[George W. Crockett was a pioneering labor lawyer, defender of
Communists and other left wingers, a progressive judge, and a member
of Congress from Detroit. Reviewer Gespass reviews a new biography of
this towering figure.]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

“NO EQUAL JUSTICE”: THE LEGACY OF CIVIL RIGHTS ICON GEORGE W.
CROCKETT  
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David Gespass
January 5, 2023
National Lawyers Guild Review
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_ George W. Crockett was a pioneering labor lawyer, defender of
Communists and other left wingers, a progressive judge, and a member
of Congress from Detroit. Reviewer Gespass reviews a new biography of
this towering figure. _

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"No Equal Justice"
The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett Jr.
Edward J. Littlejohn and Peter J. Hammer
Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814350584

Lennox Hinds, whose vision has inspired and led the International
Association of Democratic Lawyers and the National Conference of Black
Lawyers for decades, received the 2022 Law for the People award from
the Lawyers Guild. Lennox has had a storied career of his own. I
mention him because, in his acceptance speech, he paid homage to
George Crockett, who went from Detroit to New York to defend him
against a bar complaint that threatened his license. His story shows
how we all stand on the shoulders of those who have bone before.
Lennox had said that a particular judge lacked the perspective and
experience to be fair to a particular black litigant, a statement that
aroused the ire of the New York State bar. Rather than simply going to
the bar and apologizing, as many urged him to do, Lennox stood by his
statement and Crockett, as was his wont, came to his defense.

George Crockett and Ernie Goodman formed the country’s first
integrated law firm. Both are legends and, each in their own way,
models for what it means to be a radical lawyer, engaged in battle
always on the enemy’s turf. As a past Guild president, Paul Harris,
said of the NLG, if we lose today, we’ll be back tomorrow. If we win
today, we’ll be back tomorrow. George Crockett and Ernie Goodman
exemplified that spirit and that commitment. A Goodman biography, _The
Color of Law: Ernie Goodman and the Struggle for Labor and Civil
Rights _ was published in 2010 and reviewed in this journal in Vol.
68-1 by Arn Kawano. We now have, as it were, the bookend to that
biography with one of Crockett, _No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil
Rights Icon George W. Crockett, JR_. Edward J. Littlejohn and Peter J.
Hammer.

Goodman rose to eminence primarily from the labor movement. He
represented sit-down strikers at Ford in the 1930’s. Until Walter
Reuther became president of the United Auto Workers in 1946 and purged
those he thought were too close to the Communist Party, he represented
the UAW.

Crockett’s consciousness, on the other hand, was more that of a
black man who grew up in the Jim Crow south and said,

Racism pervades every area and facet of American life. It is a
characteristic of American life; and hence, it is a characteristic of
American law.

But their two backgrounds melded. Crockett was the grandson of an
enslaved African descendant but the son of a union father, a skilled
carpenter and member of the Black Carpenters Union. His commitment to
justice generally and particularly for workers, both black and white,
animated him even as his principal focus was race. Goodman’s vision
recognized the significance of the Civil Rights Movement in the south
and, under his leader- ship and not without opposition, the Guild’s
emphasis shifted from union side advocacy with the formation of the
Committee to Assist Southern Lawyers and the opening of an office in
Mississippi to further the work. In many ways, the law firm they
opened together recognized that capitalism in the United States was
based both on the exploitation of all workers and the particularly
cruel and lasting effects of its development on enslaved Africans and
their descendants. Parenthetically, neither book mentions how either
Crockett or Goodman viewed the theft of native land, certainly another
special aspect of U.S. capitalism. While descendants of enslaved
Africans were considered “Negro” if they had a single black
grandparent—thus expanding the numbers to be subjected to
super-exploitation as workers—indigenous people had to be nearly
“full-blooded” because the fewer there were, the more land could
be stolen.

But, this is supposed to be a review of the book about George
Crockett. Why, you ask, all the prologue and why don’t you get to
it.

The closest the U.S. has come to fascist rule was the McCarthy period.
Communists, alleged Communists, Communist sympathizers and those who
defended the right of Communists to espouse their ideas were shunned,
persecuted, imprisoned and driven to suicide. The Lawyers Guild,
virtually alone among legal organizations, refused to inquire as to
the affiliations of its members and was willing to defend actual
Communists, not just those they felt were wrongly accused of being
Communists. We are today facing a similar crisis. In some ways, it may
be even more dire. The Supreme Court with its reactionary majority is
slashing rights won through decades, if not centuries, of struggle and
sacrifice. What is hailed as “democracy” in this country is
whittled down with every opinion in every term. The wealth that
neoliberals claimed would “trickle down” with a growing economy in
fact has siphoned up and political power and influence goes to the
highest bidders. The question is whether to hunker down and accept
this or to take up (at least figurative) arms against this sea of
trouble and, by opposing, seek to end it. Crockett chose to do the
latter. He did not win every battle. He spent four months in jail for
contempt of court for being a vigorous advocate for his clients in the
wake of United States v. Dennis. His and his co-counsels’ bar
licenses were threatened for their alleged contempt. But, with these
threats and attacks, his career did not collapse. On the contrary, he
eventually was elected a judge and later a member of Congress. His
career demonstrates that resistance is not always futile. An old
friend of mine, David Rein, was a Guild lawyer in Washington, DC
during the McCarthy era. Unlike many others, but much like Crockett,
he did not shrink from facing the necessity of resistance, even with
FBI agents outside his door every morning. When people told him, after
the fact, what a hero he was, he scoffed. So far as he was concerned,
he was only doing what was to be expected. His response to those who
praised his heroism:

I’m not a hero, you’re a stinker.

Crockett exemplified this attitude. One gets the feeling he did not
concern himself with risks when he took on controversial cases.
Rather, he did what he did out of principle and, therefore, could not
do otherwise. He graduated from a top law school, the University of
Michigan, but when he took the Florida bar exam in 1934, which was
given in the Florida State Senate chamber, he was forced to sit in a
chair outside the chamber because it was inconceivable to the
examiners that he be allowed to sit in a senator’s seat. His
response to that indignity was not to worry about it, but not to
forget it and to develop the skills to do something about it. His
experiences led him to his principles, but such principles are not
necessarily universal. Eugene Debs said, “When I rise, it will be
with the ranks, not from them.” While many aspire to rise from the
ranks, Crockett remained true to the ranks of oppressed blacks and
other targets of state repression and devoted his career to securing
their rights.

The book itself chronicles critical events in Crockett’s life
chronologically, briefly covering his roots, his law school days and
his work with the Department of Labor. But the vast bulk of his work
was after he moved to Detroit to take a position with the United Auto
Workers and, after he and Goodman lost their jobs there, opening their
law firm, which handled one landmark case after another. The accounts
of those cases are what makes the book compelling. Its heart is
devoted to the Dennis case and its aftermath. In the midst of
anti-Communist hysteria, Dennis and his ten co-defendants, all
Communist Party leaders, were charged with plotting to overthrow the
government of the United States only because of what they said and
what their “philosophy” was. All were convicted and their
convictions affirmed. It may not be a coincidence that the Supreme
Court’s decision in Dennis was effectively overruled when a
Klansman, Clarence Brandenburg, was charged with, and convicted of,
advocating violence in violation of Ohio state law. The Supreme Court
found that Brandenburg’s speech, if inflammatory, was protected by
the First Amendment, long after Dennis, his co-defendants served their
sentences and their lawyers served theirs for con- tempt of court and
then had to fight to keep their bar licenses.

The story of the Committee to Assist Southern Lawyers has many facets.
_The Color of Law_ told it from Goodman’s perspective. This book,
telling it from Crockett’s perspective, provides a more complete,
and much needed, history of the NLG’s pivot to the south and the
Civil Rights Movement. It was that movement that began the resurgence
of the Guild after its near disintegration in the face of McCarthyism.
In no small measure, the Guild is what it is today and, indeed, may
very well exist today, because of its support for that movement. The
late John Lewis, in his memoir, _Walking With the Wind_, recalls that
more traditional civil rights organizations warned SNCC not to
associate with the Guild but that only the Guild responded to the call
for assistance. He said the same to Michael Avery, who was then NLG
president, when he was asked and agreed to deliver the keynote to the
Birmingham convention.

Charles Hamilton Houston famously said a lawyer is either a social
engineer or a parasite on society. Crockett was a very much a lawyer
who had faith in the power of the law to engineer progressive social
change. His career reflected the former of Houston’s alternatives.
Others may question this belief, but Crockett surely demonstrated that
lawyers on the right side of history can make a difference. The
authors, both academics, try to make Crockett’s story accessible for
any reader, not just for lawyers and intellectuals and it is because
his life and career had such an impact on the social and political
struggles of his times that it is an important story for us all and
not just for lawyers.

The authors, both law professors do their best to avoid the argots of
law and academia and are increasingly successful over the course of
the book. The early chapters are slow to get through, but when the
story gets to recounting Crockett’s exploits, the importance of his
life shines through. The choice to focus on just a few, Dennis and the
Civil Rights Movement in the south and his handling of the New Bethel
Baptist Church incident as a judge (if you want to know more about
that, you will have to read the book), is more than enough to
demonstrate his intellect, his steadfastness and just how
consequential a fighter for justice he was.

The book concludes with a chapter on his being a member of Con- gress
from a safe seat, which left him free to act on principle without
regard to politics or trade-offs. It is no surprise then that one of
his first acts as a member of Congress was to sue then-President
Ronald Reagan for violating the War Powers Resolution by sending
soldiers to act as “advisers” to the government of El Salvador
(he was represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights). His time
in Congress was more a fitting coda to a life of struggle than a new
chapter or direction. He ran, evidently, because he had become bored
with retirement and wanted something to do. Crockett was not one to
rest on his laurels and enjoy his later years sleeping late and sip-
ping daiquiris. He was, to the end, a fighter for justice. Thus, we
end where we began. The biography of Ernie Goodman was a necessary and
important account of an important life, but it was incomplete without
a biography of George Crockett, his partner in the first integrated
law firm this country had seen. One must say of the formation of the
firm in 1946, it was about time. One can say the same thing about No
Equal Justice.

DAVID GESPASS has been on the editorial board of the National Lawyers
Guild Review for over twenty-years including several years as Editor
in Chief. He is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. David
is doing his best to retire from the active practice of law with only
moderate success.

* Radical Lawyers
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* Communist Party USA
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* The Smith Act
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* The Civil Rights Movement
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* US Congress
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* Detroit
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