.528 --> 00:54:42.905
♪ Louisiana ♪

00:54:44.740 --> 00:54:46.785
(Lolis Eric Elie) Claude McKay
wrote: "If we must die,

00:54:46.910 --> 00:54:50.497
let it not be like hogs
pinned in an inglorious spot."

00:54:51.538 --> 00:54:54.167
In other words,
we're gonna fight like men.

00:54:54.833 --> 00:54:57.920
♪ They're tryin' to
wash us away ♪

00:55:05.010 --> 00:55:08.390
(Derfner) We all think, well,
you have a right to a trial by jury.

00:55:09.307 --> 00:55:12.727
The Bill of Rights gives you
a right to a jury trial,

00:55:12.852 --> 00:55:14.520
but for many years,

00:55:14.645 --> 00:55:17.232
that only applied
to the Federal Government,

00:55:17.357 --> 00:55:19.567
and it didn't apply
to the States.

00:55:19.692 --> 00:55:22.153
I could never quite
understand, myself,

00:55:22.278 --> 00:55:24.488
why applying the
Bill of Rights,

00:55:24.613 --> 00:55:27.492
which we think is our
fundamental American liberty--

00:55:27.617 --> 00:55:30.995
why applying it to the States
is such a crazy idea.

00:55:31.120 --> 00:55:33.832
I mean, it seems to me that
the opposite is the crazy idea.

00:55:33.957 --> 00:55:38.420
We have 51 legal systems
in this country.

00:55:38.545 --> 00:55:40.588
There's one legal system
for Federal courts,

00:55:40.713 --> 00:55:43.508
and there's 50 separate legal
systems for the State courts.

00:55:43.633 --> 00:55:47.762
Only lawyers and judges could figure
out some way to make that logical.

00:55:47.887 --> 00:55:50.182
You still read in Supreme
Court cases today,

00:55:51.223 --> 00:55:54.435
"Oh, this is trenching
on the states' prerogatives."

00:55:54.560 --> 00:55:56.562
You know, the states'
prerogatives, states' rights.

00:55:56.687 --> 00:55:59.357
We, more than, I think, any
other country in the world,

00:56:00.733 --> 00:56:03.318
have decided that
that the states

00:56:03.443 --> 00:56:07.782
retain some great autonomy
or power--

00:56:07.907 --> 00:56:09.492
"States' rights," you know?

00:56:09.617 --> 00:56:11.702
States' rights has usually
been, in our history,

00:56:11.827 --> 00:56:15.123
a cover for states
doing bad things.

00:56:16.540 --> 00:56:17.792
Taking the right to
jury trial,

00:56:17.917 --> 00:56:22.172
until the Gary Duncan case
came along,

00:56:22.297 --> 00:56:26.592
the rule was, if you're
charged in a federal court,

00:56:26.717 --> 00:56:28.302
you have a right to
a jury trial,

00:56:28.427 --> 00:56:30.555
and if you're charged in a
state court, you do or you don't

00:56:30.680 --> 00:56:32.390
depending on whatever the
state wants to do,

00:56:32.515 --> 00:56:35.810
all because of
the idiot notion we have

00:56:35.935 --> 00:56:38.480
that the states are one world

00:56:38.605 --> 00:56:40.523
and the federal government
is some different planet.

00:56:41.232 --> 00:56:44.527
(Sobol) And then it went to
Supreme Court.

00:56:44.652 --> 00:56:45.820
They're very strict about it.

00:56:45.945 --> 00:56:48.448
The don't want to be just a
regular appellate court.

00:56:48.573 --> 00:56:49.532
They're the final court.

00:56:51.325 --> 00:56:55.163
And so, I was expecting it
would take a long time, actually.

00:56:55.288 --> 00:56:58.792
But to my surprise,
they granted it quickly.

00:56:58.917 --> 00:57:01.585
I went to the Supreme Court
Library in New Orleans,

00:57:01.710 --> 00:57:04.422
which was a place I liked to
go a lot because it was quiet,

00:57:04.547 --> 00:57:08.425
and I worked on that
almost constantly.

00:57:08.550 --> 00:57:11.470
(Dixieland jazz music playing)

00:57:17.602 --> 00:57:20.813
(Sobol) I wrote my head off,
and so did others,

00:57:20.938 --> 00:57:22.648
mostly Nils Douglas.

00:57:22.773 --> 00:57:24.275
We would talk late
into the night

00:57:24.400 --> 00:57:27.612
in the bar of a Black
hotel nearby.

00:57:27.737 --> 00:57:32.325
We were, like in the trenches,
is how we felt.

00:57:32.450 --> 00:57:35.537
I used to run with Nils. We
were both runners at the time,

00:57:35.662 --> 00:57:39.248
and we'd run together to his house.

00:57:39.373 --> 00:57:40.667
We'd run next to each other.

00:57:40.792 --> 00:57:42.668
And we'd talk, going out.

00:57:42.793 --> 00:57:45.547
And we got to his house,
he'd say, "Come on.

00:57:45.672 --> 00:57:48.465
Come on in, Bessie's going
to want to feed you."

00:57:48.590 --> 00:57:52.428
First time I ever flew in
a plane, a jet!

00:57:52.553 --> 00:57:56.098
First time I ever left out
of the State of Louisiana.

00:57:56.223 --> 00:57:57.392
So...

00:57:57.517 --> 00:58:00.143
Me and my wife--
I felt pretty good, you know?

00:58:00.268 --> 00:58:03.105
And I met Mr. Sobol and his
wife, and his two kids,

00:58:03.230 --> 00:58:04.898
and we went to the
Supreme Court,

00:58:05.023 --> 00:58:07.693
and that was very interesting,

00:58:07.818 --> 00:58:11.280
seein' the nine justices,
you know?

00:58:11.405 --> 00:58:14.867
(Derfner) In the Gary Duncan
case, Sobol was arguing

00:58:14.992 --> 00:58:19.747
that the right to a jury trial
applies to cases in state court

00:58:19.872 --> 00:58:21.748
just as much as it does
in federal court.

00:58:21.873 --> 00:58:24.210
And that was revolutionary,
believe it or not.

00:58:25.587 --> 00:58:27.963
(Chief Justice Earl Warren)
Number 410.

00:58:28.088 --> 00:58:31.675
Gary Duncan, appellant,
versus Louisiana.

00:58:34.137 --> 00:58:35.930
Mr. Sobol?

00:58:36.055 --> 00:58:39.683
I was, uh, 29.

00:58:41.852 --> 00:58:44.980
(Sobol) Mr. Chief Justice,
and may it please the court,

00:58:45.105 --> 00:58:48.358
this case is here on appeal from
the Supreme Court of Louisiana,

00:58:49.277 --> 00:58:52.530
and it raises the issue that
was to a large extent assumed

00:58:52.655 --> 00:58:55.242
in the case
immediately preceding--

00:58:55.367 --> 00:58:59.203
namely, whether the Due Process
Clause of the 14th Amendment

00:58:59.328 --> 00:59:03.625
secures the right to trial by
jury in state criminal proceedings.

00:59:03.750 --> 00:59:06.002
That category includes
such serious crimes

00:59:06.127 --> 00:59:08.922
as aggravated battery
resulting from a breach of the peace,

00:59:09.047 --> 00:59:11.548
which is punishable
by 10 years,

00:59:11.673 --> 00:59:14.593
simple battery, the crime in
this case, punishable by two years,

00:59:14.718 --> 00:59:17.180
and aggravated assault,
punishable by two years.

00:59:17.305 --> 00:59:19.973
(Earl Warren) What did you say
about ten years?

00:59:20.098 --> 00:59:22.727
Is it possible it
would be possible

00:59:22.852 --> 00:59:27.690
to send a man to jail for ten
years without a jury trial?

00:59:27.815 --> 00:59:31.235
Yes, sir. There was no right
to trial by jury under Louisiana law

00:59:31.360 --> 00:59:32.653
on the charge against
the appellant.

00:59:32.778 --> 00:59:33.570
But notwithstanding...

00:59:33.695 --> 00:59:35.407
It was a friendly
Supreme Court.

00:59:36.407 --> 00:59:37.783
And, uh...

00:59:37.908 --> 00:59:41.412
not that I think Fortas would
give us any break,

00:59:41.537 --> 00:59:45.248
but the Supreme Court
had been recognizing

00:59:45.373 --> 00:59:47.960
one of these rights
after another.

00:59:48.085 --> 00:59:51.797
There was a period there that
we didn't, uh--

00:59:51.922 --> 00:59:55.802
"we," I mean the civil
rights advocates,

00:59:55.927 --> 00:59:57.095
didn't lose a single case.

00:59:59.055 --> 01:00:02.600
(Dorothy Wolbrette) The test
under due process is whether a jury

01:00:02.725 --> 01:00:05.978
is essential to a fair trial.

01:00:06.770 --> 01:00:09.773
Contrary to appellants' arguments,
recent decisions of this court--

01:00:09.898 --> 01:00:13.277
(Warren) What kind of trials
would that be, Miss Wolbrette?

01:00:15.028 --> 01:00:18.490
For a jury trial
that's essential to a fair trial?

01:00:19.450 --> 01:00:21.743
(Dorothy Wolbrette) What kind
of trial would it be? Oh, it's--

01:00:21.868 --> 01:00:24.497
(Warren) You say it's only--
it's only applicable to...

01:00:24.622 --> 01:00:29.210
to, uh... to cases where a
fair trial would be...would, uh...

01:00:29.335 --> 01:00:31.212
-(Wolbrette) No, no, no, I'm saying--
-...require a jury.

01:00:31.337 --> 01:00:33.882
No, sir, I'm saying that the
only test under due process

01:00:34.007 --> 01:00:39.137
is whether, uh, a jury trial
is essential to a fair trial.

01:00:39.262 --> 01:00:40.722
(Warren) When would that be?

01:00:42.432 --> 01:00:44.308
(Wolbrette) Oh, it-- you mean
in-- in any--

01:00:44.433 --> 01:00:46.893
I-I don't think it would be
necessary in any case,

01:00:47.018 --> 01:00:48.730
as far as a fair trial
is concerned.

01:00:48.855 --> 01:00:53.108
I believe that a judge
certainly can try any defendant fairly.

01:00:53.233 --> 01:00:58.823
There is no rational basis for declaring
that a judge cannot dispense justice

01:00:58.948 --> 01:01:01.908
with the same fairness
and impartiality

01:01:02.033 --> 01:01:06.538
which could be expected of a jury
acting under a judge's instructions,

01:01:06.663 --> 01:01:08.123
both as to the law
and the facts...

01:01:08.248 --> 01:01:10.710
-Certainly it cannot be--
-(Stewart) We're not talking about...

01:01:10.835 --> 01:01:16.465
dispensing justice as a generality,
we're talking about the particular

01:01:16.590 --> 01:01:19.635
function that a jury has in
finding the facts

01:01:19.760 --> 01:01:23.848
that 12 of a defendant's peers

01:01:23.973 --> 01:01:28.435
are perhaps better equipped
as fact finders than a single judge.

01:01:28.560 --> 01:01:31.772
(Fortas) Isn't there something
in the Magna Carta about juries?

01:01:31.897 --> 01:01:33.482
(Wolbrette laughs)
Your Honor,

01:01:33.607 --> 01:01:38.278
Magna Carta did not guarantee
jury trial to anybody.

01:01:38.403 --> 01:01:39.863
-(Fortas) I think I
have a very--

01:01:39.988 --> 01:01:42.867
pretty-pretty good idea
what the Magna Carta says.

01:01:42.992 --> 01:01:44.743
-(Wolbrette) The English tradition
of the general right of jury trial...

01:01:44.868 --> 01:01:48.455
(Fortas) Yes, ma'am, that does indicate
that at least there were some old fellas,

01:01:48.580 --> 01:01:51.583
uh, in the 13th century
who thought that the jury

01:01:51.708 --> 01:01:53.878
was an important institution in a
man's search for freedom and fairness--

01:01:54.003 --> 01:01:56.922
(Wolbrette) It's valuable!
We don't deny!

01:01:57.047 --> 01:01:58.588
They just laughed.

01:01:58.632 --> 01:02:00.843
Laughed them and Perez
right on out of there, you know?

01:02:00.885 --> 01:02:04.305
It was just the most remarkable thing,
and people were looking around,

01:02:04.347 --> 01:02:06.223
and I'm looking back at Mike.

01:02:06.348 --> 01:02:10.603
It was a comical moment,
for me certainly,

01:02:10.728 --> 01:02:12.730
and for I think everybody.

01:02:13.355 --> 01:02:14.982
It was kind of tittering.

01:02:17.235 --> 01:02:18.652
(Sobol) We won in the
Supreme Court.

01:02:20.487 --> 01:02:21.988
What's now a very famous
decision called Duncan against Louisiana

01:02:22.113 --> 01:02:26.743
ruled that the right to trial
by jury does apply in state courts.

01:02:26.868 --> 01:02:28.495
(Gary) Mr. Sobol
called me on the phone

01:02:28.620 --> 01:02:31.707
and told me about the case,
and that we won the case.

01:02:31.832 --> 01:02:33.960
We had the right for
the six-man jury.

01:02:34.085 --> 01:02:36.753
I feel good about it.
You know?

01:02:36.878 --> 01:02:41.883
I can hold my head up,
stick my chest out. You know?

01:03:20.047 --> 01:03:23.425
Duncan vs.
Louisiana was a case

01:03:23.550 --> 01:03:26.220
that could have come along
anywhere, in any state.

01:03:28.347 --> 01:03:31.600
It was part of a process that
was going on throughout the country.

01:03:31.725 --> 01:03:34.728
Sobol vs. Perez was...

01:03:36.063 --> 01:03:40.860
a case about bringing the
Constitution to play

01:03:40.985 --> 01:03:43.528
in the Deep South states,

01:03:43.653 --> 01:03:47.533
and in overthrowing complete
white supremacy,

01:03:47.658 --> 01:03:48.910
that sort of thing.

01:03:49.035 --> 01:03:50.995
(Sobol) I filed suit
against Perez

01:03:51.120 --> 01:03:53.622
right after I was arrested
in the first place.

01:03:55.332 --> 01:03:57.960
Even by Leander
Perez's standards,

01:03:58.085 --> 01:04:00.253
that was a pretty
outrageous act.

01:04:01.213 --> 01:04:03.423
(Collins) If he went
and arrested him himself,

01:04:03.548 --> 01:04:06.010
he wanted the symbolism
and the press to cover it.

01:04:06.760 --> 01:04:09.930
That was just the ultimate
personification

01:04:10.055 --> 01:04:13.517
of his white supremacy,
his anti-Semitism,

01:04:13.642 --> 01:04:17.397
his hatred of Jews,
hatred of Blacks.

01:04:17.522 --> 01:04:21.067
That was as much trying to
neutralize Richard Sobol as a warning

01:04:21.192 --> 01:04:23.903
to other lawyers to
"stay out of my parish

01:04:24.028 --> 01:04:27.030
if you're going to challenge
the natural order of things,

01:04:27.155 --> 01:04:29.450
and the natural order of
things is whatever I say it is."

01:04:31.952 --> 01:04:33.913
(Vocalist)
♪ Fear no danger! Shun no labor! ♪

01:04:34.038 --> 01:04:35.998
♪ Lift up rifle, pike,
and saber! ♪

01:04:36.123 --> 01:04:37.165
-♪ To arms! ♪
-♪ To arms! ♪

01:04:37.290 --> 01:04:38.375
-♪ To arms! ♪
-♪ To arms! ♪

01:04:38.500 --> 01:04:40.753
♪ To arms in Dixie! ♪

01:04:40.878 --> 01:04:42.880
♪ Shoulder pressing
Close to shoulder... ♪

01:04:43.005 --> 01:04:45.048
Perez was enough Klan himself.

01:04:45.173 --> 01:04:48.552
You know, he didn't have to
put no sheet on, he--

01:04:48.677 --> 01:04:50.553
he got on national
television and said,

01:04:50.678 --> 01:04:52.557
you know,
if the Federal Government

01:04:52.682 --> 01:04:54.517
would, uh, send
people down here,

01:04:54.642 --> 01:04:57.978
or Martin Luther King
would come down, what he would do,

01:04:58.103 --> 01:05:00.690
or the NAACP,
what he was going to do.

01:05:00.815 --> 01:05:05.945
He had put fences around Fort St. Philip
on the east bank of the river.

01:05:06.070 --> 01:05:09.073
He thought, "Hey, those niggers
come down here, we gonna take 'em,

01:05:09.198 --> 01:05:12.285
put 'em over there, let the
snakes and the mosquitoes eat 'em up."

01:05:12.410 --> 01:05:13.953
-♪ To arms! ♪
-♪ To arms! ♪

01:05:14.078 --> 01:05:17.582
♪ And conquer peace
For Dixie! ♪

01:05:18.373 --> 01:05:21.543
(Reporter) The only way to reach
Fort St. Philip is by boat, helicopter,

01:05:21.668 --> 01:05:23.963
or on foot through the swamps,
if you don't mind the snakes.

01:05:24.088 --> 01:05:27.633
(Man) Perez built a jail
on an alligator-infested island

01:05:27.758 --> 01:05:30.552
in the middle of the Mississippi River,
where he was going to put anybody

01:05:30.677 --> 01:05:32.847
involved with civil rights
activities. (chuckles)

01:05:32.972 --> 01:05:36.933
(Perez) We are building strong
fences around it, which--

01:05:37.058 --> 01:05:41.147
the top of which will be electrified,
so as to prevent any attempt at escapes.

01:05:41.272 --> 01:05:42.940
(Sobol) Being arrested
was one thing,

01:05:43.065 --> 01:05:46.110
but I didn't want to spend
the night on that island.

01:05:46.235 --> 01:05:48.195
(Reporter) Plans call
for putting the demonstrators

01:05:48.320 --> 01:05:51.198
in the old powder magazines
beneath the concrete gun emplacements.

01:05:51.323 --> 01:05:54.827
No snakes were in evidence,
but Perez says they're there,

01:05:54.952 --> 01:05:57.413
and the the mosquitoes
are almost a year-round problem.

01:05:57.538 --> 01:06:01.542
How many people do you think
you could accommodate in here?

01:06:01.667 --> 01:06:03.543
How many could you
incarcerate?

01:06:03.585 --> 01:06:05.963
Well, now, that depends on how
many people come into Plaquemines Parish

01:06:06.005 --> 01:06:09.717
to try and break down our
local government and cause trouble.

01:06:11.135 --> 01:06:13.053
There's no limit in number.

01:06:13.428 --> 01:06:19.018
If they choose to come in tens
and twenties, we'll take care of them.

01:06:19.143 --> 01:06:21.937
-What about--?
-If they choose to come in hundreds...

01:06:22.062 --> 01:06:25.107
we'll pack 'em in here
just the same.

01:06:25.232 --> 01:06:27.233
(Reporter) There's never been
a racial demonstration

01:06:27.358 --> 01:06:30.863
in Perez's Plaquemines Parish,
but if they come, officials are ready.

01:06:30.988 --> 01:06:35.242
Two cattle boats are even now standing
by at Fort Jackson across the river

01:06:35.367 --> 01:06:38.745
ready to haul the demonstrators
to the Fort St. Philip stockade.

01:06:38.870 --> 01:06:41.623
It was a very
persuasive thing,

01:06:41.748 --> 01:06:44.210
but not-- not so
persuasive that...

01:06:46.920 --> 01:06:48.213
I didn't come.

01:06:48.338 --> 01:06:52.718
(Derfner) When I was growing
up, everybody that I knew

01:06:52.843 --> 01:06:57.138
was in favor of civil rights.

01:06:57.263 --> 01:07:02.687
When I was a kid, I knew that

01:07:02.812 --> 01:07:07.232
Jackie Robinson was good,
and the South was bad,

01:07:07.357 --> 01:07:09.443
except Alabama,
which was worse.

01:07:10.152 --> 01:07:14.907
(Rabbi Prinz) I was the rabbi
of the Jewish community in Berlin

01:07:15.032 --> 01:07:16.617
under the Hitler regime.

01:07:18.077 --> 01:07:20.203
I learned many things.

01:07:21.705 --> 01:07:25.500
The most important thing
that I learned in my life

01:07:25.625 --> 01:07:31.215
is that bigotry and hatred

01:07:31.340 --> 01:07:34.843
are not the most
urgent problems.

01:07:34.968 --> 01:07:38.555
The most shameful and
the most tragic problem

01:07:38.680 --> 01:07:40.850
is silence.

01:07:40.975 --> 01:07:43.727
Jews who survived
the Holocaust,

01:07:43.852 --> 01:07:47.230
and close descendants of them

01:07:48.315 --> 01:07:50.692
I think there's a
feeling about

01:07:53.237 --> 01:07:57.240
helping Black people who

01:07:59.743 --> 01:08:02.622
kinda have a bad
situation going.

01:08:04.080 --> 01:08:06.125
(Elie) Most of the lawyers
that have been willing to help us

01:08:06.250 --> 01:08:07.710
have been Jewish lawyers.

01:08:08.460 --> 01:08:11.463
And we feel very close to
Jews. Certainly I do.

01:08:11.588 --> 01:08:14.258
And the reason is because
these people see

01:08:14.383 --> 01:08:17.553
that the Negro is nothing more
than a buffer for Jewish people.

01:08:17.678 --> 01:08:22.265
(Elie) The mere fact that
there were so many Jewish lawyers

01:08:22.390 --> 01:08:24.768
who are able to come down
and be a part of this,

01:08:24.893 --> 01:08:26.520
and there were so few
Black lawyers

01:08:26.645 --> 01:08:30.398
makes clear the differences in
how Jews were treated by white gentiles,

01:08:30.523 --> 01:08:33.277
and how Blacks were treated
by white gentiles.

01:08:34.152 --> 01:08:38.115
So while there may be some connections,
and indeed there have been Jews

01:08:38.240 --> 01:08:41.327
lynched in this country
for being Jewish,

01:08:42.787 --> 01:08:46.832
the truth is that our struggles
have been very, very different.

01:08:47.373 --> 01:08:50.920
Jews were allowed to do things that Black
people couldn't even think about doing.

01:08:51.045 --> 01:08:54.047
We're talking about in the '60s here,
so when we say the Holocaust,

01:08:54.172 --> 01:08:57.635
we may be talking about
maybe 20 years earlier,

01:08:57.760 --> 01:09:00.595
so the memory of the Holocaust
was still fresh.

01:09:00.720 --> 01:09:03.807
You get into a dangerous area
when you start saying,

01:09:03.932 --> 01:09:05.350
" OK, well my pain's worse

01:09:05.475 --> 01:09:06.768
than your pain, you know.

01:09:06.893 --> 01:09:09.897
Let's compare pain and let's
see whose pain is worse."

01:09:10.022 --> 01:09:12.567
It's-- it's different.
It's-- it's different.

01:09:14.150 --> 01:09:17.738
We were there
helping tear down

01:09:18.988 --> 01:09:21.325
their system of
government and society.

01:09:21.450 --> 01:09:24.912
So, the civil rights workers
were doing it,

01:09:25.370 --> 01:09:29.833
but we were helping them make
the destruction work, that we--

01:09:29.958 --> 01:09:32.502
we were the ones going to the
courts and getting the court orders,

01:09:32.627 --> 01:09:35.047
and the court orders were
telling the-- the segregationists

01:09:35.088 --> 01:09:37.465
or the government what they
had to do and couldn't do,

01:09:37.675 --> 01:09:39.427
so of course they wanted
to get rid of us.

01:09:40.802 --> 01:09:44.348
And that's why the Shakespeare
quote, let's kill all the lawyers.

01:09:44.473 --> 01:09:48.352
The first thing we do let's
kill all the lawyers... yeah.

01:09:50.980 --> 01:09:54.692
Any system knows
that the lawyers

01:09:54.817 --> 01:09:59.947
are integral with making the
system work or not work.

01:10:00.072 --> 01:10:04.243
So if you control the system, you want
to make sure you control the legal system.

01:10:06.203 --> 01:10:11.917
It was a system of-- of
pretend law in Louisiana, Mississippi,

01:10:12.042 --> 01:10:15.295
Alabama, Georgia, Virginia,
other states,

01:10:15.420 --> 01:10:19.925
and that system of pretend law,
which they could keep up as long as

01:10:20.050 --> 01:10:24.472
they weren't scrutinized by the
outside world and the Federal courts,

01:10:24.597 --> 01:10:29.183
we were bringing an outside
source of greater authority

01:10:29.308 --> 01:10:32.228
called the U.S. Supreme Court
and the Federal courts

01:10:32.353 --> 01:10:36.067
and the U.S. Constitution,
bringing that to bear

01:10:36.192 --> 01:10:39.362
on the systems of pretend law

01:10:39.487 --> 01:10:41.238
that were prevailing
in the Southern states.

01:10:41.363 --> 01:10:45.158
And that's what Sobol vs.
Perez, that case, was about.

01:10:45.283 --> 01:10:48.245
(Sobol) We filed a case
in Federal court New Orleans

01:10:48.370 --> 01:10:51.957
to enjoin my prosecution
and to declare any prohibition

01:10:52.082 --> 01:10:54.835
on the activities of outside
civil rights lawyers

01:10:54.960 --> 01:10:57.378
unconstitutional as violating
not only the lawyers' rights...

01:10:57.503 --> 01:11:00.967
If we lost, I'd be in
jail the next day.

01:11:02.050 --> 01:11:07.640
Me and Duncan were the plaintiffs,
and this defendant was Perez.

01:11:07.765 --> 01:11:10.475
There was a trial, and the
trial lasted for three weeks.

01:11:10.600 --> 01:11:12.853
And every day, there was a
story in the Times-Picayune

01:11:12.978 --> 01:11:14.480
about what was going on
in the courtroom.

01:11:14.605 --> 01:11:17.190
We were all jealous of Sobol
'cause he got all the headlines,

01:11:17.315 --> 01:11:20.693
and all he had to do was spend
a couple of hours in jail. (chuckles)

01:11:20.818 --> 01:11:26.742
(courtroom chatter, footsteps)
-(Bailiff) All rise.

01:11:26.867 --> 01:11:30.287
(courtroom chatter continues)
(gavel bangs)

01:11:30.412 --> 01:11:32.622
(Bronstein) I would now like
to call Mr. Sobol to the stand.

01:11:32.747 --> 01:11:34.833
State your name
and address for the record.

01:11:34.958 --> 01:11:37.627
(Sobol) Richard B. Sobol. Six-oh-five
Common Street, New Orleans.

01:11:37.752 --> 01:11:39.463
(Bronstein) Where did you
serve as a volunteer,

01:11:39.588 --> 01:11:41.298
and with whom were
you associated?

01:11:41.340 --> 01:11:44.092
(Sobol) I was working with the
law firm of Collins, Douglas, and Eli.

01:11:44.133 --> 01:11:48.347
(Dowling) There is no doubt
about it in your mind that you informed

01:11:48.472 --> 01:11:52.058
Judge Leon very early in the proceedings
that you were an out-of-state attorney?

01:11:52.183 --> 01:11:54.395
(Sobol) At the very first minute
when we sat down at the table,

01:11:54.520 --> 01:11:56.688
that was the first thing
Mr. Collins said.

01:11:56.813 --> 01:12:01.235
A small part of the testimony
had to do with me and Duncan

01:12:01.360 --> 01:12:02.485
and what happened, yeah.

01:12:04.362 --> 01:12:07.950
Ninety percent had to do with, how
does a Black person get a lawyer

01:12:08.075 --> 01:12:10.910
in this state if he wants to
assert rights under Federal law?

01:12:11.035 --> 01:12:12.788
And it was very interesting.

01:12:12.913 --> 01:12:15.957
(Bronstein) Would you briefly describe
the duties of the volunteer lawyers?

01:12:16.082 --> 01:12:18.627
(Sobol) The volunteer lawyers would
come down for a three-week period only,

01:12:18.752 --> 01:12:20.253
usually on their vacations,

01:12:20.378 --> 01:12:21.838
and do whatever it was
that Mr. Douglas and...

01:12:21.963 --> 01:12:24.550
(Sobol) The one thing
that Negro leadership in the South

01:12:24.675 --> 01:12:27.552
is rightly disinclined to
accept is white people telling them

01:12:27.677 --> 01:12:29.805
any further what to do
and what not to do,

01:12:29.930 --> 01:12:33.142
even well-meaning and
committed white liberal Northerners.

01:12:33.267 --> 01:12:35.727
(Sobol) The leadership is
theirs, and so are the choices,

01:12:35.852 --> 01:12:38.438
including the option not to
work with any white lawyers at all.

01:12:38.563 --> 01:12:40.815
(Provensal) How is the Duncan
case a civil rights case?

01:12:40.857 --> 01:12:43.027
(Sobol) The Duncan case is a civil
rights case because this court ordered

01:12:43.068 --> 01:12:45.737
the desegregation of the
Plaquemines Parish schools,

01:12:45.862 --> 01:12:49.365
and the officials of the parish were
contemptuous of that court order

01:12:49.490 --> 01:12:51.702
and encouraged violations
of that court order.

01:12:51.827 --> 01:12:54.538
(Woman) When I answered the
phone, it was a woman's voice.

01:12:54.663 --> 01:12:58.958
She said, "If you take those
Negroes into our new white school,

01:12:59.083 --> 01:13:01.712
it will be blown to pieces,
with you in it."

01:13:01.837 --> 01:13:03.505
(Sobol) ...lawlessness
in Plaquemines Parish

01:13:03.630 --> 01:13:06.258
by encouraging students
not to go to school.

01:13:06.383 --> 01:13:08.718
But then,
the first criminal prosecution

01:13:08.843 --> 01:13:12.555
arising out of all this was
not Mr. Perez, nor the parents,

01:13:12.680 --> 01:13:14.642
who were encouraging their
boys to stay out of school,

01:13:14.767 --> 01:13:17.853
but Gary Duncan, who had
stopped by the side of the road

01:13:17.978 --> 01:13:20.230
where his cousin and nephew
were about to be attacked

01:13:20.355 --> 01:13:22.357
for attending the
desegregated school.

01:13:22.482 --> 01:13:24.860
And the forces of law and
order were brought to bear

01:13:24.985 --> 01:13:27.028
not on those
who are trying to prevent...

01:13:27.153 --> 01:13:29.405
(Sobol) Solely by virtue
of being Negro children

01:13:29.530 --> 01:13:32.075
who had transferred to a white
school under the court order.

01:13:32.200 --> 01:13:34.410
(Provensal) The integration of the
schools was carried out very peacefully.

01:13:34.535 --> 01:13:36.122
-Isn't that true?
-(Sobol) I don't think that

01:13:36.247 --> 01:13:38.540
the district attorney saying
that these orders of this court

01:13:38.665 --> 01:13:40.583
was a disaster like
Hurricane Betsy

01:13:40.708 --> 01:13:44.588
is a peaceful carrying-out
of the orders of this court.

01:13:46.465 --> 01:13:49.217
(Bronstein) Would you speak into the
microphone so that everyone can hear you?

01:13:49.342 --> 01:13:54.013
(Gary) Gary Duncan. I live at
Boothville, Louisiana.

01:13:54.138 --> 01:13:56.600
-(Bronstein) How old are you, Mr. Duncan?
-(Gary) 20.

01:13:56.725 --> 01:13:59.060
(Bronstein) Why did you go
to New Orleans to get a lawyer?

01:13:59.185 --> 01:14:03.523
(Gary) Well, I never had any intention of
getting a lawyer in Plaquemines Parish

01:14:03.648 --> 01:14:07.610
because I figured all they were going
to do for me was to plead guilty.

01:14:07.735 --> 01:14:09.070
(Bronstein) Would you have
trusted any lawyer

01:14:09.195 --> 01:14:11.157
in Plaquemines Parish to
take your case?

01:14:11.282 --> 01:14:12.282
No,

01:14:13.782 --> 01:14:15.243
because the majority of the
lawyers are in politics.

01:14:15.368 --> 01:14:19.288
(Bronstein) Before the battery case
went to trial, did Mr. Sobol talk to you

01:14:19.413 --> 01:14:21.583
about requesting a jury trial?
-(Gary) Yes.

01:14:21.708 --> 01:14:25.837
I told him I believe I would stand a
better chance at winning the case,

01:14:25.962 --> 01:14:28.715
you know, with a jury trial.

01:14:28.840 --> 01:14:30.883
(Bronstein) We would like to
call Mr. Lolis Elie.

01:14:31.008 --> 01:14:33.553
State your full name and
address for the record, please.

01:14:33.678 --> 01:14:36.097
(Elie) My name is
Lolis Edward Elie.

01:14:36.222 --> 01:14:39.935
I live at 1035 Short Street,
New Orleans, Louisiana.

01:14:40.060 --> 01:14:42.145
(Bronstein) What kind of work
do you do, Mr. Elie?

01:14:42.270 --> 01:14:44.480
(Elie) I am an
attorney-at-law.

01:14:44.605 --> 01:14:48.693
(Bronstein) Mr. Elie, have you any
experience in handling civil rights cases?

01:14:48.818 --> 01:14:52.822
(Elie) Yes, I've handled
civil rights cases since the year 1960.

01:14:52.947 --> 01:14:57.870
My best estimate is that we have
handled between 500 and 600 civil rights...

01:14:57.995 --> 01:15:00.080
(Elie) My office was involved
in the Duncan case

01:15:00.205 --> 01:15:04.250
that was in the United States
Supreme Court and argued last week.

01:15:04.375 --> 01:15:08.172
(Bronstein) Mr. Elie, do you have an
opinion as to whether local Negroes

01:15:08.297 --> 01:15:12.050
active in civil rights have
trust or confidence in local lawyers?

01:15:12.175 --> 01:15:14.595
(Elie) Civil rights workers
and other people involved

01:15:14.720 --> 01:15:17.513
have no confidence whatsoever
in white attorneys

01:15:17.638 --> 01:15:18.765
in the state of Louisiana.

01:15:20.933 --> 01:15:22.685
(Bronstein) Have you ever attempted
to enlist the assistance of local counsel?

01:15:22.810 --> 01:15:25.772
(Elie) No, I have not because I
talked to local counsel,

01:15:25.897 --> 01:15:29.568
and their attitude
was clearly antagonistic.

01:15:29.693 --> 01:15:32.570
They talked about what would happen
to them if they attempted to help us.

01:15:32.695 --> 01:15:37.658
The lawyers for Perez keep talking about
all these white lawyers of good will

01:15:37.783 --> 01:15:40.578
who, if they had only been asked,
would have been glad to come forward.

01:15:40.703 --> 01:15:44.457
"And, Mr. Eli, did you not even
bother to ask these lawyers?"

01:15:44.582 --> 01:15:47.752
But of course, the whole time
they're asking this,

01:15:47.877 --> 01:15:49.712
they got to know
they're lying.

01:15:49.753 --> 01:15:52.090
(Elie) The white attorneys realized
that we were not making money.

01:15:52.132 --> 01:15:54.635
You would talk to people
about taking these cases,

01:15:54.760 --> 01:15:56.052
and they would think
you were crazy.

01:15:56.177 --> 01:15:57.930
(Bronstein)
Realizing this increased need,

01:15:58.055 --> 01:16:00.890
did you or the members of your
firm do anything?

01:16:01.015 --> 01:16:01.975
(Elie) Yes, we did.

01:16:03.475 --> 01:16:05.353
Since the beginning of 1960,
we have been in contact

01:16:05.478 --> 01:16:06.980
with C.O.R.E. and the NAACP.

01:16:07.105 --> 01:16:10.733
It was within a month that the Lawyers
Constitutional Defense Committee,

01:16:10.858 --> 01:16:13.237
LCDC, came into existence.

01:16:13.362 --> 01:16:17.032
(Bronstein) Would it have been possible
for you to have handled these cases

01:16:17.157 --> 01:16:18.575
without the
out-of-state counsel?

01:16:18.700 --> 01:16:19.952
(Elie) Absolutely not.

01:16:20.077 --> 01:16:22.828
(Bronstein) Mr. Eli, had you
or any member of your firm

01:16:22.953 --> 01:16:25.165
been subjected to hostility?

01:16:25.665 --> 01:16:31.003
(Vocalist) ♪ Yes, we'll rally
round the flag ♪

01:16:31.128 --> 01:16:33.132
(Elie) Our office was bombed.

01:16:33.257 --> 01:16:36.092
(Vocalist)
♪ Rally once again ♪

01:16:37.843 --> 01:16:43.600
♪ Shouting the battle
cry of freedom ♪

01:16:45.477 --> 01:16:48.647
He talked to the point about
the segregated bathrooms

01:16:48.772 --> 01:16:51.400
in criminal district court
in New Orleans.

01:16:51.525 --> 01:16:56.613
He talked about being given a
court date that was on a holiday,

01:16:56.738 --> 01:17:00.533
but, of course, as a lawyer,
you can't defy the court date,

01:17:00.658 --> 01:17:02.452
but you show up and
nobody's there.

01:17:02.577 --> 01:17:04.287
(Elie) Cases would be
fixed on holidays.

01:17:04.412 --> 01:17:07.623
We would drive up there,
and no one would be in the courtroom.

01:17:07.748 --> 01:17:10.793
They would also segregate
our clients in the courtroom.

01:17:10.918 --> 01:17:12.628
Who else would you do that to

01:17:12.753 --> 01:17:15.507
but a lawyer for whom
you had contempt

01:17:15.632 --> 01:17:18.052
and who you thought
was beneath you?

01:17:18.177 --> 01:17:20.595
But mind you, as an
officer of the court,

01:17:20.720 --> 01:17:23.640
you also have to embody
a respect for the institution

01:17:23.765 --> 01:17:25.850
because if you go there
and tell the judge

01:17:25.975 --> 01:17:28.603
or tell the district attorney,
you know, "Fuck you.

01:17:28.728 --> 01:17:31.773
You gave me this bullshit-ass
date. You knew you was doing this."

01:17:31.898 --> 01:17:32.898
You can't do that.

01:17:33.023 --> 01:17:35.652
(Elie) Judge Rarick
said to me,

01:17:35.777 --> 01:17:38.697
"I didn't know
they let coons practice law."

01:17:38.822 --> 01:17:41.908
He pointed to a tree
outside and said,

01:17:42.033 --> 01:17:45.620
"Once there was a Negro
sheriff in Clinton,

01:17:45.745 --> 01:17:50.458
and he had been removed and
hanged on the tree outside this window."

01:17:50.583 --> 01:17:55.797
Another time I went up to a place
called Arcadia with two LCDC lawyers.

01:17:55.922 --> 01:17:58.758
We were intercepted
by some police.

01:17:58.883 --> 01:18:01.845
They brought out cattle prods.

01:18:01.970 --> 01:18:03.930
They put them where we
could see them.

01:18:04.055 --> 01:18:07.850
We decided that since I was
the only Louisiana lawyer present,

01:18:07.975 --> 01:18:09.685
I should do the talking.

01:18:09.810 --> 01:18:14.900
We went in and the sheriff,
he said, "Nigger, shut up your mouth."

01:18:15.025 --> 01:18:17.943
And I was not permitted
to open my mouth in that room.

01:18:18.068 --> 01:18:22.532
It was said to me, "Nigger,
don't you come back here again.

01:18:22.657 --> 01:18:24.952
Let these white people
take care of this."

01:18:27.662 --> 01:18:30.123
How do you talk about the tone
of the clerk of court

01:18:30.248 --> 01:18:33.960
or someone like that when
that's not something that you can prove,

01:18:34.085 --> 01:18:35.545
but it's something you know?

01:18:35.670 --> 01:18:38.090
Something you know not only
because of that moment,

01:18:38.215 --> 01:18:40.675
but because of the years

01:18:40.800 --> 01:18:42.468
and decades
you have spent in this life,

01:18:42.593 --> 01:18:45.930
and because of the lessons
that your parents have taught you

01:18:46.055 --> 01:18:49.100
about the kind of deference
you must show to white people

01:18:49.225 --> 01:18:51.895
if you want to live
into adulthood.

01:18:52.020 --> 01:18:56.398
How do you prove that this
system is racist at its very core?

01:18:59.987 --> 01:19:02.447
(Derfner)
Sobol v. Perez was about

01:19:02.572 --> 01:19:05.992
the transformation of the
South into part of America.

01:19:06.117 --> 01:19:08.703
It was a huge global issue.

01:19:12.998 --> 01:19:18.922
What we dreamed of then,
we have not come close to.

01:19:19.047 --> 01:19:23.177
I remember when Barack Obama
was elected president.

01:19:23.302 --> 01:19:26.428
People kept saying, "I never
dreamed this would happen."

01:19:26.553 --> 01:19:28.557
We dreamed it would happen.

01:19:32.518 --> 01:19:34.813
(Derfner) The outside world
started really paying attention

01:19:34.938 --> 01:19:38.150
in 1964 and 1965.

01:19:38.275 --> 01:19:42.445
In 1964, the three civil
rights workers

01:19:42.570 --> 01:19:44.948
were murdered in
Neshoba County.

01:19:45.073 --> 01:19:47.617
It really shook a
lot of people

01:19:47.742 --> 01:19:52.205
because one of the ways that
segregation and white supremacy worked

01:19:52.330 --> 01:19:57.168
is that there was a sympathy
for it in the rest of the country.

01:20:06.052 --> 01:20:10.432
So in '64 and '65,
you had major events,

01:20:10.557 --> 01:20:15.312
the murder of the civil rights
workers and the Selma march,

01:20:15.437 --> 01:20:20.025
and you had major laws, Civil
Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

01:20:20.150 --> 01:20:23.195
And those two things
changed things irrevocably.

01:20:23.320 --> 01:20:27.490
...as a registered voter can we in
any way start on the road to freedom.

01:20:27.615 --> 01:20:29.825
And I hope you'll all help us.

01:20:29.950 --> 01:20:34.205
(Derfner) In '62 and '63,
it really was enemy territory.

01:20:34.330 --> 01:20:35.832
It was a foreign country.

01:20:35.957 --> 01:20:40.420
By '67 and '68,
we were in enemy territory,

01:20:40.545 --> 01:20:43.715
but it was enemy territory
that was being occupied

01:20:43.840 --> 01:20:46.342
by the United States of
America, slowly but surely.

01:21:03.360 --> 01:21:07.030
(Lolis Eric Elie) There's been
an awakening among Americans

01:21:07.155 --> 01:21:12.243
about how very precarious
our rights are.

01:21:12.368 --> 01:21:16.038
We find folks rallying
to defend those things

01:21:16.163 --> 01:21:19.875
which we thought were
emblazoned not only in our Constitution,

01:21:20.000 --> 01:21:23.045
our great documents, but also
in the hearts of Americans.

01:21:23.170 --> 01:21:27.550
Police used to shoot Black
kids all the time.

01:21:27.675 --> 01:21:28.968
All the time.

01:21:30.053 --> 01:21:32.638
What's different is now,

01:21:32.763 --> 01:21:35.308
when it happens,
it's a big deal.

01:21:36.100 --> 01:21:38.060
Before, it used to happen,
and nobody cared.

01:21:39.103 --> 01:21:40.647
And it happened much more.

01:22:21.730 --> 01:22:24.148
(Lolis Eric Elie) Frederick Douglass
used to talk about the abolitionists

01:22:24.273 --> 01:22:28.403
caring a great deal about
slavery but not so much about the slave.

01:22:32.032 --> 01:22:35.910
For Richard Sobol to
effectively argue in Gary Duncan's case,

01:22:36.035 --> 01:22:39.080
he had to see it as a case
about a human being

01:22:39.205 --> 01:22:41.165
and not a case about
a civil right.

01:23:03.228 --> 01:23:06.398
(Sobol) So then they wanted
to give Duncan a jury trial,

01:23:06.523 --> 01:23:10.112
and we brought a case,
saying the only reason

01:23:10.237 --> 01:23:12.780
they could possibly try the
man at this point after all this

01:23:12.905 --> 01:23:17.160
was just intimidation
and vengeance.

01:23:17.285 --> 01:23:19.620
And we filed a case
called Duncan v. Perez.

01:23:19.745 --> 01:23:22.040
Your boys done that to me.
I learned my lesson.

01:23:22.165 --> 01:23:25.085
(Sobol) That went to trial,
where the judge ruled in our favor,

01:23:25.210 --> 01:23:26.085
and he issued a nice opinion,

01:23:26.210 --> 01:23:28.755
saying that there was
malicious prosecution,

01:23:28.880 --> 01:23:30.798
and they enjoined them
from trying Duncan.

01:23:30.923 --> 01:23:33.635
And so it was kind of a
trifecta, I guess.

01:23:34.802 --> 01:23:36.178
(Gary) You're a changed man, huh?

01:23:42.018 --> 01:23:45.272
(Sobol) He grew and turned out
to be an important leader in the parish.

01:23:47.273 --> 01:23:49.025
He was the head
of the shrimpers' association

01:23:49.150 --> 01:23:51.987
and became an important figure
after that.

01:23:57.075 --> 01:23:58.367
And he's still my friend.

01:24:13.298 --> 01:24:17.095
(Man) I never came to
Louisiana again without seeing Gary.

01:24:25.562 --> 01:24:27.855
I was feeling very sick

01:24:28.063 --> 01:24:32.527
and reluctantly decided that
we had to put off meeting with Gary.

01:24:32.735 --> 01:24:37.448
We wrote to him and said,
"Don't come this week.

01:24:37.573 --> 01:24:39.075
Richard's not feeling well,

01:24:39.200 --> 01:24:42.203
and we'll
reschedule it later."

01:24:42.328 --> 01:24:47.750
He wrote back and said,
"I don't care what his condition is.

01:24:47.875 --> 01:24:50.295
I wanna see him.
I wanna be there."

01:24:50.420 --> 01:24:54.923
So, uh, he came.

01:25:05.977 --> 01:25:08.312
Mr. Sobol became part
of my family.

01:25:08.437 --> 01:25:09.897
I'm part of his family.

01:26:07.663 --> 01:26:09.998
(Vocalist)
♪ I just wanna talk about it ♪

01:26:10.123 --> 01:26:12.835
♪ Just a little bit ♪

01:26:12.960 --> 01:26:14.628
♪ Just for a while ♪

01:26:17.257 --> 01:26:19.717
♪ We will win this race ♪

01:26:19.842 --> 01:26:22.553
♪ I still believe we can ♪

01:26:22.678 --> 01:26:25.973
♪ Oh, don't be misled ♪

01:26:26.098 --> 01:26:28.392
♪ I won't let no one ♪

01:26:28.517 --> 01:26:31.938
♪ Destroy my path ♪

01:26:36.442 --> 01:26:41.822
♪ I stood around in
ice-cold blood ♪

01:26:42.948 --> 01:26:48.287
♪ Livin' in fear for
everyone I love ♪

01:26:48.997 --> 01:26:54.502
♪ Segregation is
all I can see ♪

01:26:55.795 --> 01:26:57.963
♪ There's no fine line ♪

01:26:58.088 --> 01:27:01.592
♪ They're starin' off of me ♪

01:27:01.717 --> 01:27:05.347
♪ Yes, I'll embrace
these strangers ♪

01:27:05.472 --> 01:27:07.432
♪ Face to face ♪

01:27:07.557 --> 01:27:10.602
♪ North and South ♪

01:27:10.727 --> 01:27:15.230
♪ I won't let no one
destroy my house ♪

01:27:15.355 --> 01:27:18.192
♪ Take this road by myself ♪

01:27:18.317 --> 01:27:20.278
♪ If I have to ♪

01:27:20.403 --> 01:27:23.572
♪ No, I have friends ♪

01:27:23.697 --> 01:27:28.995
♪ I won't let no one
destroy my path ♪

01:27:33.875 --> 01:27:36.460
♪ The heroes I've read about ♪

01:27:36.585 --> 01:27:40.465
♪ Wouldn't take a life
like a thug ♪

01:27:40.590 --> 01:27:42.508
♪ Look in my eyes ♪

01:27:42.633 --> 01:27:46.512
♪ You'll see the
flow of love ♪

01:27:46.637 --> 01:27:49.348
♪ What do y'all hear? ♪

01:27:49.473 --> 01:27:52.393
♪ Does anyone hear me? ♪

01:27:52.518 --> 01:27:54.270
♪ Should I write a letter? ♪

01:27:54.395 --> 01:27:55.938
♪ Talk to a mayor? ♪

01:27:56.063 --> 01:27:57.482
♪ Become a politician? ♪

01:27:57.607 --> 01:27:59.483
♪ Provide a speech? ♪

01:27:59.608 --> 01:28:01.443
♪ Choices I make ♪

01:28:01.568 --> 01:28:05.448
♪ I like them to be my own ♪

01:28:05.573 --> 01:28:08.158
♪ Oh, this feels so wrong ♪

01:28:08.283 --> 01:28:12.413
♪ But I won't let no
one destroy my ♪

01:28:12.538 --> 01:28:17.960
♪ I've been down
some weird streets sometimes ♪

01:28:18.085 --> 01:28:21.130
♪ But I know that ♪

01:28:21.255 --> 01:28:24.925
♪ I won't let no one
destroy my ♪

01:28:25.050 --> 01:28:26.760
♪ I won't let no one ♪

01:28:26.885 --> 01:28:30.348
♪ We're gonna get better ♪

01:28:30.473 --> 01:28:33.642
♪ We need a change of weather ♪

01:28:33.767 --> 01:28:35.562
♪ The world needs a change ♪

01:28:35.687 --> 01:28:39.523
♪ We can't stay this
way forever ♪

01:28:39.648 --> 01:28:43.193
♪ We gotta get better ♪

01:28:43.318 --> 01:28:46.322
♪ We need a change
of weather ♪

01:28:46.447 --> 01:28:48.448
♪ The world needs a change ♪

01:28:48.573 --> 01:28:52.412
♪ We can't stay this
way forever ♪

01:28:52.537 --> 01:28:55.748
♪ We've gotta get clever ♪

01:28:55.873 --> 01:28:58.710
♪ More clever than ever ♪

01:28:58.835 --> 01:29:01.128
♪ The world needs a change ♪

01:29:01.253 --> 01:29:04.590
♪ We can't stay this
way forever ♪

01:29:19.605 --> 01:29:21.357
(vocalizing)