Lawyers From The United States

"After all, advocates, including advocates for States, are like managers of pugilistic and election contestants, in that they have a propensity for claiming everything."

"Is that which was deemed to be of so fundamental a nature as to be written into the Constitution to endure for all times to be the sport of shifting winds of doctrine?"

"One who belongs to the most vilified and persecuted minority in history is not likely to be insensible to the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution... But as judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic."

"The history of liberty has largely been the history of the observance of procedural safeguards. And the effective administration of criminal justice hardly requires disregard of fair procedures imposed by law."

"A phrase begins life as a literary expression; its felicity leads to its lazy repetition; and repetition soon establishes it as a legal formula, undiscriminatingly used to express different and sometimes contradictory ideas."

"No court can make time stand still."

"The line must follow some direction of policy, whether rooted in logic or experience. Lines should not be drawn simply for the sake of drawing lines."

"Litigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess."

"Of compelling consideration is the fact that words acquire scope and function from the history of events which they summarize."

"It must never be forgotten, however, that the Bill of Rights was the child of the Enlightenment. Back of the guarantee of free speech lay faith in the power of an appeal to reason by all the peaceful means for gaining access to the mind. It was in order to avert force and explosions due to restrictions upon rational modes of communication that the guarantee of free speech was given a generous scope. But utterance in a context of violence can lose its significance as an appeal to reason and become part of an instrument of force. Such utterance was not meant to be sheltered by the Constitution."

"National unity is the basis of national security. To deny the legislature the right to select appropriate means for its attainment presents a totally different order of problem from that of the propriety of subordinating the possible ugliness of littered streets to the free expression opinion through handbills."

"It would be a narrow conception of jurisprudence to confine the notion of 'laws' to what is found written on the statute books, and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon it."

"To be effective, judicial administration must not be leaden-footed."

"The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it."

"In this Court dissents have gradually become majority opinions."

"The Amendment nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of discrimination."

"Of course, I believe I have an unfair edge over most of my colleagues right now. My mind works faster than my mouth does. Washington would probably be a better place if more people took a moment to think before they spoke."

"You don't joke about calling black men 'boys.' Men like James O. Eastland used words like that, and the racist policies that accompanied them, to perpetuate white supremacy and strip black Americans of our very humanity."

"I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland. He never called me 'boy,' he always called me 'son.'"

"One of most important things I discovered was how the 1965 Voting Rights Act became law. The 1964 Civil Rights Acts contained a voting provision, but in Mississippi there weren't 10 (black) people registered. So Lyndon Johnson called Sen. James Eastland to his office. Eastland was the head of Judiciary Committee. Since Johnson had left the Senate, Eastland was the most powerful single person in Congress. Exactly. They didn't just start recording with Nixon. (Laughs.) When LBJ had Eastland in his office, he recorded the conversation. He told Eastland: "I'm gonna give the blacks the vote—though he didn't say "blacks." "You the only one that can give me any trouble. I'm gonna give them the vote. Jim, all you got to do is you take that vote under your wing." And Jim went along with it. They didn't even have a committee for (the 1965 legislation). It went right through. ... Jim Eastland at the time was the most hated white man in Mississippi (by blacks); he eclipsed Bilbo and Vardaman. Two months later, he was the most beloved white man in Mississippi by blacks. The other thing that Lyndon told him was that if you take that "black" vote under your wing, we will not only control Mississippi, we will control the whole South for the next 50 years and most states, every big city in America. It was a plan, and it worked perfectly according to the plan. It's the main reason blacks loved him so much. Of course, that's been happening through-out history. ... Democracy has some good points, but it ain't hardly what most Americans think it is."

"Your chances of getting support in the black community are poor at best. You have a master-servant philosophy with regard to blacks."

"For a quarter of a century, in the Congress of the United States, we tried to get passed an anti-lynching bill. A simple law to protect the lives of black citizens below the Mason-Dixon line. This was not legislation, as our protesting brethren so often take us to task for—the legislation of brotherly love with they say is impossible. It was a law making it a federal offense to hang a human being from a tree, cover him with kerosene and cremate him. But the loudest cheerleaders of our current law and order rallies—the Eastlands and the Strom Thurmonds—were the very gentlemen who fought against that legislation until it was ultimately passed."

"Jim Eastland could be standing right in the middle of the worst Mississippi flood ever known, and he'd say the niggers caused it, helped out by the Communists -— but, he'd say, we gotta have help from Washington."

"The whole political structure in Washington is partly designed to protect the Southern oligarchy. And Bobby Kennedy's much more interested in politics than he is in any of these things, and so for that matter, is his brother. And furthermore, even if Bobby Kennedy were a different person, or his brother, they are also ignorant, as most white Americans are, of what the problem really is, of how Negroes really live. The speech Kennedy made to Mississippi the night Meredith was carried there was one of the most shameful performances in our history. Because he talked to Mississippi as if there were no Negroes there. And this had a terrible, demoralizing, disaffecting effect on all Negroes everywhere. One is weary of being told that desegregation is legal. One would like to hear for a change that it is right! Now, how one begins to use this power we were talking about earlier is a very grave question, because first of all you have to get Eastland out of Congress and get rid of the power that he wields there. You've got to get rid of J. Edgar Hoover and the power that he wields. If one could get rid of just those two men, or modify their power, there would be a great deal more hope. How in the world are you going to get Mississippi Negroes to go to the polls if you remember that most of them are extremely poor, most of them almost illiterate, and that they live under the most intolerable conditions? They are used to it, which is worse, and they have no sense that they can do anything for themselves. If six Negroes go to the polls and get beaten half to death, and one or two die, and nothing happens from Washington, how are you going to manage even to get the ballot?"

"Senator James Bigot — pardon, Eastland."

"He has associated himself in a leadership role with the so-called White Citizens Councils whose purpose is to organize defiance to the Constitution of the U. S., as interpreted by the Supreme Court, and which have engaged in activities which I consider to be wholly un-American and dangerous to American democracy. I believe that Senator Eastland is a symbol of racism in America. I believe that Senator Eastland is a symbol of defiance to the Constitution of the U. S. as interpreted by the Supreme Court. I believe that Senator Eastland is precluded by philosophy, conviction and activities from presiding over the Senate Judiciary Committee as chairman in an impartial way, and from discharging the agency of the Senate in that regard."

"The Senator from Mississippi has said on the floor of the Senate: We will protect and maintain white supremacy throughout eternity. He has said on the floor of the Senate: The Negro race is an inferior race. He has said on the floor of the Senate: Let me say frankly that in my Judgment the CIO and the PAC are Communist organizations. He has said on the floor of the Senate: New York, for all practical purposes, is a Communist state. He has said on the floor of the Senate that the Supreme Court has become indoctrinated and brain-washed by left-wing pressure groups."

"Our faith is strong that long after Senator Eastland and his present subcommittee are gone, long after segregation has lost its final battle in the South, long after all that was known as McCarthyism is a dim, unwelcome memory, long after the last Congressional committee has learned that it cannot tamper successfully with a free press, The New York Times will be speaking for (those) who make it, and only for (those) who make it, and speaking, without fear or favor, the truth as it sees it."

"In every stage of the [Montgomery] bus boycott we have been oppressed and degraded because of black, slimy, juicy, unbearably stinking niggers. … African flesh-eaters. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary to abolish the Negro race, proper methods should be used. Among these are guns, bows and arrows, slingshots and knives. … All whites are created equal with certain rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of dead niggers."

"Rhodesia has an ingredient which is sadly lacking in America. This is racial harmony."

"You've inserted the thin end of the wedge by allowing stinking niggers into such a fine hotel."

"I would not be surprised if Martin Luther King and these agitators next desecrate the graves of Confederate soldiers and drag their remains through the streets in an effort to garner headlines. And what kind of person is participating in this march? Beatniks, frauds, and persons wanted to answer for crimes in other States."

"Johnson: Jim, we've got three kids missing down there. What can I do about it? Eastland: Well, I don't know. I don't believe there's ... I don't believe there's three missing. Johnson: We've got their parents down here. Eastland: I believe it's a publicity stunt ..."

"I don’t like you — or your kind."

"As I said, we have more Nigra professional men, more businessmen, we have substantial Nigra cotton planters. In fact, they have made more progress in the south than in the north. The master-servant relationship today is largely a northern product."

"I am sure you are not going to permit the NAACP to control your state."

"The Anglo-Saxon people have held steadfast to the belief that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."

"Today, however, a trend away from traditional standards of propriety begins to be in evidence. Our Court has been indoctrinated and brainwashed by left-wing pressure groups. The Court is out of step with the American people. We see Justices of the Supreme Court banqueted and honored by left-wing Communist-front organizations militantly interested in legislation on which the Supreme Court must pass."

"On May 17, 1954, the Constitution of the United States was destroyed because of the Supreme Court’s decision. You are not obliged to obey the decisions of any court which are plainly fraudulent sociological considerations."

"The white people of the South do not have race prejudice. They have race consciousness, and they are proud to possess this awareness of the significance of race. Had they not possessed it, the South would have been mongrelized and southern civilization destroyed long ago."

"That is a very strong statement, Mr. President: “All is race; there is no other truth.” These are known to have been Disraeli's views. Disraeli would have been horrified at a program designed to mongrelize the Anglo-Saxon race which he so greatly admired."

"The southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination. Segregation is not a badge of racial inferiority, and that it is not is recognized by both races in the Southern States. In fact, segregation is desired and supported by the vast majority of the members of both races in the South, who dwell side by side under harmonious conditions. ... Let me make this clear, Mr. President: There is no racial hatred in the South. The Negro race is not an oppressed race. ... Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire. Free men have the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, free from governmental interference and to build up their own culture, free from governmental interference. These rights are inherent in the Constitution of the United States and in the American system of government, both state and national, to promote and protect this right."

"The Senator from New Hampshire certainly does not believe that the Governor of New York would clean Communists out of the Government service, when New York, for all practical purposes, is a Communist State."

"Organized mongrel minorities control the government. I am going to fight it to the last ditch. They are not going to Harlemize the country."

"This much is certain. If the present Democratic leadership is right, then Calhoun and Jefferson Davis were wrong. If the present Democratic leadership is right, then Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner were right, and Lee, Forrest, and Wade Hampton were wrong. If the President’s civil-rights program is right, then reconstruction was right. If this program is right, the carpetbaggers were right."

"The people of the South are expected to remain docile while their civilization and culture are destroyed, while their segregation statutes are repealed by Federal action, and while the white race is destroyed under the false guise of another civil-rights bill. We are expected to remain docile while the pure blood of the South is mongrelized by the barter of our heritage by northern politicians in order to secure political favors from Red mongrels in the slums of the cities of the East and West."

"Let me say frankly that in my judgment the CIO and the PAC are Communist organizations. I know that there are millions of good loyal Americans who belong to the CIO; but in my judgment, the leadership of that organization is definitely Communistic."

"After Liberia was founded the white man ruled it for a period of 25 to 30 years. It was doing well under white control. But 80 years after the white man withdrew, as the League of Nations found, it had not become even semi-civilized. Yet, Mr. President, we talk about racial equality. I assert that the Negro race is an inferior race. The doctrine of white supremacy is one which, if adhered to, will save America."

"We are dealing with an inferior people, and yet we are discriminating against the white soldier, in favor of the inferior person, and under this measure, we are giving the inferior person a preference in securing employment."

"I repeat that when communism enters a country, it makes the classes class-conscious. It makes races race-conscious, in order to weaken the internal structure of the country and pave the way for communism."