Charles Morgan Jr. Interviewed on February 24, 1995

HANSON: Just for the record, Chuck, give me your name.

MORGAN: Charles Morgan, Jr.

HANSON: And you were born where?

MORGAN: 1930, across the river from Cincinnati, Ohio.

HANSON: And you grew up, your early years...

MORGAN: The first fifteen years in Kentucky.

HANSON: And you came to Birmingham. Just give me a little background.

MORGAN: In 1945.

HANSON: Okay. Your father did what?

MORGAN: He was the manager of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company.

HANSON: And when you moved to Birmingham, you lived where?

MORGAN: Why, Mountain Brook.

HANSON: You say that as if there was no other place.

MORGAN: Well, there was certainly no other place at the time that anybody in their right mind wanted to live.

HANSON: Why was that?

MORGAN: Because it was a precious little kingdom. It was a nice little, upper middle class, very upper middle class, White community. And it was understood that people who lived there were socially acceptable. It contained two country clubs and lot of White folk.

HANSON: And, so, that's why your family moved there?

MORGAN: My family was there because it was the best residential section in town.

HANSON: Did your father feel very much a part of the White power structure?

MORGAN: No.

HANSON: Talk about that just a little bit so we get some background. I'm trying to find out...

MORGAN: In the first place, the last thing in the world that my father would have thought of in moving to Birmingham was something called, quote, 'the White power structure,' end quote. I doubt that many people in Birmingham thought of themselves as power structure. Many people in Birmingham thought of themselves as White or Black, and the power structure in Birmingham was pretty clearly defined. It was United States Steel.

HANSON: Did your father sell insurance to United States Steel? Is that what brought him here? I'm trying to get a little background, Chuck, to come to your attitudes.

MORGAN: No, he worked for the National Life and Accident Insurance Company out of Nashville, Tennessee. My father was born in the mountains of Kentucky. My mother was born in Paducah. Paducah was in western Kentucky. That's more the landed noblesse oblique. Where my father was born, there were no slaves and no slave history, so one of the best things he could do in this entire world was to get out of the place that he was born, literally in a cabin which was in a 00:03:00suburb of, I guess, Lackey, which would have been a suburb of Allen, which would have been a suburb of Prestonburg. So he was quite interested in doing that, and he hit the road and got himself a job and worked his way up inside of the National Life and Accident Insurance Company which was out of Nashville.

HANSON: You came here and you were approximately fifteen [years old], correct?

MORGAN: Yes. Incidentally, they had a large industrial insurance business. Industrial insurance was insurance in the south that was generally sold to Black folks, whether it was that company or even a few Black owned insurance companies. And so, a person who worked for such an insurance company or, ultimately, managed it had to know an awful lot about living conditions amongst Black folks. Go ahead.

HANSON: Okay. You went to high school, then, when you got here. Three years, two years...

MORGAN: I went to high school. I went to Birmingham University School and I went to Ramsay High School from which I graduated.

HANSON: Then you went to the University of Alabama.

MORGAN: Yes.

HANSON: Why did you do that as opposed to going up east like a lot of your contemporaries did? Why did you go to Tuscaloosa?

MORGAN: Well, I didn't even think about going up east, and not a lot of my contemporaries did. Some of them did. The University of Alabama was the state university. I was out of school a bit early. I had skipped a grade some place down the line and I was, I suppose, 17 or whatever and I started out at the University. It was the state university and it was a fine place to go. I didn't even consider the other places.

HANSON: Okay, but you got interested the minute you got down there in student politics. I mean...

MORGAN: Well, it wasn't that moment. No, I didn't do that the first minute I got there. It took a while. I was interested in student politics because that was the thing in the State of Alabama to be interested in.

HANSON: And you wanted to be a politician yourself?

MORGAN: Well, I don't think that's true. No, I don't think that I wanted to be a politician. I was just interested in politics.

HANSON: Deal with those years in Tuscaloosa, particularly, because that just 00:05:00precedes the Autherine Lucy entrance. But, were you in Tuscaloosa at the time the Supreme Court decision came down, Brown v. The Board of Education?

MORGAN: Sure, I started at the University of Alabama at 1947. I left the University of Alabama in 1955. Brown v. Board was 1954. Autherine Lucy had filed suit before that.

HANSON: Talk a little bit about those years, Chuck. I mean you took a very strong position in favor of Brown. You took a strong position in favor of Autherine Lucy.

MORGAN: Well, that's right. But you see, I didn't have a strong pulpit to speak from. I mean, a strong position did not mean that I was suddenly going to broadcast nationwide and say, 'Hi there, folks, this is a kid at the University of Alabama that favors Brown v. Board.' But people at the University knew generally that not only I, but many others--Whites--thought that the outcome in Brown v. Board should be precisely what it was, that desegregation was unconstitutional. There were a goodly number of White folks even though many 00:06:00people today don't remember, don't want to, or weren't there... A good many folks in Alabama were pretty liberal. You've got to remember Alabama was far more liberal than most northern states on most issues.

HANSON: Except race.

MORGAN: No, I don't, I don't give that away either. I think that there were a lot of northern states which, starting in about 1948 with the race of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency over the years and Harry Truman's campaign on the civil rights platform, had decided that there was something called civil rights and they had to take a position, so they took a position in favor of it and of them. Now, in Alabama, they took a position generally against it. Alabama seceded from the Democratic Party when Harry Truman was nominated in 1948. I remember that.

HANSON: You were there, were you not?

MORGAN: The Dixiecrat Convention was here and my father attended the thing and 00:07:00all that sort of stuff and everything and here on out. But, you see, what happened in Alabama, you always had very...Alabama was far to the left of most states in the Union with respect to its senatorial representation, members of the house and, in nineteen hundred and forty six [1946], its governor.

HANSON: You're talking now about Jim Folsom?

MORGAN: Why, of course.

HANSON: And that's the one that you worked very hard for. That was your first political campaign of consequence.

MORGAN: No, no, I was still in school, still in high school and as far as I was concerned if Folsom was never...Folsom was never respectable inside the precious little kingdom nor was he ever respectable inside any other Birmingham industrial centers of power. But, Folsom was a person that I saw when I was sixteen years old, when he first...I guess that was his first successful run and I can remember him running. I thought he was kind of a funny fellow. I mean, 00:08:00after all, he'd lie down and do anything else it took to get publicity or be in the newspapers. But, he never said he hated anybody, and he always said quite the contrary.

So, I think I and a goodly number of people who were in Mountain Brook didn't talk about being for Jim Folsom, we didn't even know that race was a major issue at the time. But, that's what Folsom did, and then it came to the '48 convention and he led the loyalists. So, by 1948 when I was at the University of Alabama, I knew there was a difference between Loyalists and Dixiecrats. And soon, along the way, I had to make up my mind whether I was on the one side or the other, and a number of us made up our minds that we were on the side of the loyalists and I wasn't at all isolated or alone in that. The entire Hill-Sparkman organization--even though Hill and Sparkman were not noteworthily to the left on the race question--the entire Folsom operation, everybody in the state made a decision with respect to all the loyal democrats. They had to know that they 00:09:00were on the side of the political party that included the Black folks and did so nationally. Now, many of them wrestled mightily to get free of that. George Wallace was a Loyalist. He and George Hawkins, whose campaign I worked in and managed later and worked on in '58, all those kinds of people that were around.... This was a big labor center. I mean, you can't look around Birmingham, Alabama and not understand that there were disputes between laboring people who were Black and those who were White. And, the one thing the steel workers and the CIO unions had to do was to get rid of that rivalry between the two. And--.

HANSON: Say that again. Get rid of the rivalry, or sort of put it...stimulate it so that Blacks and Whites would be working against each other?

MORGAN: Not...the steel workers. The steel workers wanted them working together.

HANSON: Okay, you're talking about the steel workers.

MORGAN: I mean, White folks, some of the times when White plant owners and 00:10:00others would have a strike or something of the White workers, they would try to bring Black folks in as strike breakers and sometimes they were successful and that made them very unpopular in that circumstance too. The only way that you organize in the mine workers or the steel workers was to make sure that racial barriers did not exist so that they couldn't run in strike breakers. This was not the conservative city that everybody sees. It was conservative in the state... The state itself was conservative as race is the measure, but on other issues, it was far to the left of much of the country.

HANSON: So, you, then, became, can I fairly say this? First, before you got involved as a civil rights attorney, you became very much an economic kind of liberal.

MORGAN: By the time I graduated from the University of Alabama Law School, I taught a course four times called American Economic History. I didn't just wake up one day and say, 'Hey, I like economics,' or whatever it is. But, I actually 00:11:00did that as I was going through school. Now, I was always interested in that. I developed a certain degree of scholarship at the University of Alabama because I had to. I had been too interested in politics and other things. So, I finally had to make almost all 'A's' for four or five semesters to get an average that could get me into law school. And, when I got to law school, it became a habit, so I did the same thing in law school. I was an honor student in the law school.

I've had different interests in life and as they have approached me, then, sometimes the world has been interested in what I was interested in. Sometimes, it hasn't. That hasn't bothered me too much. I've just had to move through those things. I could always look at Alabama a little differently than a lot of folks did because I knew some of the contrasts that existed in it. But, when you grow up in post World War Two and you had Jim Folsom as governor--and he was not going to cuss the Black folks--and you had a Lister Hill and a Sparkman-- You started off, I guess, with senator Bankhead along the way. And, you had all 00:12:00these people and these were returning veterans of World War Two. You know, one of the wonderful things World War Two did for an awful lot of people that is forgotten today is that it told them that there was such a thing as democracy and that Hitler was a racist and that Mussolini was a fascist and the Nazis were on the other side and the Japanese, of course, were of another race. It was more comfortable fighting them, no doubt. But, the fact of the matter is that these people were fascist totalitarians. And, a lot of young men came back from the war and they went to the University of Alabama and I'm sure other southern campuses, too, but certainly in Alabama, and those folks came back and they had lived in a world whereby they had been defending what they thought was democracy. Many of them saw that what they were living in was not. I wasn't alone in that.

HANSON: But Chuck, if these people came back from the second world war--and that's both Blacks and Whites, because Truman did desegregate the army, that was the first time--

MORGAN: That's right, but the Truman desegregation of the army wasn't in the middle of a pitched battle during World War Two. But go ahead.

HANSON: Yes, it came afterwards. But, the important thing was there was that change. Those veterans came back, both White and Black, but they came back and went to school and by 1954 came this Supreme Court decision and everything changed. I mean the--what you call the liberal state or the liberal city, closed its doors, did it not? I mean it said, 'We shall not desegregate our public schools.'

MORGAN: I don't think I've ever accused Birmingham of being a liberal city.

HANSON: I thought you said that it was a lot more liberal than the rest of the state in everything but race.

MORGAN: Oh, you're talking about with organized labor. Yes, until you saw the people who were actually living at the country clubs and running the town, I mean owning it.

HANSON: Okay, so there was...

MORGAN: Except for Pittsburgh people. I mean, Pittsburgh owned the place, lock, stock and mill. But the rest of the folks around here all did business with Pittsburgh, so they were pretty conservative. But, inside the other segments of the society where laboring people worked, 25,000 of them, 50,000 in unions and 00:14:00in mines, those folks were not exactly what you called people who worshipped at the altar of mammon as you'd say.

HANSON: What about...let's take that topic and I want to go back to Tuscaloosa again and the Autherine Lucy situation. But let's take that '54 situation. Everything actually changed then in this city. There seemed to be a wall that came down and said, "We are not going to change.' Atlanta didn't take that approach. Why do you think Birmingham did?

MORGAN: Every city took that approach in the south. The entire South took that approach. When the cotton curtain [went up], which had always been there anyway, it just was molded into a wall when Brown v. Board came because people had been making up their minds for years before Brown v. Board. And, segregationist politicians, who were generally representative of the rich, the well borne and the able, certainly moved in 1954, as they had in 1948 when they used the race 00:15:00question to take the democratic party away and they did exactly the same thing then. Now, at that point, you had certain noted politicians, Bull Conner--Theopholis Eugene, I think, was his given name--and all those people, and they were really pawns for a goodly number of white folks whose names I could mention. I think I won't right now.

HANSON: Why?

MORGAN: Because I don't choose to.

HANSON: All right.

MORGAN: But these folks were in the area and they were conservative beforehand, and they were conservative after that. But, the race issue gave them something really to talk about, because now they could talk in terms of segregated schools and all of the phrases they might have used. I remember one deacon [saying], 'Niggers have taken over your school. Niggers had taken over your churches. Niggers had taken over all those kinds of things,' and, consequently, they had great power and that was true not just of Birmingham. That was true across much of the South. Birmingham was always rawer and tougher than the rest of the south. Atlanta had a business community and a semblance of an educational 00:16:00community inside the city and you had in Birmingham-- You didn't have much of that. People who did business here did business through U.S. Steel and did business with U.S. Steel. If you mined coal, you sold it some place. If you were an ore miner or if you owned the ore mine, you got rid of it there if U.S. Steel didn't already own it. And, all of the rest of the steel companies did. This was just that place. We're talking about 50,000 folks around here.

HANSON: So you're saying that this cry against Black folks fell on very fertile ground, because people were built with lack of education or whatever the case may be.

MORGAN: And, traditionally, if possible, when White labor went on a strike, Black folk would-- They tried to bring Black folks in and convicts and prison labor sometimes to break the strike. And that didn't--There was not a unity in working together. Only a couple of labor unions managed to put that together and 00:17:00work together so they could get organized. They did a good job at that.

HANSON: Let's go back to Tuscaloosa and the Autherine Lucy case because you, in your book, One Man, One Voice site the fact that you had called Autherine Lucy when she came, and she mentioned that she heard from this young White man and you were the one that called her. But the University didn't do anything towards bringing her in. Did you want to do something about bringing her into the University?

MORGAN: Yes, but you see, I mean, there's nothing that I would.... I mean I'm not....Let me think. To ask the question in this time and to think about the question say in nineteen hundred and forty seven [1947] through nineteen hundred and fifty five [1955], would I have wanted to bring her to the University of Alabama? Sure. But, would I have wanted her to enter the University of Alabama? Sure. But, would I want to have a means to do that? Sure. And did I have any conceivable means to do that? No. The only thing I had was I had some influence 00:18:00on the campus from time to time in the ways that some people did, and I could just assure her that we would have that matter worked out when she got admitted. That everybody would be a peaceful admission and it wouldn't be bad and that could have been done easily.

HANSON: Were you in law school then?

MORGAN: Not when she got in, but she came in 1956. I was out of law school in 1955.

HANSON: How did you begin to work with people like Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores? I mean what was the connection there in the beginning? Because your career goes on interestingly defending a lot of very unpopular positions, Chuck. I mean, that's what you're noted for.

MORGAN: Well, the defense of unpopular positions did not feed me, to start with. But, let's just go back....

HANSON: Let's go back.

MORGAN: At the University of Alabama... I understood Alabama very well. I 00:19:00finished near the top of my class in law school if not at it. I knew the... I had come out of Alabama with a couple of degrees. I knew a lot of people. I had worked in campus politics and activities and in Young Democrats' work and in democratic state politics well before I got out of the University of Alabama. I left the University of Alabama at age 25. By the time I left Alabama, I understood the Hill-Sparkman bunch, the Young Democrats, and everything else that I was involved in. I was the national committeeman for the Young Democrats, I guess, before I ever got out of school. Now, I knew state politics and I knew state politicians and they knew me and they knew I was a little strange in some beliefs. Some of them did, but a great number of them agreed with me. Now the fact that I wind up saying something and am known for saying something or breaking loose that way was not by my pre-design. I didn't wake up one day and say, 'Hi there. There's a revival. I'm going to do something.' It is just that 00:20:00some people were confronted with having to make a decision. Most people wanted to avoid that decision. I was sane. I certainly would have preferred to avoid making the decision. I had already made my mind up as to how I felt about things and I said it. But, I sure didn't want to be confronted with something that would strike me away from the entire community or town.

HANSON: Then why did you?

MORGAN: Because I wasn't smart enough to turn it down. I couldn't figure a way out where I could live with myself. I didn't have the capacity to rationalize, apparently, that other people did, and I was confronted. Confrontation is what changes people. Their minds are already made up, generally. They know what they think. They know what it is and they know whether they can live with themselves or not. So, once confronted, then you make a choice.

HANSON: Alright, what was the first confrontation that...? You said it didn't pay the bills. What paid your bills in the beginning when you took ....?

MORGAN: Well, I made a law practice. I'm not sitting down there looking for a 00:21:00civil rights case. That's crazy. I suppose, as you get into things you think about them. For instance, I was already active in politics to a degree and already involved in the liberal or Loyalists Democratic...the Loyalist wing of the Democratic Party. There were Loyalists and Dixiecrats. We were Loyalists. And, in that context, people knew what people thought. I mean there were folks in the crowd that knew. And, when you go through it and you're suddenly someplace and you're thinking about this and you've watched everything go, then, at some point, you either have to--You make a decision and a choice. For instance, if you represent somebody, you're appointed to defend someone in a criminal case, then you have to make a decision. You've accepted the appointment. They paid a hundred dollars ($100) back then for a capital case. That means if the fellow could face capital punishment you got a hundred dollars ($100) from the State of Alabama to defend that person. Now, one of the reasons 00:22:00some lawyers would do that, even those...like I did when I started out with a corporate firm here...one reason lawyers did that is because, if they were young, they wanted to learn something. Well they also did not want to be--at least I did not want to be--known as 'Death House Morgan.' That was a word that went beyond me. I didn't want to be known as a fellow who took advantage of anybody that got killed. Now, once you've been presented with a case and you go ahead and you handle it, you start learning more and more about things as you go. It's not just law or rationality. It's facts and circumstances. And one case after another case after another case, you wind up doing things. And, you know the strangest thing happens. All of your friends and associates, all of whom were associated with you in one activity or another, seem to develop a propensity to find out that they can send you a case that they wouldn't handle.

HANSON: Why did you never turn it down?

MORGAN: Well, I didn't....I had a different perception of things. I didn't want to take some cases sometimes and get out there in those damn things any more than anybody else did. That was crazy. But, my perception of being a lawyer was different from that of a lot of people.

HANSON: Deal with that a little bit. Let's go back to deal with some of the cases that gave you high visibility that led up to your leaving in '64. I'm thinking of you taking, for example, the Alabama Council on Human Relations, the Bob Hughes case, the Norman Jimerson case. There were no attorneys that would handle that in Birmingham.

MORGAN: Well, there probably were some lawyers. I'm talking about White lawyers.

HANSON: Yes, I'm talking about White lawyers, because there were segregated juries and we're going to get to that in a minute.

MORGAN: There were some White lawyers, probably, who would have taken those cases...a few. And those lawyers were unknown sometimes, often, to me, but certainly to the clients. Now, when someone comes to you and they have a 00:24:00problem, then, the first thing you want to do is shun it off to somebody else. I was never a member of the Council on Human Relations. I mean I was hardly ever...I mean I was a member of the Young Men's Business Club primarily because at least it was an organization that had some controversy to it. I mean, in a world in which the Junior Chamber of Commerce was over here and the Young Men's Business Club [YMBC] was over there, I got to the YMBC. And we had debates in that thing!

It was really very strange in Birmingham that somebody would do that sort of thing, a group or an organization. We had folks that were, you know, good people who were confronting things. Well, as far as I was concerned, the last thing in the world I wanted to do as I got up in the morning was to go out and confront the race question. And the reason for that was that I had done very well and I was not what you would call ignorant of the world in which I lived. I mean, I traveled the state in politics. I had done a world of things. I knew everybody from...you know...I mean, I had people who were interested in me. Mark Ray 00:25:00Clement in Tuscaloosa and others. Jim Folsom. All those folks around, I mean Hill and Sparkman, I got along with all of these folks.

Now the last thing in the world they wanted me to do--any of them that knew me well--would be to get involved in an integration case, because it was unheard of. You've got to be out of your mind to do that. Well, I wasn't out of my mind, obviously. It's worked out very well over the long haul. I couldn't foresee any of it. But, you see, what happens is that when you are confronted in life, you make certain decisions and the decisions you make generally govern the rest of your life in certain instances. And when you make those decisions you begin to move, even if your moves cut you away from the community and one leads to another because you don't live in a vacuum. If Joe Jones over here knows something happened, he may tell Bill Green who tells Sam Smith and Sam then 00:26:00knows somebody and pretty soon you wind up with another client and you say, 'Where did that client come from?' Well, it came because of the first one. And it could be that your capacity to rationalize wasn't ... you weren't that rational a person perhaps. Now, I didn't have any question about what was right and I knew I was an American citizen and there was a Supreme Court of the United States and, as such, all those things entered into it. There was a certain sense of patriotism and if you took a case then you tried to win it. You could win it any number of ways, settle it, do this, get the case dismissed, do all those things I could and you just wound up repeatedly getting in those things and when you did wind up repeatedly getting in them, it wasn't that you couldn't foretell the future. You just didn't know what else to do other than whatever your duty was.

As I said, it wasn't my duty to join the Council on Human Relations. I didn't 00:27:00race over every day to see if I could attend a NAACP meeting. I mean, that wasn't in my interest. I didn't wake up one morning thinking that was a fine thing for me to do. I didn't go join some debating society. The Young Men's Business Club is as closest I came to that around here. I didn't do that. All that happened was, things happened and invariably, when I get into a case then some son of a bitch would come along and would anger me a little bit along the way and that would just increase my resolve. Now, in fact looking back at it, I have a lot to be thankful for Birmingham. I got out of here alive.

HANSON: True.

MORGAN: I got out of here well. I came back here for years. I still do. I used to say I didn't make any...lose any old friends. I just made new enemies. And I 00:28:00didn't do anything particularly noteworthy, you see.

HANSON: But Chuck...

MORGAN: I was a lawyer.

HANSON: I know. Stop right there though. We must talk a little bit about the climate for White folks at that time and what it was like if you dared speak out. For example, one of the cases when you came back into town, a classic that you recite in your book, is that you're down here at the Parliament House having lunch and somebody saw you and went across the street. It was shortly after the city had desegregated the lunch counters and so forth. And they said they'd rather eat across the street with a group of niggers than sit in the same hotel room with Chuck Morgan.

MORGAN: That's right.

HANSON: Obviously you weren't the dearly beloved...It didn't offend you? How did you put up with that? I mean, you knew people and they resented you. You were not the most dearly loved man in Birmingham.

MORGAN: You know something. This may come as a big surprise to you, but the odds are pretty good that I'm still not. (Hanson laughs.) Now, the second thing is 00:29:00how do you do that? Well, you don't do that voluntarily. You don't wake up one morning and say I'd like to do that but you have to figure out whether you're right or not and then you have to figure out whether it's worth it or not and then you have to do whatever you got to do.

HANSON: Stop right there. What made you...? Was it your conscience that said this is right? You said you were an American citizen. You were...

MORGAN: My conscience told me this was right, yes. My conscience told me the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union were right also, and I didn't pick up the first mail opportunity I had to join. I was confronted.

HANSON: So, you're saying it was always in your life, this confrontation, where you had to make an ethical decision?

MORGAN: I'm saying that precisely what has happened with almost every social movement in the country and certainly with the movement for civil rights in this country is that the conduct of the oppressed was such that it confronted the oppressors. And, if you witness that, then, the old line from the labor days is, 00:30:00'Which side are you on?' And, if it confronts you directly then you either do your duty or you don't. I didn't do anything... I didn't do one thing that a lawyer shouldn't do. I did only what a lawyer should do.

HANSON: Then why weren't there more lawyers? In this case, specifically, White lawyers that would take civil rights cases in Alabama?

MORGAN: I don't know. You'll have to ask them.

HANSON: Well, we've tried, and nobody will give us an answer to that.

MORGAN: Well, in the first place a lot of them don't go. I mean, I can think of... If I were Black, there would be a world of lawyers I wouldn't enter into their office asking them to represent me. If I were a member of the Communist Party for instance, I wouldn't just search out some of these lawyers around town here and ask them to represent me. Now, me, I was pretty well treated by these lawyers around here. I remind you, because don't think for a minute that I wasn't. There were two things I was doing. I was doing a lot of the dirty work. It was clean to me. It was clean to the world, but I was doing a lot of the things they didn't have to do and I had a lot of friends. I was president of the Junior Bar Section of the Young Lawyers that year. I was in charge of sundry 00:31:00things in the Bar Association. I started out with a corporate firm here in town, had a world of friends and I was active in politics and I still do and I haven't lost those friends. I still see them now. I see those lawyers now, many of them, the ones that are still living, and I don't have a problem with them and they didn't have a problem with me. I went to a bar dinner the other night here in Birmingham. I might as well have been returning to a family reunion with a lot of those folks, but the fact of the matter is that I chose a different course than they did. Many of them respected that course. A lot of them were on the other side, politically and otherwise, and I can't expect them, if they're on the other side, politically and otherwise, to stand around applauding me.

HANSON: But, Chuck, you suffered a lot financially, in a lot of different ways and yet you kept plowing ahead. For example, segregation....

MORGAN: Every single thing that I suffered along the way financially, if you 00:32:00will look back over that as life went on, everything came out very well.

HANSON: Sure. You can take it with perspective. But I can remember walking in your house in Mountain Brook with search lights going on the front door that stayed on 24 hours a day.

MORGAN: Well now, they were just kind of big long lights. They were not searchlights in that sense, but they were there because I thought a place should be well lit--in Birmingham.

HANSON: Now, be honest about that. You had had threats. Your family had had threats. Your child had had threats. Being a White man, taking some civil rights cases...

MORGAN: I don't believe the child had threats.

HANSON: But you had threats.

MORGAN: Well that was alright, sure, but I expected that. I had a lot of threats, sure.

HANSON: And what about... Did you fear for your life ever?

MORGAN: Of course.

HANSON: You would go across the tracks and meet with Orzell Billingsley carrying a gun sometimes in your cases.

MORGAN: I didn't carry one much, but I had a permit to carry one and I did sometimes have a thing that would protect me in my briefcase, sure.

HANSON: Do you think you could have used it?

MORGAN: Do I think I could have used it? Well,...I mean, what a strange question.

HANSON: I don't think it's strange at all.

MORGAN: You don't think anybody ever carried one of those things and didn't think they could use it.

HANSON: Do you still carry a gun?

MORGAN: No.

HANSON: Why?

MORGAN: I don't want to.

HANSON: Why did you carry it then?

MORGAN: Well, I didn't want to then.

HANSON: But you felt you had to?

MORGAN: From time to time. Not every day, not much.... I've always thought they were more trouble than they were worth, usually, but there were events and things that came along that from time to time told me that I should be able to defend myself against people who were not interested in fist fighting.

HANSON: What was the response of your mother and father, Camille, your wife, to your outspoken stand on a variety of different things? And we are going to get 00:34:00into some of these cases in just a minute which are famous now. But what was their response? Did they ever say, 'Chuck, pull back. Don't be so outspoken.'?

MORGAN: Not my wife, no, never.

HANSON: Your mother and father? Your brother?

MORGAN: No, not my brother. I think my mother and father were worried about me not making it. So, consequently, they would express that concern from time to time. But as far as my wife was concerned, no, not from the moment that we... not from the moment that the subject first came up have we disagreed on it.

HANSON: Despite the fact that your life was threatened, despite the fact that you had to live under lights because you liked, to use your term, 'a well lit lawn'...

MORGAN: No don't, don't. Listen, it was nothing compared with people like Shores and folks like that who had an entire neighborhood with no policemen around. You know, I'm telling you. I'm living in Mountain Brook. If I were sitting over some place and worrying about doing something to somebody, about the last place I 00:35:00would like to go if I were from...I'm not going to mention the area in Birmingham, something like White steel workers or somebody else, I'm not going to trot out to Mountain Brook to do something. Why, good Lord, man. That's about as foreign as... It's foreign in a different way, the same way the Black community is, but in a different way.

HANSON: Let's talk about some of the most famous cases. Certainly, desegregating juries, Chuck. I mean, you had some failures in that but you saw in the beginning that that had to happen quickly.

MORGAN: Well, because of my experience in Birmingham practicing law, I understood--because of my experience generally in Alabama with politics--I knew that Black folks had to have some power and the power that Blacks could get, of course, is the vote. Without the right to vote, everything else would fail. Now, the instruments of power in our democracy are generally... The first power is 00:36:00the power of the vote--a power just as important is the power of being on a jury. If you had all White juries, as we generally throughout the State of Alabama, the jury can do anything to you. The jury is what takes your life away. The jury can take away your property. The jury can take away everything. Therefore, that's one of the great instruments of power in a democracy. We talk about the police and the lawyers and this and that, but the jury, that's the essence of power.

The vote is the essence of power in a democracy and when I started practicing here, women couldn't serve on juries. Blacks didn't serve on juries except in 00:37:00some areas in small numbers. They'd show up one, two or three in the panel. With women, I filed a case called White v. Crook in Lowndes County, Alabama. I like that name. White was Gardenia White and she was Black. Crook was Bruce Crook and he was the jury commissioner and he was White. But, also, I added into that complaint the question of the exclusion of women from juries and on recollection that was the first application of the equal protection clause for the rights of women with respect to a matter of that nature. So, in that one case, I struck down-- We managed to desegregate the juries of Lowndes County and, secondly, managed to take away the ban on women, White and Black from serving on juries in the State of Alabama.

Those cases, those jury cases were filed county by county by county. I would 00:38:00have somebody, and this is...much of this is after I left here and went .... I left Birmingham in late 1963 and by 1964 I was back in Atlanta. In '64 I then organized the ACLU Southern Regional Office, American Civil Liberties Union Southern Regional Office, and consequently, filed lawsuits across the South. So, when I left here, I didn't leave for long and I didn't leave for real, some might say. Because, then, it was in Alabama counties, numbers of them, not just one, two, or three, that a lawsuit would be filed against the jury commissioners to require the desegregation of juries. And they would be filed in a federal court. And, then, we would rule to desegregate the juries since statistically they would have to come up and make sure that they met, generally, the population in the area. Well that's the transfer of power that nobody much sees 00:39:00or notices, looking back at it, but that's one of the strongest instruments of power that exists. Very few things in this society can take away your life, legally, or take away your property, legally.

HANSON: Could the state have changed everything if they could have passed a law in the legislature to desegregate juries? The answer is, 'Of course.' Some states did, didn't they?

MORGAN: No.

HANSON: None. In the South.

MORGAN: In the South? Not when I was doing this, no.

HANSON: Okay, so you went county by county in Alabama particularly, but you also did it in Mississippi?

MORGAN: In Alabama. I had a great desire to see that Alabama changed. I mean, I had the whole South and we had other organizations working with...and worked with them whether it was in Mississippi or Georgia. We had lawyers and organizations and ultimately you raised money in the North and the money flowed South and it became a major industry for folks. And you had lawyers all across the way. We had lawyers in particular states and so we filed lawsuits with them, Black lawyers, White lawyers, whatever. But, all those things were devoted and 00:40:00dedicated to redistributing power. It was not...I mean, I wasn't that...The traditional way to do it is you defend a Black man charged with a crime and you raise the question of systematic exclusion of Negroes from the Grand Appellate juries and, after you raise the question, you see, you get in the record and you go up and appeal the case and you get the conviction reversed and he doesn't go to death because you've proved racial discrimination in the selection of the jury. But you see, what I did was different. We fashioned an answer out of a little arcane reference to a couple of cases and the answer was, file suit in federal court against the state court at jury officials and put them under an injunction, because when you used to raise the question for Black defendants, it would go away. The whole thing would go away. Then you'd turn around and retry him and whatever else it is then after the court ruled you'd have the juries about the same way. This way, we put them under a court order and we would 00:41:00____________. And I don't care if the county was Lowndes, Harber, Bullock, wherever across the South, we did that. And, then the second place was in the voting rights cases.

HANSON: Before we get to that, also--which is sort of right with it, because you always talk about segregated justice, from cradle to grave, lack of justice for the Black man in particular--

[cross-talking]

MORGAN: There's no way...You see, I can be critical, and I sometimes am, of some companions that I had. But imagine what you'd do if you walk in a courthouse and you raise the racial questions if you are a White lawyer in those years. You earn your living there. You've got a wife and kids at home. You've got a mortgage on your house, just like everybody else. You look at it and you know you have an obligation to raise the question of systematic exclusion of negroes from juries, but you know if you do so that you'll have to give up your livelihood, the town you've lived in, your mother's and father's and everybody 00:42:00else's around, your wife and children. Now, under that circumstance, that's quite a burden to be on a lawyer or any other citizen, you know, who lives some place. Well that's what was confronted. There were a lot of lawyers that didn't like that system, but if they did something about it, the natural laws of economics did them in. Now, I understood that. I'd been through all that. So, when I went with the ACLU, I used the ACLU and they used me. But, I used it and grant funds and all across the South, hired lawyers to file lawsuits to desegregate juries that even some of them later would be trying cases in.

HANSON: Also, you desegregated prisons, I mean the Caleb Washington case. Along with Orzell Billingsley, you had been fighting this for years.

MORGAN: The whole justice system. Jury cases, the prison system, you name it. All of it is a part of the instrument of power. The basic instrument of power in 00:43:00any society and culture is to do one of two things: kill someone or put them in jail. That's the way the world works. Now, I understood that. And I understand it today. Lots of people today don't seem to understand that. It's what I would refer to as kind of murky, miasmic liberalism. I mean, the world would be nice, but that's called power and I knew something about politics and I knew that was the way that you changed things was to alter power, not so that Whites wouldn't be serving but so that you would desegregate and integrate. And you know why you want to integrate? You want to integrate because that means that Black folks and White folks both talk differently. They say things differently when White folks are around. Black folks do, and White folks say things differently when Black folks are around. That's just the nature of human beings. Everybody forgets 00:44:00about the nature of human beings.

HANSON: So you decided to use the federal government in a new way to desegregate juries to get people to desegregate prisons. But the classic case, of course--and you had a lot of help here--was the one man, one vote. You saw reapportionment as absolutely fundamental to changing the state. In other words, they were all part of a large scheme, were they not, Chuck?

MORGAN: I could see something that other people didn't see. They still don't see it and they still don't understand it and they may never. It doesn't matter a whit. Somebody will. Somebody will see it. If you have a state legislature, as Alabama did, that was created in 1901 and designed to make certain that certain agricultural interest ruled the area and designed in such a way that you have a state senator from, say, Lowndes County and a state member of the House or two and that this state senator and that state senator from Wilcox and the state senator from X county and Y county, that all these people had great power in a 00:45:0035 person senate. And Jefferson County was 642,000 people, ultimately, by about 1940 as I recall. And Jefferson County had one vote in the state legislature and state senate, too. Seven members of the house. Other places had two or three members of the house. Every county had one. Sixty-seven counties had one house member. Therefore, the apportionment of the state meant that the vote of a person in Jefferson County, White or Black, was minuscule compared with the votes of the people in those other counties.

Now, how do you change the state? Well, in the first place, if the Black Belt of the state--named, incidentally, if anybody ever watches this, not because of the population, it is said, but because of the color of the soil--the Black Belt of the state ran the operation and the Black Belt of the state is interested in what? Cheap labor. What's the cheapest labor? Well, slave labor was pretty expensive. It got cheaper after Reconstruction. So, you've got all the crops and 00:46:00all the Black folks living on the farm and how do you control folks who live on the farm? They see you've got more than they've got. Well, you know, the strangest thing is you sometimes do it with guns, whips, knives, chains, the sheriff and the county jail. Now, how do you do something about that? Well, the first thing you do is you desegregate juries. Simultaneously, you'd better desegregate the voter rolls, because if you have a democracy, the real power lies in the voter rolls. And so, simultaneously, we started filing voting discrimination cases and working with those who did across the Black Belt, also. And in the ACLU years it was just wonderful. I mean, it was like, there I was in Atlanta, Georgia and I had people all over the United States who were contributing money and foundations and others for me to go out and hire lawyers 00:47:00and to get people to do things and try cases myself and take them to Supreme Court to alter the law that concerns you deeply. But, talk a little bit about where you were at that time. You were with the ACLU in Atlanta.

MORGAN: I was in the ACLU in Atlanta in 1964. I left here in '63 and was... In '64 the Voting Rights Act was proposed, but '64 was the year for the Civil Rights Act.

HANSON: That's right. '64.

MORGAN: [unclear] and the rest of that. I lived in Washington and then moved to 00:48:00Atlanta, I guess later in that year-- Late in '64 I moved to Atlanta. Now, in 1965, you had the Selma to Montgomery March and those things for the Voting Rights Act. And, you see, we also had a Department of Justice back then and I liked those people. A lot of people don't like the Department of Justice, but I always thought they were pretty good folks. Burke Marshall headed up the Department of Justice and John Doar was in the Department of Justice as number two in the Civil Rights Division and Bob Kennedy was the Attorney General of the United States. Whatever people may say about any Kennedy, any place, Robert Kennedy was hard minded, tough and he was devoted and dedicated to making the United States live by its promise and carrying that promise forward to the South. So, I liked him, I mean, personally and otherwise and I liked these other 00:49:00folks personally and otherwise and they took care of their things and I'd try to take care of things that they couldn't take care of and things that.... They couldn't handle all of these lawsuits. They could break down this statute and that sort of statute. They had all sorts of things going for them. Then, Jack Kennedy was assassinated, of course, soon after...in the fall of 1963. Well, then, in came Lyndon Johnson and, you see, Lyndon Johnson, as southern as he is, was a man who understood power. You know, you don't have to be a walking around genius to understand power, and Lyndon Johnson was probably both a walking around genius and he understood power. He knew that one way to alter that power in the South was to alter the vote. Now, he knew that that was the right thing to do, too, so he embarked upon the vote. So if you can take care of the votes 00:50:00and if you can take care of the jury structure and the justice system and, then, lastly, if you can take care of the .....

HANSON: Reapportionment.

MORGAN: Well, I mean, you've got that. That's the vote. I consider the reapportionment cases, those cases, all of them having to do with the vote down the line. And, when you get through, you change those two things. Then, education you see has to fall in the center of that. You can't educate people or get money for education or do anything else unless you've got a decent legislature, a decent voter set of rolls and a decent set of people who are not going to be able to kill people with impunity. And, they've got juries to protect that. So, by working on the instruments of power...I came to these conclusions in Birmingham. I mean, nobody sat around and philosophized with me about this. I mean, I could see this from the University of Alabama right straight on through. I understood power and I had a lot of folks who were more miasmic than I was in civil rights things. They did other things. They were interested in-- I understood what had to be done to give people a playground in 00:51:00which they could all operate. A place where they could debate back and forth, where people could hear different arguments. And, I... That's what I did. I did that for eight years out of Atlanta.

HANSON: Chuck, let's go back to 1963. The thing-- If you said to X number of people in Birmingham, 'Chuck Morgan,' they would say, 'I remember when he said,' and they'll quote 'Birmingham is dead,' which is not exactly how you said it in that famous speech before the YMBC. That happened in '63 after four little girls were killed at the Sixteenth Street Church. Do you want to address the climate that led up to that bombing that certainly was a turning point in your life?

MORGAN: No, and I don't think it was an event in my life. I mean, I know that that was an important event in my life. It was a terrible thing to have happen 00:52:00and it sickened me. But...I can't recount those events.

HANSON: Why did you determine to give that speech in the first place? Because you were so outraged?

MORGAN: Well, it was nothing else. Sure. I mean, I didn't sit down and rationally say, 'Hi, there. I think I'll go give this speech. Hey let's go to Gettysburg.' No, that's not any event. I mean, I just... I was furious. That's why.

HANSON: You said something there that having just recently gone....

MORGAN: It was sick. The whole thing was sickening.

HANSON: But you said, 'We are all to blame.'

MORGAN: Well, of course. We were.

HANSON: Address that a little bit.

MORGAN: Well, we are a democracy. When the people's will is carried out by bombing kids at a church that's pretty close to seeing who did it. You know, I'm not a great one to wake up one morning and say corporate guilt is the way of the 00:53:00earth. I'm not talking about that. But, I lived in Birmingham, Alabama. I knew who the hell did it. I didn't have to.... I wasn't born yesterday, but I didn't have the capacity to rationalize [that] most people did, because I could see things they didn't see or at least I was willing to look. But there was nothing great about that. I didn't do anything. There was all these people talking about courage and this and that and all that sort of routine. I only did, you see, what I couldn't keep from doing. People don't understand that. Other people could keep from doing it who agreed with me. I just didn't have the way... I couldn't do that.

HANSON: Let's talk a little bit about practicing law in Birmingham, Alabama for two Black lawyers that you worked very closely with, most notably Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores. What was it like? This was before there was any desegregation, before your famous cases on juries, before your famous cases with 00:54:00the prisons. What was it like the first time you came in contact with somebody like Arthur Shores or Orzell Billingsley? How did they practice law? How could they practice law in this highly segregated society?

MORGAN: Well, it was very hard because they didn't have any power.

HANSON: That's your theme, isn't it? That's the theme of everything.

MORGAN: It's not the theme. It's the theme of democracy and the world and life. I mean it's nothing I thought of, because human beings who are interested in politics understand a little bit about power to start with, and human beings that are interested in law ought to understand something about power and it just... The real question is, did Orzell Billingsley and Arthur Shores have power? They had about nine thousand Black votes, as I recall--nine to ten or twelve thousand Black votes in a period of time in Birmingham and Jefferson County, and that was a semblance of power, you know, a little bit, but not much. Orzell was... I drank with Orzell a good bit. We'd go off to some place, his 00:55:00house or somewhere--not in Mountain Brook. We didn't go out there. And Arthur was not a person who was that way. He'd never go with us. And I did not work with them in any number of cases. I mean, Orzell was a plaintiff of mine in one case, Billingsley v. Clayton, a jury case. Or maybe that was his father.

HANSON: That was his father.

MORGAN: Yes, his daddy. [pauses and laughs] Orzell, that's a funny story. [speaking low] I probably ought to pick up the phone and tell him before I tell it, but these were people that I saw. It was a segregated society. I didn't see them any place except at Orzell's house. I was closer to Orzell than Arthur. Arthur was pretty straight laced and he was a fellow-- Orzell drank a good bit and he was... Arthur was a representative of, you know, the business interest...

HANSON: The power structure.

MORGAN: The NAACP and the rest of it. But, Orzell and the other young lawyers, 00:56:00you know. There were some younger lawyers around who were Black lawyers and I used to...I thought they were brilliant in many ways. I'm not commenting scholastically. I don't know what they did in law school, but they could find a remedy and think of something to do. The problem was that they were crippled.

HANSON: Because--

MORGAN: Because they lived in a segregated society in which all the power was in the hands of the White folks.

HANSON: And being crippled they also didn't have access to some of the libraries, did they, Chuck?

MORGAN: Well, they didn't have access to the rest of that. You see there are people who can practice law without much law libraries, but in Birmingham, I discovered one day at the Birmingham law library, I was-- I told somebody just the other day. I was at the Birmingham Law Library looking for something and I noticed all these people who worked there who weren't helping anybody do anything--about four of them, I counted. And I counted particularly because there I am in the old courthouse, Jefferson County Courthouse and I'm wandering along and I'm searching for something and I looked over at a little room over 00:57:00there and there used to be a room in there, there's a little ... the sixth floor of the courthouse had an elevator that would take you upstairs to the law library. And, in the law library there was an old man there, with gray hair, a short little fellow, a nice fellow as far as I was concerned, named Charlie White.

The Birmingham Bar Association ran that library. Well, Black folks couldn't even be members of the Birmingham Bar Association. They had their own private bar association. And, it was...one of the great revelations of my life was to discover that Orzell or whoever it was, would go over to the law library and they couldn't go into the law library and get a book. They'd get up there and they would put them in a little room, like the little room I saw. And, then the law librarian, Charlie White, would bring them books. They would tell him what they wanted, and he'd come over and bring the books back to them. Now, of course, I started to say to somebody the other day, desegregation has resulted, 00:58:00now, in a law library where the librarians don't even bring White lawyers' books. (laughs) But, there was Charlie White working along the way carrying the books over to the Black lawyers.

There were a thousand things that were strange and absurd looking back, but you see, they were all designed to a purpose and the purpose was to make sure that White people, just because of their race, remained in power. Nothing else. And, if you... There were a thousand rationalizations...but that's what was involved. To a great degree that's involved in a lot of politics today, and we're talking about thirty years later. And, I imagine, they'll be involved thirty more years from now. Ultimately, if things continue to work along the way, and we have democracy along the way, and the continuance of the Constitution--If the Supreme 00:59:00Court comes in, it'll enforce it and that sort of thing and we'll find that those problems will go away. But that comes from something called integration.

You know it's not... There's been a lot of integration of the South. You can see it by the sundry shades of Black folks. Now, all these artificial distinctions of race, I mean religion, you don't even, you know-- You can't even tell what somebody's religion is when you see them, but people all over the world...until you know what it is, people all over the world kill each other over religion. Well, they can see race. They kill each other over race. It just.... Most things in life are very simple. You don't have to be an honor graduate of the Alabama Law School--or Harvard or Yale. The problem with the law and the problem with education is, it gives people a way to think "rationally" or, to put it another way, to rationalize. And when they rationalize, they rationalize away most of 01:00:00the things they might have done, which could have changed something along the way, along life's road. And, I have seen many people do that and I have not, you know, I have not written them off. I mean, I have a world of friends here who disagreed with me and over the years, I mean they just... I'd see some in Atlanta and some in some other places, those eight years in Atlanta, four years in Washington. And all these folks, I mean-- As I say, I didn't lose a lot of old friends. I knew a world of people.

HANSON: But Chuck you might have--

MORGAN: I made a lot of new enemies.

HANSON: Yeah, right, but you might very well have seen things differently--and I want to get to the core of why you did--because aside from just what you did in Alabama and when you were with the ACLU in juries and one man, one vote, and prisons and so forth, you also defended unpopular causes, not the least of whom 01:01:00was Muhammed Ali who was Cassius Clay who didn't want to go and work in the Vietnam War. The Levy case, a dermatologist who also did not want to serve in the Vietnam War. Did the ACLU give you that kind of cover, or why did you decide to take those cases? Those were individuals. That was not a question of power. That was individual.

MORGAN: OK. The day that the ACLU, in a time like the Vietnam War, gives somebody, quote, cover, that is the day that the organization should dissolve. Now, the...When I left here and went to Washington, I worked for the American Association of University Professors for a while after I finished A Time to Speak. And then, after that, the American Civil Liberties Union decided that, low and behold, the poor benighted southerners needed some help and needed some 01:02:00emancipation and so, consequently, they wanted to organize a Southern Regional Office of the ACLU. It was also in liberal jargon or whatever you want to put it, it was pretty good business, as the ACLU Southern office raised enough money to handle it and probably raised some money extra to boot. But there were foundation heads all across the country who were interested in the South, many of them having been southerners. I mean the guys who ran them. And, so, consequently, when I was in the southern office of the ACLU, grants came and with those grants I could do something that we hadn't done before. I put maybe fifteen or ten or twenty lawyers on a retainer. They were Black, most of them. Some were White. Every month. Why? I wanted them to be able to practice where they were and live, eat. I understood that. See, if you could eat and sleep, 01:03:00have a place to live, food, shelter and clothing, then you're likely to be around and handle cases.

Now, the Vietnam War came along and as the Vietnam War came, it got in the way. It was just a terrible inconvenience for the Civil Rights Movement (both laugh). I'm in Atlanta, Georgia and there's Julian Bond, who's, you know, a friend and a client. There he is in the Georgia legislature and they want to throw him out. I wind up in a case called Bond v. Floyd. I'm already in Reynolds v. Sims or Sims v. Frank is the way they filed it, and I've done that. I guess I argued that case in '64. I'm in Atlanta...when I'm in Atlanta and I'm back in Atlanta in '64, I argue Reynolds v. Sims in the Supreme Court of the United States in '64. In '65--

HANSON: (coughs loudly) Excuse me, Chuck.

MORGAN: That's alright. In '65, when you go along, then the Voting Rights Act comes in and all these things are there, so there's another thing coming along 01:04:00and it's the Vietnam War. I say the Vietnam War got in the way. It was a terrible inconvenience for the social revolution that was underway. It's very difficult to have a social revolution in a time of war. War does things to people and governments. I don't know where you read this, but it's readable many places that war does things to people that other things don't do to them, and to nations. When you've got a, quote, enemy, out there then the war effort takes precedence. Well, what we did with the Civil Rights Movement, you see, is that it was existing in the time of the Vietnam War. And people like Martin King and others move against the war. In the first place, Martin King was a Christian. I mean, people keep forgetting that. I mean, they think of Martin Luther King as a "civil rights leader" or as a great speaker or as an excellent writer or as a 01:05:00PhD from Boston, but Martin King was a Christian and most Christians understand there is something wrong with war. Most of them don't mind it much, but they know there is something wrong with war. Well, Martin King knew there was something wrong with war. The old spirituals knew there was something wrong with war. Lots of people sang, 'Ain't goin' to go to war no more.' And, along with that come the Vietnam War and at that juncture people in the United States look at them and they say what in God's green earth are we doing in Vietnam? As far as I'm concerned, I don't particularly want to get involved in the war. I'm interested in other things but the war keeps getting in the way. I mean, the war is in the way of the social revolution going on in the United States. War generally kills social revolutions. Well, something happened with the Vietnam War. It was a little bit different. The social revolution may have been killed by the war. It may not have. I doubt that it has. But, secondly, it also killed 01:06:00the war. The Vietnam War was there and I...

HANSON: But you took individual cases, Chuck. I mean, King certainly got to be very unpopular with a lot of the good folk, the liberal folk, that were beginning to accept him and what he had done in the Civil Rights Movement. But when he came out--I can remember him doing it just before Memphis and when he was killed--when he came out and, 'a,' talked about the garbage workers and organizing and, 'b,' when he talked against the war, everybody said, 'Well, he's too radical.'

MORGAN: Now, just look at that. Here's a man who goes out and says garbage workers should be organized and should be paid more. Now, there are very few citizens of this world who don't know that garbage workers should have been organized and should have been paid more. Today they are. They are organized in many cases and they are paid more. They work for private contractors today, generally, throughout the country, but back then, when King did that, there was just a lot of folks who hate anybody who is on the side of working class people 01:07:00making more money. I mean, you know, I-- Just wake up every morning and you can find people who are opposed to that. They are in high office. They're in office today. They were in office twenty years ago. They were in office a hundred years ago. They will be in office another hundred years from now, maybe, unless the world is changing so rapidly through certain kinds of things that there is no need to go into. Newt and I understand them. I don't think Newt understands it very well (both laugh).

So what you have is, King moving over into the anti-war movement also but his understanding being different from that of others. People were critical of him many liberals who were for civil rights were critical of that for two reasons: First of all, King was then opposed to a democratic president who was liberal on the general issues of civil rights. So, a number of liberals allied themselves 01:08:00with that president. I liked that president myself. I didn't write him off. I differed with him on the war, but I didn't write him off on that score. And, some people looked at Martin King--people were constantly looking at Martin King and people like him, and they wanted to find a reason to be against him anyway. I mean, [people said], 'Who is this fellow out here?' 'Is he so sanc... You know, what kind of a guy is he, really? Is he really a fellow who's a Christian? Is he really a good man? He's got to keep a place someplace. We've got to get down there and unzip those shoes and look at them.'

Now, when-- The war kept getting in the way, so-- If I can get a call from Chauncey Eskridge, who was also a lawyer for Martin King and others and--I think this is the way it happened for SCLC--and he asked me if I would go out and help defend Mohammed Ali in his draft case in Houston, the answer is, 'Of course I will.' I mean, after all I'm being paid a salary by the American Civil Liberties 01:09:00Union. Hell, they ain't--for anything unfair in the draft and I go out there to Houston and I meet him the first day, you know and we were standing down in front of the federal courthouse one time out there, coming out, and we looked around. There was a television reporter with hair shaped just about like yours and she was with NBC as I recall and there was a big crowd of people as we walked out the federal courthouse. And we stood there for a minute and I'm standing there and the cameras are on him and of course, I'm with him, so I'm on camera occasionally along the way. These questions are asked and one of the questions she asked of Mohammed Ali, she said, 'Is it true that you don't work with any White people?' or something like that or '--you don't like White people,' or something like that and he gave some answer to them like, 'Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.' You know, 'That's right,' and whatever. And when the camera came back around whatever it was and her turn came again, she says, 'Well, you said 01:10:00that you don't like any white people, but he's your lawyer--' No. 'He's your lawyer and you don't have any friends, you say, that are white.' And his answer, quick as lightening, was just like this: He says, 'He's my lawyer, not my friend.' And, you see, there's a lot of people who don't understand that kind of distinction. Now, in fact we did got along pretty well later. Later, he turned to me and said (laughs), 'I'll stop at nothing to drive us apart,' or something like that. But the fact of the matter is that the war got in the way. So, when Howard Levy gets in difficulty and asks for help or somebody asks for help, sure I went out and defended him.

HANSON: Okay, but then the other famous cases .... Did the Watergate get in the way of the Civil Rights Movement? I mean your goal has always been one thing...to bring about social justice in this country. I think I can say that fairly, can't I, Chuck?

MORGAN: Well, I think you can say that. Also, I've done other things along the way. I've gotten to be rich and well borne and able myself. I've made a good bit of money.

HANSON: But let's go, before we get to that-- We'll get to that in a minute, but let's just talk about those things that have large social import. The Watergate trial was another one. You were called in as an ACLU lawyer, is that correct, to defend those who went into the Watergate [Hotel]?

MORGAN: Not to defend the ones who went into the Watergate, no, no.

HANSON: The victims of the Watergate.

MORGAN: The victims were the Democrats. The Association of State Democratic Chairmen had a working wiretap on their telephone--

HANSON: Right.

MORGAN: --and I was now fresh in Washington. I had left Atlanta and I was the director of the ACLU Washington's National Office--not the local office, but the national office--and some folks came to me and asked me to defend a fellow, represent a fellow, named Spensor Oliver. His phone was the one tapped by a working wiretap by Baldwin or others, a bug, in the Watergate [Hotel]. He was the Chairman of the... Oh, I've forgotten exactly the name of it, but it was the 01:12:00Democratic Party organization and they had him tapped. And the question then became, 'What can we do about that?' So, I filed a motion to suppress the contents--a pretty good memory here, because (unclear)--a motion to suppress the contents of illegally intercepted oral and wire communications.

Now, I filed that motion in court to exclude the contents of any wire intercepted conversations. Now, my interest was in defending the client, and in all these cases unless I'm filing an affirmative lawsuit for the client or a lawsuit to break down segregation or something that I've dreamed up and going at it affirmatively-- Otherwise, your duty as a lawyer is to defend your client and it doesn't matter who your client is, he could be right-wing, left-wing, Black, White, whatever. And, in this particular case, I'm defending a client by moving 01:13:00to suppress the contents of those conversations. The prosecutor said he was going to introduce the conversations to show the reason for the Watergate wiretap. Well, I knew that the Watergate break in wasn't because of my clients or what they were saying on the telephone or any of that sort of stuff, or what they could say on the telephone. But, I filed the motion to do that and went through that case and I always knew that the people on the other side of that case were just like the people on the other sides of some cases in the South and that they were on the wrong side of the great questions that ordinarily faced the citizens of the United States.

HANSON: Do you feel that as a large social issue also?

MORGAN: Well, the large social issue is, who is going to run the country? In that instance, Richard Nixon was. And he did for a while and then his party came 01:14:00along and then Jimmy Carter came in for four years and then the Republicans returned with Ronald Reagan and they're in power right now. And their interests have not generally been the kinds of political interests that I've had. I mean, on tax rates, I guess I profit, but as far as the rest of its concerned, no I'm on the other side of most of the things those people are for.

HANSON: Chuck, here it is February 1995. The Republicans have taken over Congress, for whomever listens to this down in history, whatever. Be a little far seeing. Where is the social revolution coming now? Where is it coming from? We're talking, I say we the Congress, in particularly the Republican wing. It's talking about dismantling everything, dismantling welfare, quitting grants to the states. How far this will go in history I don't know, but for this moment in time, address those things. That certainly isn't part of a larger social revolution that you knew. It's an entirely different kind of thing.

MORGAN: Without opposition, the Republican Party is moving to dismantle things that are for the good of the people, in my judgment. The Democratic Party, you see, doesn't manage to find itself capable of defending its own programs. It doesn't have either the heart or the will for that. Now, there's nothing really that I can do about that. I'm not going to run for president. But, you see, under that circumstance, when everyone is afraid to confront the people-- You see there are two things. Skepticism, and I've always been skeptical of a lot of things, but cynicism is the death of a democracy. And the cynics of this world undermine it worse that any underground or subversive group in the whole history of the country could possibly do. Democracy, and our democracy in particular, 01:16:00with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and 15th.... This democracy is an idealistic system that must live by ideals. And, if it doesn't appeal to people's ideals then it won't last. Now, one of the ways you undercut those ideals is cynicism. You always find some fault with something: 'The people didn't do this,' or, 'They didn't do that,' or, 'They made a mistake last year,' or, 'Look who they elected,' or, 'My God, they elected Nixon and gee it will never be the same again,' or, 'Gee, what happens here with so and so now that we've got...?'

Now, if you have a political party that is devoted to ideals, it must express those ideals because one of those things that happens in a political campaign is the mass education of the populace, Blacks, Whites, everybody else. Now, if you speak truth to power and people, you gain power. But when you are cynical about it and you think the people don't have good sense, and you write them off, then 01:17:00you have no program and they ordinarily vote for folks like they did in the last election.

HANSON: Do you think the social revolution, looking back--here again, I'm talking about the Black/White revolution, which has been so important in the south--has it been a success? Do you see it...the obvious things there have been are there have more access by Blacks to the system as it were, but are we becoming more alienated one from another?

MORGAN: Oh, good God, who cares?

HANSON: You don't care.

MORGAN: About alienation [of] one from the other? Look, I would prefer to live in a society where people weren't mean to each other, where the world came along and everybody loved each other, where Black folks and White folks got up every morning and went out there and Hattie McDaniel served the food and everybody stood there and sang to the heavens and everybody said here we are. That'd just be wonderful. But I don't know of that time has ever occurred in history of the 01:18:00human race on a regular basis. It happens every now and then. Now, if you are in a society like our culture and society, and the things are out there, are we better off now than we were then? That's the implicit...

HANSON: That's exactly what it is.

MORGAN: The answer is: every given day, every moment of every day. Sure, we're much better off. Number two. Could it all be taken away? Not probably, not all of it, but a hell of a lot of it could. Number three. Is the Democratic Party far better than the Republican Party today? Well the Republican Party at least has certain principles and precepts. Those principle and precepts generally are meanness and unspoken hatred and fear. It's the-- It's kind of the midas touch. It's the money, money, money approach and somehow, some rules of economics and 01:19:00law say everything is going to be alright if we just adopt these rules of economics. And, the Democratic Party goes around, they don't have organized labor, they don't have all those other kinds of backgrounds that they used to have and they are floundering around and all they ought to have is beliefs. That's all they need.

HANSON: Could I summarize all of this and say, if we understand how power works, we can do something about constantly improving our society? Is that too simplistic, Chuck?

MORGAN: No, it's not simplistic. What the simple thing is, is that in our society, with freedom and access to information, the way people can get known and do things in this country, that if you do right, you ordinarily win. And if you win enough, the whole society wins--Blacks, whites, everybody in it. If we ever do that in the country in a really great way, we'll do it for the whole world.

HANSON: Thanks, Chuck.