HOWARD LAW SCHOOL
A WHITE BOY’S LEGAL EDUCATION
I moved to Washington, D.C. in 1973, right after my graduation from the University of Oregon, to pursue my chosen career in documentary film production. In that first incredibly hot and humid summer, the drumbeat of black liberation was rocking the city. The 1968 riots were a very recent memory. The burnt-out neighborhood called the 12th Street corridor, intersecting with U Street, had once been at the center of Washington’s African-American artistic and cultural renaissance. The vacant, crumbling buildings were constant reminders of the still pent-up fury of the disenfranchised black-majority population. During my first tropical summer in the sweltering city I was introduced to the ever-present sight of young black males wearing African dashikis and sporting dramatic Afro hairstyles, who liked to drive past and flash the raised-arm, clenched-fist Black Power salute. People were still getting used to the proud and hard-fought-for moniker Black in place of Negro. All of this ferment fed into a cauldron of social/artistic/political development and empowerment by/for people who had tasted the bitter fruits of disappointment of unfulfilled promises from the civil rights era. People were justifiably angry.
I was a sax player, and I brought my horn with me when I moved to D.C. I joined my first jazz group, a mix of black, Hispanic and Jewish musicians who rehearsed in a piano shop on 18th Street in Adams Morgan. Under the direction of a tall, gay black band leader, we played a style of free jazz that echoed the chaos of revolution that was in the air. My friendships with those musicians, and the times I spent hanging out in that primarily black neighborhood (it has gone through a remarkable gentrification since then) formed my first introduction into the world of Washington’s majority Black population.
During those early years in Washington, while working in the TV news industry for all three national networks and the local news affiliates, I was able to get all around the city. I had a privileged insider’s view into the corridors of both national and municipal power, and came into contact with Black professionals and working class people of all walks of life. And I visited the main campus of Howard University, which was a fascinating hot-bed of Pan-Africanism. The students built a model of an Ujaama village on the quod grounds, which I remember photographing with a camera crew. Later, before leaving the city to spend five years working in the German TV industry, I visited the campus of Howard Law School, located in a different part of northwest Washington at Van Ness Street, on assignment with a TV crew. I couldn’t have possibly imagined at that time, that a mere six years later I would attend law school there.
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After five years in Germany I was ready for another challenge. I returned from Europe to Washington, D.C. in the fall of 1982, and enrolled in Howard law school. I was one of a tiny minority of white students at the school. Having spent four years in Washington before my travels, I was already exposed to many of the issues that concerned the black community. The other white students were all from the local area and had mostly chosen to attend Howard for economic reasons — the school offered the lowest tuition of the five law schools in the D.C. area. The economics was also an important consideration for me, but I primarily chose to go there for political and ideological reasons. A year earlier, while still living in Germany but after having made the decision to go to law school, I had visited schools in Texas, and considered my alma mater, University of Oregon, before deciding upon Howard.
Having grown up in the sixties, I always considered Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to be, not the polar opposites that so many social critics consider them to be, but rather complementary visionaries of the same message. Years later, at my office at George Washington University law school, theirs were the only two portraits that adorned my walls. Today, forty years after their deaths, I still get chills up my spine when I listen to the recordings of either of those great orators and martyrs. And I was delighted to be able to attend Howard, the institution of those giants of legal activism Charles Hamilton Houston and Thurgood Marshall.
I have been asked many times through the years what the experience was like, and how the black students at Howard treated me. I am proud to say that not once in three years did I ever hear a “discouraging word” from a fellow Black student. And I cherished the warm friendship and collegiality that was extended my way.
As an institution whose primary mission is the education of African-American lawyers, Howard Law consciously addresses some of the problems that Black students who want to become lawyers face: issues of low bar passage rate and concerns about discriminatory hiring practices once the law school and bar exam hurdles are overcome. And yet the school attracts some of the top Black students in the nation, many of whom attended white undergrad schools and who want to indulge in a supportive Black community one last time before going out into a still largely white, hostile professional world. But Washington is a great place for a Black attorney to start out, or to stay for that matter.
Two Howard professors were especially influential in my legal education: Jerome Schumann and Warner Lawson. Professor Schumann unfortunately passed away in 2004, and Warner Lawson finally retired from the teaching profession in 2014. They both had a very remarkable quality, which was expressed in vastly different styles but was present in each lecture — they had a true love for their students, and they recognized the insecurities that so many law students naturally brought with them to the classroom. Through the use of humor and irony they were both able, in their own ways, to tweak out those anxieties and dispel them during the communal classroom experience.
Schumann, who was the son of share croppers, built his wealth through his knowledge of Property and Real Estate law. He was a heavy-set, handsome man who liked to dress like a banker and always had a cherubic grin on his face. He spoke with the cadence of a southern Baptist preacher, and incredibly he had the talent to use the same dramatic techniques in his Property law lectures. He would start out slow and soft-spoken at the beginning of class, and gradually increase both the volume and intensity of his words, until, fifteen minutes into the lecture, you could have been sitting in a southern church, nodding your head to the rhythm of his words, shouting out, “Preach it!” He chose and enunciated every word for dramatic impact, with as much precision as a Shakespearian actor. I was enthralled each time he delivered his property “sermon.” Many of the younger students were cowed by his overbearing persona, which was all a show, but I was old enough to appreciate that I was in the presence of a true dramatic genius. I came out of every one of his classes smiling, thankful for the privilege of having been in his class.
Professor Lawson, my Contracts professor for two semesters, had a completely different style, but one which I naturally appreciated. He brought to the equally daunting subject of Contracts the insights of a liberal arts philosopher and raconteur. He imbued each class with an eclectic array of analogies and aphorisms drawn from a broad spectrum of human experience. A tall, lanky figure, he paced in front of the classroom, chain-smoking cigarettes from an improbable cigarette holder, striking an effete figure of philosopher/jester.
Incredibly, I received the grade of “A” in both of those fearsome two-semester subjects, both of which I had dreaded and would not for the life of me have taken if they had not been required courses. I enjoyed both subjects thoroughly, which I attribute entirely to the teaching abilities of the professors.
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I initially concentrated on criminal law at Howard. I interned at the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, at the U.S. Attorney’s office, and in the summer of 1984, at the Federal Defenders of San Diego. My two semesters with Howard’s criminal law clinic were my introduction to the heady responsibility of defending a client who is facing real jail time.
Like every fresh-faced clinic student I considered myself a crusader. My first client in D.C. Superior Court was a transvestite hooker. He used to ply his trade at Thomas Circle on 14th Street, one of the mainstays of the D.C. skin trade. He was a tall, thin, light-skinned man who I’ll call Josh. He’d been busted at night by an undercover cop driving a Ford Shelby Cobra.
I was determined to win his case, and in my research I found an antiquated Court of Appeals decision from the District of Columbia, that basically held that police couldn’t convict a homosexual of prostitution without a corroborating witness. The apparent intent behind the decision from the 1950’s was that it was considered so calumnious to imply that anyone was a homosexual at that time that you’d better have a witness to back up your claim.
I went to visit my client in detention at D.C. jail, with my housemate Maurizia, a tall and lovely Italian woman who worked for the World Bank. When we met Josh in lock-up, she complemented him on his beauty-rings. I’d never heard of beauty rings before, and neither had my client, but when she explained that they are the rings that some people have around their necks, and that in Europe they are a sign of beauty, sure enough, he did have them, and he was delighted at her complement. During our interview he confirmed my suspicion that the arresting officer didn’t have a supporting witness to back him up. I assured him that I would put on a sterling performance in the courtroom on his behalf.
On the day of my first trial, the arresting cop testified, explaining that he had made a routine bust of a hooker on 14th Street, who then turned out to be a male in drag. After my cross examination, in which the cop admitted that he had been acting alone without a witness the government rested its case. Ball in my court. I then made my brilliantly prepared and executed argument for dismissal based on the precedent decision and the obvious fact that the arresting officer had no supporting witness. The judge wasn’t impressed by my argument in which I cited a case from the 1950’s, and he denied my motion for summary judgment.
It wasn’t my choice, but the faculty supervisor at my side insisted that I put my client on the stand, even though I hadn’t prepared him for cross-examination because I hadn’t anticipated calling him. I knew it was a bad idea but the supervisor insisted. We took him through his fairly innocuous story of trying to catch a ride in the evening at Thomas Circle. He testified that he had merely been hitchhiking on 14th Street when the handsome police officer pulled up and offered him a ride.
“What did you do then?”
“Well, I got in the car, of course.”
“What happened next?”
“I put my hand on his dick.”
When that zinger came out, everyone in the courtroom, except my client, knew that he had just convicted himself. Lesson: Don’t let your prostitute client take the stand, unless you are sure that (s)he’s not going to talk about male anatomy.
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When I left Howard after three years, I knew that I would devote my career to social activism. I never even interviewed with any of the corporate law firms that dangle the big bucks before the noses of anxious law grads. My eyes were set on the burgeoning Central American refugee crisis that was besetting Washington in 1985. I was thankful to Howard for giving me the skills to be a trial attorney and the opportunity to assess the state of the law and figure out what I wanted to do with my career. I was thankful for the dedication of the professors to their students.
Thirty years later to the day that I had first entered the hallowed halls of Howard as a student, I returned to teach a Refugee Law course. In the fall of 2011, while I was working with the UN Refugee Agency at the border of Egypt and Libya on the Mediterranean, I pitched the idea of such a class to the Howard faculty and the idea was approved. I was so delighted to return to that small campus in 2012 and to work with such talented and committed students. I was able to repeat the class in the fall of 2014, but my international travel prevented me from continuing after that.
I was a white guy who was a beneficiary of an HBCU (historically black college and university) and we, as a society, must further our commitment to their funding and development.
Excerpt from My Trials: Inside America’s Deportation Factories by Judge Paul Grussendorf