Transcript:

Thelton Henderson was the assistant dean of Stanford Law School, and we’ll get into his role in what led to the hiring of Professor William Gould. So you came to Stanford Law School, Thelton, in 1968, and I always started out with a statistic that Harvard Law School graduated its first African American in 1869.
When, when you arrived at Stanford Law School, a hundred years later, Stanford had never graduated an African American. It wasn’t until the class of 68, a hundred years later, that Stanford graduated its first African American. In my class at Stanford, the class of 1970, and I started in 1967, there were no African Americans, there were no Latinos.
There were no Native Americans and there are only six women and because of what you started and what you did, Felton, is that I know that you were at the law school for eight years and when you came it was about two percent of the student body was minority students. When you left eight years later, it was more than 20 percent and astonishing accomplishment.
And now Stanford Law School the student body is 40% students of color. And, and I mean, it’s. And I personally am so proud of what the Stanford Law School has been able to do and so proud to be friends with you and to work with you on Felton because I think this is incredibly important. Needless to say, when you started at Stanford Law School, there were not only very few minority students, but Stanford Law School had a staunch tradition of hiring as professors only white males.
So, So what was it like? You know, and for me, that’s just the way things were. I, in my undergraduate and throughout law school, I’d never had an African American professor. I never had a female professor. I never had a Latino professor. And now, Looking back on it, I’m astonished that I wasn’t aware of what little sense that made.
So, for you coming to a law school that could be seen as being a a bastion of white privilege what was it, what was like coming there? You were both You were an assistant dean, but you were also a faculty member there because you did work on stuff. What was it like coming there to an institution that had only white professors, male professors, since its beginning?
Well, you have to understand that I came there, I was on a mission when I came there. I had talked to Dean Manning about my concern that The school hadn’t graduated black until Sally Ann Payton in 1968, and In response to my concerns, he offered me a half time job, that’s an important part of my start there, to set up such a program.
I was on a mission, and my focus was to set up that program and find qualified minorities from around the country. We talked about a budget, and this was good enough to get two alumni from the law school to fund the program. Fund the program so that I could travel around the country, interview recruit, and so I was focused on that.
I found some friends on the faculty that I got along with. Mike Wald was an instant friend who is still a friend till today. Tom Gray, and Tom Ehrlich, they were all very good friends. Jack Friedenthal, Gary Gunther were very friendly to the program and so I spent most of my time associating with them.
But other than that on this half time basis, I came over to the school and worked as hard as I could, flew around the country. Looking for minorities. That was my main goal, and I wasn’t really concerned about the rest of the schools, quite frankly, at that point. And just for posterity’s sake and to give them their due, why don’t we tell us the names of those two alumni who funded the program?
Vic Palmieri and Miles Rubin. Wonderful men, both wonderful men. I got to know them quite well. It’s been a wonderful weekend. They call Baltimore. He had a wonderful place down south on the beach and we played tennis. And I thought I was quite grown up person, but I was in awe when I finished playing tennis with him and walking back.
To his home on the beach there and bump into Cary Grant. It was very good, but two, two wonderful men, generous men who gave me everything I needed to get the job done. While you were then identifying, recruiting and mentoring these students, did you, one of the values, of course, of a diverse faculty is to provide role models.
Thank you very much. Right. And those role models are not only for the minority students, but role models for the white students. So, did you, did you think about whether that hampered you, that there were no role models at, at, at, at the law school, or that once again, that’s something we just didn’t focus on?
No, no, I focused on that. I was very aware of that. And You know, and that’s why Bill was so important when he finally came, because he was a perfect role model. I mean, he was a scholar, a real scholar, the real deal. He was forthcoming, he was available and he was available to the minority students that by then there were half dozen or so, more than that minority student got to school by the time Bill got there in 1972 and door bill was open to those, I used to give affairs.
For the minority students, Bill would come to those and it was very important to the students. No question about it. Important to me to also have a a fellow minority there at the law school. And so to the, so prior to Bill’s coming, you were conscious about the fact that one of the things that hampered the program was the lack of a diverse faculty that would provide role models for the students?
Absolutely. You know, I, Bill is a real sportsman of football baseball and all, and we used to talk, use all analogies, and I used a sports analogy. I played football at Cal, and I know when you’re recruiting athletes, It’s very important when they come there to see another black athlete it really helps and I, I knew that.
And so I would get some of the black undergraduate students to, to help me. There were no black minority students at the law school, but there were a few at the undergraduate school. And I would get them to help and there were people like. Charles Ogleshree at the undergraduate school and, and many others that helped.
That’s important in recruiting. So that was, but, but in fact, there were a few minority students and Leroy Bobbitt and Luis Nogales, you know, worked closely who were law school students. Yeah, they were, they were close. In fact, I had them You know, I was sending them out to do a recruiting for me, yes.
And then they would be there to greet the students when they came. And they both did a wonderful job. Now, it’s kind of an interesting story that when Bill was hired, is that you first found out that he was hired after he was already there, and you weren’t involved at all. Not at all. And so, tell us about that.
Well, it just, as I said, he showed up, I heard, I can’t remember who I heard it from that we had this black faculty person coming, and I was elated by it, and I was so glad to meet Bill, and we bonded immediately, you know, we bonded on every level at the school, the only blacks at the school in any administrative or faculty position, love sports together. He’s a huge jazz fan. We love jazz and and his wife’s a great cook. They would invite me over just to love at first sight and it’s it. Really has lasted for 50 years. And so to the extent that you were always concerned that they were not role models, is that the coming up bill alleviated, obviously that concern.
And I presume you saw that as being a huge step at the law school in making your job easier and more productive. Oh yeah, no question about it. No question about it. So, so, we’ve talked about this before, but were you curious about the fact that, that you were one of the last to know about Bill being, that Professor Gould being, being hired?
You know, interestingly enough, I wasn’t. I, because I just thought, well, I guess this is a way law schools work, you know, I didn’t think anything strange about it. I thought that’s that’s the way it’s done. And once again, and once again, I know your position was this. Indeed, for all practical purposes, you were the first black professor at Stanford law school, right?
And, and, and, and, and, and did you feel additional pressure on you? In terms of your teaching, because you were in that position? Yeah, well I felt real pressure because I, you know, I’m not naturally a teacher. I tell great stories, I’m a storyteller, but I don’t have a professorial mind. But I was out there trying to do my best.
And indeed, at some point I really felt that Part of what they were doing, I was teaching a course, a civil pro course, with Jack Fredenthal, I was teaching a criminal course with John Kaplan I taught a course with Tony Amsterdam and It became regular each year that I was teaching something, co teaching, and I, I came to conclude, I’ll never know if it’s true, but I concluded that they were testing me, that they were taking a look at me, and trying to get me to a professorship, or a faculty.
Full faculty position sort of through the back door. That was that was my feeling. No one ever told me that, but I, I, I believe that’s what was going on. I, I, I know that prior to your coming, there had been an attempt to bring an African-American student into the, to the student body at Stanford Law School, and the planning was not done well, and it turned out to not very, it, it didn’t turn out well at all.
Yeah. It, it didn’t. Yeah. Did you feel the pressure knowing that if you fail, is that it would really adversely affect the law school and minority students and that there was presumably this burden on you to make sure you got it right? I did. I felt an enormous pressure and I probably put a lot of pressure on myself because I very naively thought, okay, I had never thought about teaching or law school administrative work.
I was a lawyer. I was a civil rights lawyer, as I thought of myself, and at the time I went over a legal aid lawyer. And my plan was to come to Stanford for two. three years and set up the program, get it going, and then go back either back to legal aid or back to private practice. That was my plan, but I was a very naive young man in those days, and once I saw how institutions work, how the law school worked, and some of the faculty there that were Rather resistant to the rapidly rising minority membership at the law school, minority enrollment.
I realized that all the commitments that, that David Manning made were to me. And that if I left after three years it would stop right there. Or at least would slow down tremendously. And I ended up, as you said in your introduction, for eight years to institutionalize the program. It was important enough to me to that it, this became permanent.
Stanford didn’t abandon this as soon as I left. And so I didn’t leave until it was a part of the university. And It would have been very embarrassing for them to undermine it or abandon it at that point. And everybody unanimously has said that what you did, In smoothing the way and having the program work so smoothly and successfully that it paved the way for the diversification of the, of the law school faculty as well.
Had things not gone well, there were probably would have been much more difficult to institute that diversification. So, looking back on it, how do you see your role? And not only diversifying the student body, but diversifying the Stanford community and specifically leading to the diversification of the faculty.
Well, I felt it was very important to be a role model. My biggest hero has always been Jackie Robinson. I was a big baseball fan. I played baseball through from Little League all the way through college baseball. And I know that if Jackie Robinson had not acted the way they hoped he would act, and leave the way and open that door, there wouldn’t have been the major league progress that followed his success.
And I use that as my own model, that I had this opening the door at Stanford and I had to do it right so that they would those that were less friendly would see no harm. This isn’t so bad at all. And I, I worked very hard. To be the Jackie Robinson at Stanford that would open the door and bring in the students, bring in qualified students.
It’s very important that it worked, not just bring in some people who would flunk out and go on their way. And so yeah, I was very conscious of that. I, I, I, I wanted it to work long term, so that’d be okay. You realized at that point that this was. very significant in so many ways for the law school.
And, and, and I presume that you immediately began planning about how to involve yourselves with each other and So talk about that. Well you know well, as soon as I took the job or as soon as I agreed to take it, I realized that, you know, as I started getting into it more and more, that one of the problems I was going to have is that there were not.
Very many undergraduate minority students coming through the pipeline to recruit for law school. That was a real problem. And so I started focusing on, on that. How am I going to find, where are these students going to come from? Because I don’t, the one thing I didn’t want to do was bring students in. Simply because they were a minority who ran over their head, and they weren’t going to succeed.
Where am I going to find these people? And one of the things that was helpful to me, was I used myself as a model when I I was very lucky when I got a football scholarship to Cal and they admitted me, Cal admitted me out of a all black school in Los Angeles that didn’t have a good academic recommendation.
They admitted me. On the condition that I get a, go to summer school and take two courses and pass them both, get a, and that, that really saved me. I, I don’t think I would have made it at Cal because the first exam I had in summer Was a history four a course and give the significance of Napoleon’s blockade of the English coast.
And I had never in my life had anything other than a true false and a multiple choice question. I didn’t know how to write an essay question. You didn’t even, you didn’t even know what an essay question was, didn’t know what an essay question was. So I started writing. I studied my off, so I really.
read everything there, and I was used to memorizing it and throwing it back at somebody. So I sort of did that on the exam, and I got a D on the exam, but with this wonderful professor that Mr. Henderson can come see me And he took an interest in me, and he said, I know you studied because I wrote the book.
We’re using my textbook, and you threw everything back at me, you know. Napoleon was short. He was married to Josephine. You gave me all the facts in the book, but you didn’t tell me the significance of his blockade. And he found out that I was up there to play football. And I said, well, will they pay for a tutor for you?
And I said I don’t know. And I went to the athletic department and said, of course they would. And he had his teaching fellow tutor me and the scales started falling off. Oh, he showed, first thing he did was show me three A papers. And I said, Oh, that’s well, I can do that. And, you know, and it got, I passed both courses in the summer, but had I just started in, in the fall, without that prep, I would have probably gotten all Fs in all five courses and flunked out.
So I had that in mind in terms of what I was trying to do and what I was looking for, and that there might be people like me that were smart enough but didn’t have the preparation, and so I, I arranged for one of the students at Stanford, that was a good student, to be a tutor, to tutor, and I was ready to tutor and talk to them, and see that they were ready to go, and that they had the tools to do it.
That was, that was. What I was trying to do and so to the extent that your pitch, as it were to students that you were attempting to recruit to Stanford law school, that you could say to them previous to bill to Professor Gould’s coming that, you know, I think if you phrased it before, is that come on in the weather, the water is fine.
There’s other black students here and things are going well, but I guess is that. sales presentation, as it were, was even more effective when you could say that one of the professors at Stanford Law School was an African American. Absolutely. No, no question about it. And especially one like Bill that was so open and available to them.
It wasn’t like, okay, yeah, bring them in and I’ll say hi to them, tell them, but I’m busy. It wasn’t like that. Bill was open, available, and that, that was the. Big, big thing to these students. There was no question about it. So do you remember anything in particular about his reaching out to students to anything special that that you can recall illustrating what you’re talking about?
Well he was available. I think probably you have on your list a student that I particularly remember and I’ve known him all of these years, too. I’ve just been so impressed how Bill took Gary Williams under his arm. What do you take someone under, under their mentor? Yeah. Really? groomed him and, and Gary’s a beloved distinguished faculty member at Loyola Law School.
And he will be, he will tell you in an instant that he owes it all to Bill, because Bill took him and he was, I think Gary was working with the ACLU or something and wasn’t particularly happy with that. And Bill. Got him this interview at Loyola, and that’s what he did with students. He didn’t just pat them on the shoulder and say, go get them.
He went with them. He saw that they got there. And the students understood that and appreciated it. And again, when he would spend time at the Minority, at the Law School of Minority, I would give a party each at the start of each semester. At a black lawyer, Harry Bremond was his name, partner, first black partner at Wilson’s.
Anyway, Bill would go to these parties and really spend time and be sitting around the barbecue pit and talking to these students, encouraging them. Sharing stories with them, making sure they felt free to come by his office, and that they had a friend there. It’s very, very important. Very important.
Especially with Gary Williams, because not only did Bill, Professor Gould set up the interview, it was Professor Gould’s idea that Gary Williams ought to go into teaching. I mean, Gary had never thought about it and was discussing what he was going to do. And Professor Gould said, you know, I think you’d be a good law school professor.
Yeah. And not only that, I think I can get you that job. Right. And, and did it. And he, yeah, yeah. And you know, not only did he do this with black students, he did this with white students. Absolutely. Absolutely. So Keith Cunningham. was a student who was a practitioner in labor law and wanted to teach labor law in law school.
And Bill was aware of that. And so when Professor Gould became a visiting professor at Willamette Law School up in Portland, he reached out to Keith Cunningham and said, why don’t you help me teach this class? And Keith Cunningham, essentially out of the blue, reached out to him and 16 years later, Keith Cunningham was still a labor law professor at Willamette Law School.
And it’s because Bill had the knowledge of Keith Cunningham, what he wanted to do, what his talents were, and when he saw an opportunity, he immediately acted on it. Yeah. It’s you know, or, or the story of Ken Shropshire, who is the head of sports law now at Wharton, is that Professor Gould reached out and a really interesting story and created Ken Shropshire’s career.
Yeah. Yeah, Bill was one of the guys that, you know, spearheaded the, the idea of sports law, you know, and he was one of the early, early people that has created the field of sports law. Yeah, amazing man. It’s really quite extraordinary. You can think about then Bill’s impact on the law school. I mean, not only, of course, as diversifying the law school faculty.
Which was, you know, this place that it had only white professors, old white professors in its history and being the first African American and being so successful. So could you give, do you have any more thoughts about, about that, his impact on the law school, his impact on attracting minority students?
And and just who he is. Yeah, impacting, attracting minority students, but in attracting further minority faculty members. Yeah, I think he had a tremendous impact. And again, I, I use the Jackie Robinson analogy. Someone like Bill that comes in and is the real deal. You know, he’s he’s a scholar. No one questions that his scholarship is.
impeccable. It’s, it’s voluminous. He’s prolific in, in his, his productivity. It opens a door at Stanford for, whether, and I, I’m not accusing them of anything, but very often when you Say you do your first and you’re way behind other schools and going, you say, okay, well, let’s, let’s find somebody and you’re making a gesture and if the person isn’t that very good, you, the door closes again, but good.
Bill was so good. That’s that’s an outstanding faculty person in every way. That you know, he said, Oh, there, but we didn’t know that there was people like that out there. He opened the door. He served as a model. He showed that it can be done. And, and everybody learned from him.
The, the, the, the rest of the faculty at the school, the students saw what they were capable of doing through bill. And it just made all the difference in the world, I think. The, the The willingness of Stanford to increase to, I don’t know what their faculty or their minority faculty numbers are now, but I’m sure that whatever number that is, is in part due to Bill opening that door so wide.
And so effectively knowing now that it was a dozen years before the next African American was hired. And of course, the faculty now, and I don’t know the exact number, but it is, it is very, very diverse. They’ve just the first it’s taken all these years. But the first African American female professor was granted tenure just, just this year at Stanford law school.
But the law school has hired its first Native American female professor at the law school. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a very, very different place. And, and, and you know, that you are key in changing the law school. Had you failed? In what you were doing had not gone so smoothly and successfully, we wouldn’t be where we are now.
It would have been someplace, but You know, not as, not as good, but, but there’s a, there is a real emphasis on diversity at the law school, both in the student body and in the faculty, which as a Stanford law grad, I’m very, very proud about and proud to know you and be able to document, you know, your role in, in, in all of this.
Thank you so much. You’re doing a wonderful job with this, and I just look forward to seeing this and all the other things you’re now doing with other people all in one package. It’s just, it’s phenomenal, and I don’t know where you learned to do that. You didn’t learn to do all of that at Stanford Law School, I’m sure, but wherever you learned it.
You, you’ve done a phenomenal job. You’ve inspired people, you’ve energized us all, and it’s great. It’s great for Stanford. Hello, I’m Regina Petty. I’m a Partner and Chief Diversity Officer at Fisher Phillips. What I understand is that you told me that although you disappointed Bill by becoming a management lawyer, is that you told me that people on the labor side you believe are It is better for them that they work with somebody with your background who, who understands.
Issues from the labor side as well. I did come to believe that in practice. I actually initially stayed away at the first general practice firm I joined in San Diego that had the largest labor and employment. Practice in San Diego at the time, and we’re trying to recruit me away from the litigation practice to join their practice because that was in the early eighties.
And I was concerned that employers weren’t ready to actually comply with the discrimination laws. And might be only looking for lawyers who were trying to help them avoid compliance. And I knew that wasn’t a good fit for me, especially as a young one. So I went with the litigation practice, general litigation practice, even though at Stanford I took.
Every course that Professor Gould offered and along with Professor Gunther’s Conlock class and Professor Babcock’s Primlock class, they were my favorites. And so that’s when you first met Bill when you were his student? At Stanford Law School, or, or when you got there, did you establish a connection with them?
When I got there first first year of law school, I did not start taking his classes until the second year. I grew up in Los Angeles. I was actually born in Watts. I’ve been raised in Compton, Gardena, and Englewood, and Los Angeles is was very segregated when I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s, which often comes as a surprise to people who are not from Southern California.
So I actually grew up in a black community residentially until we moved to Englewood. And at the time that we moved to Englewood, because of the increasing numbers of black families that were purchasing homes in Englewood white flight had begun from Englewood. So when I first started junior high school in Englewood, it was an integrated community.
By the time I graduated from high school, it was Barely integrated at all. And so by the time you got this down for undergrad, you had been around white people enough so that you were comfortable being around white people. Is that correct? I really didn’t give it a second thought one way or the other. So my mother was An elementary school teacher and all of her closest friends were also African American elementary school teachers and principals, but because they were the 1st to integrate.
the faculties at LA Unified School District. I was exposed to a lot of white teachers as, as a child that were also my mother’s co workers. And so I didn’t really think very much about being comfortable around white people. Or not until 1968, I would say, when I was about 11 years old and I was trying to understand the rioting that was happening around the country and the racial divide.
And, and, and, and so, but, and as you were growing up then in your, in your communities, there were black people of power that you had Dealt with well, that, that actually is the sort of hidden silver lining of, Mm-Hmm. of seg segregation is, I grew up in a community where black people were in charge of everything.
Mm-Hmm. . I grew up in a black church, you know, run by black deacons and the black pastor, my mother was the president of various auxiliaries. In, in the church and ran the church’s vacation Bible school, and ultimately became the national president of a black church auxiliary. On top of that, my mother’s.
College friend and sorority sister at Texas Southern University in Houston was Barbara Jordan. And they continued to keep in touch after my mother moved to California. And so I met her a number of times and I was therefore exposed to black women and black men who being attorneys. So that idea even was not a foreign concept to me.
And then as the civil rights movement you know, grew and became such a source of of violence and opposition, I started paying a lot of attention to what was happening in the courts and following the extremely important role. That black lawyers like Thurgood Marshall were playing in changing the law, and that is what cemented my interest in becoming an attorney, but I couldn’t help but notice, of course, because of the segregation of the judiciary at that point in time, that it was the rulings of white judges in those cases that ultimately Produce the change in in the law and as you were growing up in your junior high or high school, and we were beginning thinking about being a lawyer.
Was it very common. Did you have friends who Brat black friends who were thinking about being lawyers or was just kind of uncommon among the people that are classmates. It was still unusual for my age. To know black lawyers, the fact that I knew a handful was pretty, was pretty unusual. And that didn’t really change if you look at the data from the, from the ABA until the early 1990s.
That statistically the number of back black lawyers increased to the point where maybe it would be pretty commonplace for someone to know at least one black lawyer, we, we were a rare breed when I came out of law school in 1982, weren’t we Kenny. And what did you know about Stanford, when you went there did you expect that it was going to be diversified that you expect that you were going to be in a situation where most of the classmates were to be white, or it’s something that really Make that much difference to you?
Oh, it did make a difference to me actually in my ultimate decision to choose to choose Stanford. So the only reason I applied to Stanford was I had an opportunity to go to a Stanford USC game at U at USC and see the Stanford band for the first time, actually the fall of my senior year of high school.
And I. Told my mom after that I want to go to this school called Sanford because they have a lot of fun there. The band is great. That’s actually why I applied to Stanford. It was not on my application list. After I was accepted, my first choice continued to be a school called Sanford. Back east, which deeply troubled my mother, she did not want me to leave California and she started a full court press to get me to decide to go to Stanford that included contacting the admissions office.
Asking if there were any black staff in the admissions office, finding the one black staff person at the time and saying, telling him, I need you to help my daughter choose Stanford, help me convince my daughter to choose Stanford. And she brought me to the, to the campus and he had arranged a great day for me to visit that day that included the black theme house.
Java. And that was such a wonderful experience seeing the camaraderie and support centered around the black theme house at Stanford amongst the black the black students. They made me feel that if you’re worried about coming here. Don’t be. We don’t let anybody. We will be here for you. We are a community.
And fortunately, my freshman year dorm assignment was in that door. Okay. I was living in two worlds. I had a black community cocoon, similar to what I had grown up. With in, you know, through my childhood, including into my team into my teen years within the predominantly white environment at Stanford.
And I had this whole community advising me about everything that you could possibly want advice about as a freshman and sophomore to be. Successful at Stanford as an undergrad. And so as you were there, you started to figure it out pretty quickly. This was a good decision. Best decision I could have made.
I never regret it going to Stanford. It’s so funny. It’s Regina, we’ve known each other all these years, never said, I’ve talked about where we grew up specifically, but I think just a couple of miles away, the same story. And a couple, a couple of years earlier, I mean, it’s so born in the Crenshaw district when it was a predominantly black in the part of town that we were in John Adams for those who know the streets.
And then as my father had success, he wanted to move to a bigger house, which ended up being what’s Baldwin Hills now, which was. Predominantly white at the time. It was early 60s, and I look at my elementary school pictures and my brother and I are the black kids there for about two years. And then all of a sudden, all the pictures are predominantly black.
I mean, white, white flight was real. And that was you know, our, our first exposure to this kind of phenomenon. How does this kind of thing happen at, at both schools? Richard school was we had a good number of black teachers. So having black teachers was not was not that unusual. I mean, white teachers to even when the schools became predominantly black again.
So, so when I got to Stanford. It was a definite reduction in the number of black faculty, but there was still, you know, my first advisor as an undergrad was a black faculty member took a number of classes from from black faculty. It was when I got. To law school, that was the first place and it’s, you know, my first stop was at Columbia for two years, and there was one black faculty member, Kellis Parker.
And then when I came to Stanford, the third year, there’s one black faculty member, and as you looked around in our era, that was pretty much the case of Derrick Bell at Harvard or Ralph Smith at Penn or the other there was. Typically one and and we were fortunate that Bill was Bill was our one, and he was so, so successful in that kind of way so, so it wasn’t, you know, all the stuff that you, you kind of.
I think people might have problems with in terms of this, this transition into the white world. Stanford, especially at the undergrad level, was uniquely set up to help you make that journey. Although, you know, we had great consciousness of where we were. And Regina mentioned the, the theme houses when, when I first got there was, it was in Robley, which was a little bit different, but the same idea.
And I, I remember the first. Few weeks kind of leaving the dorm, going off into the, into the white campus and being anxious to get back to the dorm for, you know, some sense of, of what had been my, my normalcy. And I think, you know, bill, bill kind of provided some of that in law school too. That, that you, you knew you could go in his office.
And you can have a full conversation, not have to not have to restrain, you know, other than, you know, old professor versus, you know, not kind of restrain the kind of things that you talked about so you get that level of comfort at the law school, although, you know, it was, it was, it was stark, though, that, that even at the time you know, Doris was there, but, but in terms of faculty that, you know, bills in what year did you arrive at Stanford’s law school.
Also, 79, 79, 80. So, but, so, by that time, Felton had left, isn’t that right? Right. Yeah. So, going back, how did, how old were you and how did you decide to become a lawyer? Did you know other lawyers? Was it unusual for somebody growing up in your neighborhood who was black who decided to become a lawyer? You know, I was trying to think.
You know, I remember a lot of us as kids saying we were going to be lawyers. And, but when I look back in the neighborhood and kids that actually did become lawyers. There weren’t that many. There were I mean part of your question is, were there lawyer role models in the community for sure just as Regina said that there was, you know, some of my father’s buddies and.
There were certainly, you know opportunities to, to, to meet lawyers, if you were doing something wrong, you, you may have encountered a black lawyer along the way. So yeah, there was a presence and there was an awareness, but it was still. I mean, even going to college was not necessarily universal.
I mean, it was coming out of, out of my high school, the idea of going to community college was, was pretty dominant that there was this transition movement and the idea of being fortunate enough to, to get a scholarship to go to Stanford was It was kind of kind of crazy, although from our school, we had had a couple of other black people that had come before me.
So that was my level of awareness about the place, just knowing that it existed. And then I was fortunate enough to get a football scholarship. So that’s that’s really what set the path for me. But just just like Regina, too, whatever trepidation I had. Once I went on the visit the band didn’t do anything for me, but once, but the idea of, you know, meeting other guys who would be my teammates who lived in the black dorm and that level of comfort and they relate just, just as Regina said, I mean, I, I said, I mean, you know, I, I had kind of this remote idea.
Well, football doesn’t work out. Maybe I’ll go to law school. And so one of the recommendations was by one of these guys was, well, major in political science. And I was like, well, what if I don’t get in law school? Can I still get a job with a political science degree? I mean, shouldn’t I major in business or something that’s, you know, kind of straight to it.
Straight to dumb and these, you know, I’m really guys laughing at me saying that, you know, you don’t need to worry about that. You’ll, you’ll, you’ll get through and you’ll, you’ll get in somewhere. Just, you know, we will make sure that happens. And then you made a decision to go to Columbia for law school.
Was that a rejection of Stanford on some level or You know what I, so it’s interesting, I think about when when the number of, you know, and it was always the, the, the case that there was, you know, a couple of guys from the football team that went to Los Jackie Brown and kind of guys from that era.
I didn’t, I didn’t apply to Stanford law school coming out. I was ready to get out of there. But it wasn’t a rejection. I mean, I think it was in a lot of ways, and one of the reasons why I came back, I mean, I didn’t really appreciate the place as much as I should have in the moment, which I think is the case with a lot of things we do in life.
The idea that it was this kind of there were no tragic events and everything kind of went smooth, and I made these great friends. I think in my mind that was, that was the college experience. That was what everybody, everybody got to enjoy that because we didn’t, you know, you didn’t ever have a chance to compare with people how they were doing elsewhere in depth until kind of after the fact that then I realized what it was.
So for me, and I’d never lived on the East Coast, it was a new opportunity so all that kind of stuff is what got me out of there. So does it resonate with you when Regina said she lived in two worlds. When she was at Stanford as an undergrad, both in terms of the dorm that she was in, but also that she was dealing with a lot of other people.
So you’re, you’re asking a great sociological question in a broader sense. I mean, I think, you know, this is the old Du Bois kind of, you know, commentary. I mean, we always live. In two worlds. I mean, you know, the worst thing to do is, is to try not try to defeat that not live in two worlds. It’s probably more than two that you have the consciousness being continue to be yourself.
But, but how these other worlds. Accept you or how you’re impacted by him in the moment causes you to react in different kinds of ways. And this is very much the issue of, you know, going to the black door or going in Bill’s office versus, you know, going into, you know, captain’s office or going into Brenner Hall or something.
It’s, it’s just, it’s, it’s just different, different location. Now the, the maturity that I would say even while we’re at Stanford, we were able to develop was it’s, In some sense, I mean, like I say, it’s not, it’s not our problem. It’s, it’s, it’s our ability to, to deal with it. The different reactions to us happen in different places.
Columbia, I think there were 30 black people in each class. They were much larger classes than, than at Stanford. So there was a, a great level of comfort on, on that issue. I mean, a lot of it for me now that I’ve lived in Philadelphia for 40 years, sounds kind of funny to say. This was this East coast thing.
I was like, what am I doing? What am I doing here? And so, you know, they had an opportunity to apply as a non matriculating student spend, spend a year at Stanford. Oh. So let me, let me see what that, that’s about. And, and, and this was in, I mentioned Lados earlier. I mean, lados was just doing. A tremendous job of inspiring black students at Stanford to apply, you know, in a way that we had not done.
And then she was receptive to, to these kinds of, you know, very few people did it kind of transfer opportunities. So, so coming back to me, I mean, I had all these. Thoughts about, you know, how wonderful it had been, you know, two years later, you know, that was a pretty good place after all. And also, you know, it’s interesting too, I mean, I, I, I knew about the work that Bill was doing and, you know, he’d done a little bit of sports related stuff, which I had some, some interest in.
So I spoke with him a bit as I, as I think about it. So he was certainly played a little bit of a role in that. But you know, it is, it was striking then, I mean, if you’re talking about Leroy Bobbitt, Sally Ann Payton, and, and and, and Vaughn, you know, there weren’t that many more in each class while Regina and I were there.
It was, it was much, much better. And by the way, sidebar. So one of the reasons that my earliest mentions of Stanford Law School to me was my high school geometry teacher. Was Sallyanne Payton’s mother. So, so so she would always tell me, my daughter’s, you know, I guess by the time I was in whatever class she was teaching was, I think Sallyanne was in Michigan or somewhere at that time, but yeah, but it’s, so it’s a place that that was always attractive to me and but for this idea of I need to try something different I need to get out of here.
You know, I probably would have given it more thought coming out. And I want to welcome Judge Tony Richardson, who is on us here. So we’re just asking these questions and we’re going to get to you shortly, Tony. But, but let me, let me ask this. So. At Stanford it, it, it, Ladoras, especially after, after Felton left, you, you know, Felton and have you met Felton?
Yeah, I mean, you know, think about he was kind of this very senior guy. Certainly got, you know, had interactions with him. When we first, when I first got to Stanford, he was there and I got to Stanford in 73. So he was still, still around. In terms of race, was there a difference between what it was like at Columbia?
And what it was like at Stanford?
I feel like I need to lay down on my couch to answer that question. You can just ignore these questions. That’s a very, that’s a very deep question. Yeah, so yeah, it’s very different. I don’t know if you’re good, bad or what, but, but a very different kind of setting. I mean, we were all in the same time living in the same time and same kinds of issues, but I will say, I mean, Columbia is in, in Manhattan, you know, Harlem, in or adjacent, however you want to characterize it.
So you, you were struck by the realities of the world pretty, pretty quickly. There was a you know, East Coast, the Black American Law Students Association, BALSA was way more invigorated because there’s so many schools around. There was a lot of this kind of activity for Black students. This is when I first got to Columbia.
We’re dealing with, with, with Baki and sort of all these, these issues were there. So it was a different, different moment in time. And no, you come back to Sanford to the, to the country club. We certainly had, had issues. They weren’t, you know, you have, you have to drive to East Palo Alto and get stuff really in your face.
Otherwise you could just. You know, be a part of the country club atmosphere more so, but, but, but, and that’s not to say, I mean, we, I was extraordinarily politically active, engaged, involved at Stanford, but it was, it was, it was harder to be direct engaged as opposed to let’s go on, get on the train and go down to the Supreme Court and protest or, or, or just go up to Harlem.
It was, it was so much easier and so much, yeah. In your face, I guess the best way to say it at Columbia when you came back from Columbia. Was part of the equation the fact that Bill was at Stanford Law School that there was a black professor there or it really wasn’t that significant your decision?
Wasn’t that significant? But I know I knew I knew it. I mean, you know, if there were no black professors, maybe because I did, you know, it’s whatever course he taught. I probably in the year I was there, I took I know I did the research, independent study. It took some advanced labor course. I’d taken a good amount of labor law at, at Columbia.
So I was glad he was there and the The educational atmosphere, I guess is a good way to phrase it, was, and again, I, I can never figure out it was a third year. It was a place really that much different, such a different, and I took courses like evidence. I took some, I took a course from Barbara Bancroft.
I took some of the bigger kind of traditional. courses. So, you know, it wasn’t all Seminox and they were very different in terms of, of the atmosphere. And again, it might’ve been part of, it was a third year, so I said, let me just get through this. But I think, I think there really was less of a traditional King’s Field intimidation kind of structure that was in place.
And let me add another faculty member of color that at least for my class, I’m in the class of 82. So we came on camp on the law school campus in 1979. But, but Professor Miguel Mendez was very important to the fabric of the law school experience for all students of color as well. So, so we didn’t see ourselves as just having one professor of color, because we, we had both Professor Gould and Professor Mendez.
And as a matter of. Go ahead. I agree. Absolutely. In fact, I just jotted down Professor Mendez his name to make sure I mentioned him as well gave him that shout out because I think in many ways he was as significant. A contributor to the good will and good feelings we had as minority students. At Stanford is Professor Gould was and he was supportive of not just the Latino students, but the black students as well.
And very, very encouraging and very positive. And as you know, he passed away several years ago, and it was one of the most I remember when I saw him last at Stanford with Professor Gould I think it was him celebrating a birthday or something. Oh, it was Professor Gould celebrating his birthday.
It was at his home. Professor Mendez was there and he was sick at the time, but he was doing better and he still had that same incredible vibe. And I assume you know this Alan, Professor Gould and Professor Mendez were incredibly close. They were best of friends. Ken nice to meet you. And Regina, I know of you, and it’s nice to see you.
Your reputation preceded you. I got there in 80, after you had graduated. Because I transferred. Guess from where? Columbia. Oh, is that right? So, Ken, when you were talking about Columbia experience and going to Stanford, I’m sitting there saying, Oh my gosh, that’s my experience. I did that. So I can answer some of those questions as well.
What year did you graduate from Stanford then? 84, but I didn’t arrive until 82 and Regina had graduated, as I recall, in 82. And she was in that incredible class that Everyone spoke up with such reverence and such. And you know, I missed it. But that’s when I arrived in the fall of 82. I spent my first year at Columbia.
I don’t want to bore any of you guys with the reasons why I ended up there. But the short story is I wanted to go to Stanford. I got accepted to Stanford. I met the doors. Cordell loved everything about it. Loved her. Love Shirley whose last name escapes me, her secretary, who was who was a white woman, older, who was like a mother.
Was the black students, you know she was incredible. So everything about Stanford was just amazing to me. And when I told them I wasn’t coming, it ripped my heart out, but it was because at the time the girlfriend, the woman who became my wife with whom I went to college. Was going to be in New York City working at Doubleday and I was very insecure and I felt that if this poor law student was stuck on the West Coast, here she is on the East Coast, you know, all those guys are going to be all over.
That was going to be done deal. I got into Columbia. And reason reason that as much as my girlfriend at the time my wife to be as much as we wanted to be on the West Coast, coming from Columbia, I ought to be able. It shouldn’t be bad. It shouldn’t be a problem to get to the West Coast, because Columbia was a great law school with a great reputation so forth.
So I went to Columbia fully intending. To spend 3 years there, lo and behold, my girlfriend wife was a biomechanical engineer, decided that that’s not what she wanted to do, fell in love with the experience I had during my 1st year and decided she was going to go to law school, applied to all the schools, got in, including Stanford, and then when Stanford was really heavily recruiting her, Ladoras she essentially said, I’m To Stanford, Tony and I come as a pair.
We come as a team. I’m only coming if he comes. And so, and can I think you pointed out this the size of the classes were different. Columbia was twice as large 300 students per class as Stanford, which was about 150 160. So there wasn’t an immediate fix, you know, going from a large. larger school to a smaller school, the numbers just weren’t there.
But that was a push that my wife made and eventually it worked out. A slot opened up and Stanford said, Oh, okay, you can come to tell me. That’s how I ended up at Stanford. Now I didn’t have an appreciation though at that time about Professor Gould or about Professor Mendez. I love the vibe at the school.
I, that was not my focus at all. To be honest, it wasn’t until I was actually there as a student that I saw the magnificence of Professor Gould and, and Professor Mendez and, and I took their courses and that sort of thing. And of course, I knew about the doors who herself is just an amazing, amazing, amazing person, and surely her, her, her secretary at the time.
That was an allure for me. And it proved to be fortuitous and it worked out great. I was interested in the course, because I was always focused I grew up very poor and the deep south, labor issues are always at the forefront of my mind. I always associated with the employee, not the employer, that sort of thing.
I became interested in taking that course for that reason. After I took the course, I decided I didn’t want to do labor law. I will say that. No, and that had nothing to do with Professor Gould. But when I took the course, I gained an appreciation for who Professor Gould was. It was only at that to be honest and then I grew fond of him after I had taken his course in my third year when I was not one of his students.
That’s when we became close. I was a baseball player. And as you all know, I mean, he’s an incredible fanatic, especially for a team that I did deplore to this day, the Boston Red Sox. I kept saying to him, how could you root for that team? Don’t you know their history? So we have those kind of discussions.
And then we would go out in the afternoon. He was more into it than I was to shag flies to to throw the ball and such. And we, we would do that from time to time. So I got to know him not then as a professor, but as, and it was strange because I had such reverence for him. I looked up to him.
But here he was someone who I played ball with, and I, and I, that could not have happened at Columbia, by the way, you know, you asked about the difference that that did not, there was a line at Columbia that was so drawn professors students. And, you know, you made an appointment to see a professor at Columbia, the doors are always closed.
You have to knock. You have to have an appointment. Didn’t happen at Stanford. You can walk in. The doors were literally open, not just to Professor Gu, but to other professors, white professors. It was a different, it was such a different feel. It was, we were treated more as adults. I felt at Stanford Law School, then we were treated as where we were treated as young students at Columbia so totally different experience.
One funny, one funny Columbia thing. There was even a, and I don’t know Tony if you were there long enough to experience. There was even a separate elevator, you should have an elevator key for faculty to use because it because it was schools in this building up and down. Yeah, very anti. Stanford kind of structure as well, but you know, wonderful place, but just very different.
And I understand Tony, that you became a member of Bill’s family. Essentially, I understand you became close friends with Bill V. When, when Professor Gould realized I was going to go down to clerk for Judge Williams, who I will say is the first black federal district court judge appointed west of the Mississippi.
And the father of Vaughn Williams. Well, that’s true. Well, yeah, yeah. But, but when he found out I was coming down to LA to clerk, he said, I got to put you in touch with my son. He’s living down there. He, I think Bill had just finished up at Occidental. So I, I didn’t know the younger Bill at all, but his dad put me in touch with him.
And as soon as I landed, I got a hold of Bill and. Now, Bill is my best friend became my best friend, so that’s the connection, Bill, to your point, Alan got married after I did, yes, and had two children, and his oldest daughter he asked me to be the god, godfather, so I’m the godfather of his oldest daughter, right, so Regina, I have a deep connection with the Gould family, I was, I was wondering if Ken recalls that I slept on his couch While he was at Columbia one day because I made a trip back east to visit lost to go to a student conference and at the same time visit law schools that I was applying to.
So I feel like I have this teeny little bit of Columbia, Columbia collection connection. But I was, I was very glad to judge Richardson missed. mentioned Professor Babcock again, because when she joined the faculty, as you know, I think maybe she was the second, she was the first or second female faculty member.
She was the, she was the first. Okay. And, and again, like the first professors of color she involved herself with the students and was a part of what made. For women, women of color their experience richer as, as students at the law school too. So when, whenever I think back on my experience at Stanford all of those, all of those professors are part of it.
And of course, the doors and surely. were social and central once they got us onto the campus in the kind of experience and support that we had as well. And so it, it is difficult you know, in my, in, in my memory to just single out one person. Who was either the reason I went to Stanford or made the difference in the quality of the experience that I had.
I can single out a couple of people who contributed to the negative experiences that I had at, at Stanford. At the law, at the law school, which were more than the negative experiences that I had in undergrad but Stanford, all of those people made Stanford into a welcoming community for diverse students.
I think a little bit before the core faculty was even ready for it. Our class, the Class of 82 thanks, you know, to Judge Thelton, Sowing the Seeds, and then Judge Cordell’s extremely energetic approach to recruiting diverse students to Stanford, our, the Class of 82 had the highest number ever of Black and Latino law students in that a class had had at Stanford.
I apologize that I have not. Followed the data since then. So I’m sure that’s classes census have topped us, but it was a huge standout because I think before that class, the highest number of black students in the same class was around seven Latino students around five, our class had 14 African Americans, 13 with the Latino students, and.
Back then did very poorly with Asian students, which I know has has been probably the most dramatic change for diversity at Stanford. So, you know, reaching about nearly 30 ethnically diverse students in one in one class was a major milestone that was very exciting to to all of us. But there was a blemish our first day of law school, the law school newsletter came out for the start of that semester, and there was an interview with a Stanford faculty member who strenuously objected.
To the fact that there were so many diverse students who were coming to Stanford now. And as a part of articulating his objections, he greeted us with the statement that we were going to form an identifiable bottom layer of the class. Was there, was there
pushback or protest or, or reaction to that from the minority students. The other faculty members and LaDoris ran around reassuring reassure us that that was not the majority sentiment of faculty members and that they would not have supported our admission if they thought that we could not succeed at Stanford.
Comparable to everyone else. And for us, it, you know, it made us so very conscious of how hard we needed to work while we were in the law school and and all the opportunities at the law school that we, we talked about who’s going to do this, so that there is diverse representation. We didn’t just leave it up to individual students of color to decide that they were going to apply to law for law review or not.
We talked about it to make sure that a number of people are applying. Same thing for moot court, who’s going to do moot court amongst ourselves. We made sure that there was diverse representation and all of those, you know, major things going on in the law school all the time. Because. You know, what did we know?
Maybe, maybe he had some information that hadn’t been shared with us that maybe he was right. So it was very, it was very disheartening. But, you know, so many people on the faculty did speak up, but never formally that I recall. I do not recall that anything was Published and this was 1979. This was, yeah, that was in September, 1979.
Yeah. I don’t recall anything being published. I’m pinpointing problem because that, that is the year they let me transfer in too. So that, that may be the, that may be what they were really concerned about. , but . So, so the numbers were, that’s it. It was all your fault. It was just me. I’ve got, you know, we have as, as, as we, as you probably now know, Alan, from, from that class and.
You know, not far behind us we have one of several judges, Judge Richardson, but we, we have judges in that class. We have law, law professors of color from the class of 1980, 82. We have people who went on to become bar leaders like, like myself I was president of the San Diego County Bar Association we have other bar leaders like that.
So he ended, so that particular professor actually ended up adding to the fuel of our determination to be successful, both in law school and in the profession. Because we didn’t just take forming identifiable bottom layer of the class to mean we would get poor grades in law school. We heard it as you don’t belong in this profession.
Bill Gould and Barbara Bethel were kind of different. As I understand it, Barbara Bancroft, her mission was to encourage female students. And as lawyers and, and on the other hand, is that Bill was was supportive of all students but really didn’t have that same mission that Barbara did. Does that make sense?
Yes? No? Okay. I think Bill was, Barbara was more Professor Babcock was more upfront and vocal. If you will, she wasn’t silent. Bill was more He acted, but he wasn’t profuse. He wasn’t, he was more silent in terms of the kind of support. And silent is the word I’m looking for. You, you felt it. He, he was always very encouraging and you could tell that he was always interested in helping you get to where you wanted to be.
I don’t remember going to him asking for things. For example, I’m going to LA. Do you know people there? He offered. It was always Bill. You know, doing that. So I don’t know if that answers your question. Yeah, no, no. I had a run in with a professor like Regina, you know, names remain out of it for a moment.
And I remember going to Bill and telling him, you know, can you believe this happened? And he immediately pulled out a dictaphone and, and basically took, you know, took my deposition to make sure he had an accurate accounting of, of the event. He said, he basically said, I don’t know what we’re going to do with this, but I want to make sure we have it in the moment if we need to use this later on.
And he didn’t, you know, he didn’t go up and let’s blow up the building. Let’s do, he was, he was preparing for whatever might be the appropriate steps. So, and one thing about Bill and Ivo said this is that Bill’s door was always open. And then when you were having a discussion with him, that’s why I understand from universally is that Bill always seemed to be had all the time in the world.
To, to talk to students and not discouraging and saying I had to do something else, but, but the, the conversations would continue because bill would want them to continue. Absolutely true. And all three of you have continued to have some kind of relationship with bill. Some more than others. But definitely one of the things that Bill honored me with in addition to generally continuing to be a friend and professional mentor after I graduated from law school was he was doing a project for a client on To establish a neutral and effective investigation and dispute resolution process for situations during organizing campaigns that might otherwise result in unfair labor practice charges to try to intervene before it got to the unfair labor practice charge.
Stage and he needed some lawyers on the on the ground. This was a nationwide project on the ground to help him with with that. And he reached out to me to ask me if I might be able to participate in the in that project, as well as, you know, several other Stanford students were attorneys that also participated in that project.
This was after And so the, you know, the kind of relationship that he maintained with so many students with as they were alum. I think speaks, speaks a lot about him as a person, I grew up in a neighborhood that was basically all African American and Latino. So that until I got to undergrad, that was my experience through, you know, school.
junior high school, a little more diverse in high school. But really my first truly, you know, integrated atmosphere was when I was at UCLA. So Stanford was Stanford was a new experience for me because Stanford even then was still predominantly white. My class was 12 African Americans. And so finding out that Bill was there was huge for me.
My recollection is a little cloudy, but I think That he participated in the orientation for first year law students, not black students, but just generally. And I was so taken seeing him and hearing him. And as we talked about very down to earth guy, I, I made it my business to meet him as soon as I could.
Because. You know, he was, he was a beacon of, of, I guess, accomplishment and opportunity because they, they described what his credentials at this orientation. And I was overwhelmed just listening to all the things he had already done. Most of my teachers were white. So again, the main exposure that I got, or the first main exposure.
to professors of color was at UCLA. There were a few of them there that I had the opportunity and the privilege to have classes with, but no, that was not true at my, at my schools, my elementary or middle or high school. And you were recruited to Stanford Law School at that time by Felton or by LaDoris Cordell.
I felt and and at that time you did have a course before you came down a sense that there was African American representation at Stanford Law School and Felton did a great job of making that clear to you. Yes. And how significant to you was that in making a decision to come to Stanford Law School? It was significant in the sense that the other law school I was really looking at seriously was Bolt and they did not make any of the effort that Felton did to talk to me.
They talked about, you know, the presence of Professor Gould and the importance of, of increasing the diversity of Stanford Law School. So, That was a big factor, huge factor, in fact, that, that influenced me to go to Stanford. My experience was completely different. From Gary’s and I mean the opposite end.
I was born in Harlem. My family was living in the Bronx at the time, but when I was about five years old, my family moved about 100 miles north of New York City. Into the Hudson Valley, which could not have been less diverse. So when I was in school, high school in particular, I think my class had fewer than 5 percent African American and maybe about 1 percent of that Asian American and.
maybe 1 percent if that Hispanic American. So really it was predominantly white. And so when I went to college, I went to state university of New York, Binghamton or Binghamton university today that’s when I encountered a more diverse. still significantly underrepresented African American, Hispanic American population.
But based on what I was used to, huge, just huge. And in those days Some would call it misguided. I would call it the university was trying to find its way. They had what they call third world corridors, which they allowed Hispanic and black boys, girls, males, females to live together. And so they had dorms that way.
Anyhow I could. Interact with folks and it was an eye opening experience. I mean, outside of my family and the few black friends that I had in high school. I, I’d never seen anything like this before. So that by way of saying that although, as I said, it was a larger number of people, the percentage was very small and I only had two African American professors, even at the State University in those days, and they were in African American literature, I can tell you their names, because, you know, I had so few, Lofton Mitchell was a a writer and a playwright and Sanna Quet who had been an official in the Igbo government and caught up in the Biafran Civil War and had to flee to save his life when his side loss.
And he went through Cambridge and or Oxford, I can’t remember which one. And he ultimately ended up in the U. S. And so those are my two. And then, so I get to law school, and lo and behold, there’s Bill! Oh my God! And it was, It was inspiring. It was someone who you could look at and say, here’s an example of success and understand in those days we’re talking about for me in 1970s.
You know, other than Thurgood Marshall and a few others who were very prominent. You did not have a lot of example of successful African American lawyers, and for me, I was looking at one, and one who was very smart, one who was very knowledgeable, and as we’ve discussed before, very approachable, very engaging.
So in a lot of ways Bill represented what could be for me and I dare say others like me in my class who had not seen a lot of examples of success. We weren’t The children of lawyers and having gone to the very best schools. I mean, all I had to do is look in the parking lot of the law school to see the successful backgrounds.
I mean, I remember seeing one of the guys drive by. In this Mercedes and I said, he’s not he’s not a professor. I said, Wait a minute, he’s in my class. This other woman go by in a Jaguar and I she’s my class to what if I’ve gotten myself into here. So I mean it was a completely different experience but anyhow, Bill was a real representative model.
And that’s very important for people of color, I believe, then and now. I met folks when I got there. I met Felton, you know you know, I went in, had a lot of conversations with them, but I didn’t get letters from folks or recruitment letters or, or any sort of, you know, questions or invitations to come visit the law school.
Mind you, I was in New York, so that would have been a long trip. But still you know, that that just didn’t happen. It just got a letter of acceptance in the in the mail, which I cherish because I mean, I had a few others. But it was my first letter of acceptance and I said, Wow, and from Stanford, who could want anything more case closed.
There was nothing that led me to believe that there would be a black professor at Stanford Law School. If you would ask me at the time. Well, do you think they’re black professors at Stanford, I might have said, Yeah, African American Studies, African history. Maybe one might be somewhere in the sciences or maybe, but yeah, no, I, I had no expectations in those days of finding diverse faculty because I had not experienced it.
And do you remember the first occasion that you found out there is a black professor here at Stanford Law School. Yeah, it was in the the BALSA meetings, I think, and someone said, Hey, you know, and I think it was Stoughton, actually, who was there and said, By the way, Bill Gould is here. Yeah, you know, you should talk to him, you should take his class.
Oh, really? So, I mean, that was sort of my introduction to Bill being there because otherwise I didn’t know. So Keith, you were two years behind Gary then at Stanford Law School. So Gary, did you see yourself as kind of a being a leader in, In diversifying the law school or was it diversified pretty significantly?
I mean, when I started Stanford law school in 1967, there were no African Americans in my class. There were no Latinos. There were no native Americans and there were six women. So what was it like for you to come there and, I mean, so having 12 in the law school, 12 African Americans in law schools, just shows what Felton has been able to do in a short period of time.
I, you know, it’s interesting I didn’t think in those terms, I knew that it was New. There were a number of things that let me know that that that number 12 was was a big deal. Some of the professors were not especially welcoming to us. And Bill and Felton were real what’s the word I want?
They were real anchors for me in terms of, I knew I, in terms of telling me, you can do this and you belong here and, All of that. But yeah, it was it was interest. Not interesting. It was challenging in a way, because, as I said, there were some Stanford professors were not particularly welcoming. One of my recollections.
And one of the reasons why I am as I am as a teacher first year was hard for me. Like Keith, I had no background. I had no, no idea what was needed to succeed at law school. And I, I kind of struggled that first semester. And I specifically recall going to a couple of professors during their office hours and getting the distinct impression.
You know how soon can this be over? You know, you’re this. My feeling ultimately was that from their perspective, I was wasting their time. It was another reason why Bill is so important and felt him because that was those were the two places where I knew I could go and get assistance, guidance, support and that it was not going to be an imposition.
Did you become con? Go ahead, Keith. Yeah, I just wanted to make a comment on what Gary said you know, Gary, the only thing I would say to that is my experience just being blunt is that I don’t know that Stanford in those days had very good professors who could teach. They were excellent at research.
They were smarter than a whip, but every almost every visiting professor that came in to me was superior than most of the Stanford law professors as teachers. They did not relate well to the class. There were a few who were very good at it. But, and I don’t want to name names at all, so I’ll leave it up to people to figure out.
From their various classes who their favorites or least favorite were. But yeah, I mean, I, I felt that a lot of them were awkward, and that they did not know how to convey well what or inspire people. That’s why one of the other reasons why, as I’ve mentioned before, Bill was a refreshing brush of breath of air because he could do that and he could teach well and he knew how to entertain.
I mean, there’s just certain things that teachers And most of them didn’t care. It’s like, I’m here to do research, research or perish. And oh yeah, I got to teach a class. Okay. No, I, I absolutely agree with with Keith on that observation. I, there was not that much of an emphasis at the time on people’s ability in the classroom.
And so my experience, especially first year was very similar. It was just that in addition to people not being all that great in the classroom. They also were not willing to spend any time that I, in my experience during office hours, trying to help you understand what it was they were trying to convey.
Now maybe You know, maybe that was just a general. I don’t know. But as a black student there, I just felt like I wasn’t very welcome in those offices. Did you know that there was Bill Gould was on the faculty of Stanford before you came then? I did, and I think I knew that because of Felton. Excuse me. I was recruited by Felton.
He, you know, I submitted my application just because I was interested in Stanford. It was a name, you know, and I knew it was a great law school and I really wanted to stay on the west coast. I didn’t, I didn’t have any desire to go east. So that was why I applied. But obviously, Felton got a hold of my application.
So I remember getting a call from Felton telling me, you know, I really needed to come up and visit you know, that, that the school had this commitment to diversifying the student body. I don’t remember if he mentioned Professor Gould in that conversation. But he did talk about the school’s commitment to doing better with the student body and that that was a big part of his job.
So, but I did come up and visit. And I, as I said, I, as my recollection is, I probably learned about Gould being there during the visit. And then for whatever reason, Professor Gould was part of our orientation for the first year class. It wasn’t aimed at the black students. And when I saw him then I knew I had to meet him as soon as possible.
I can never forget the first time in his office because of the way his office looked. I was like, oh my god. But that being said, he was extremely gracious, as Keith said, very, very approachable and down to earth. As I recall, he said to me, you know, I don’t teach any first year classes, but anytime you want to come by and just chat about the law school experience you’re welcome to do so.
And I took advantage of that by which. Means I met his sons, and eventually I wound up going out and playing catch with a hardball with Professor Gould and his sons and that was sometime during my first year, and I knew by that point I was going to take his labor law class second year that was the first thing on my list.
Did you have a sense of dealing with the other of these 12 students, the fact that Bill Gould was the professor there was significant in their lives? Oh, no question. Yeah. There are well and Willie, and a student by the name of Al Johnson, we were pretty close in law school and I think the three of us all at different points, reached out to Professor Gould, as we were going through first year.
Yeah. And as you know, he was unfailingly welcome, welcoming and gracious and all the rest of it. The rest of my class, I don’t know as well. And, and I mean, we were, we were reasonably close during law school, but those are the people I can think of. And yes, we all reached out to Professor Gould as a support.
And Keith, could you think back and think how your law school experience would have been different? Had bill gold not been there. I think that it, you know, I mean, to the extent that, as I mentioned, bill act is inspiration, there would be probably less inspiration. And I mean, I look, I, I wasn’t someone who went to Bill often.
And I think but that was just my, I didn’t go to any law school professor, frankly, very often. I viewed that almost as if being called into the principal’s office, you know, so I stayed out of those offices. But no, but I mean, my, my experience. probably, I don’t know that it would have been terribly different other than the fact that would I have taken his labor law class?
I don’t know. Maybe not. So it may have made all the difference in the world. And you’re taking his labor law class was because you were interested in that subject and really was not Because he was an African American professor at, at Stanford Law School intertwined. I mean I, you know, I, I wanted to take a class with bill and I was interested in exploring labor law.
I really didn’t know what it was about, but I knew about bill. And I said, Yeah, this, you know, so let’s get two birds with one stone here and never regretted it was really, really, really happy that I went down that road. And in fact, you, your career was as a labor. Attorney both first, first for the NLRB and then in private practice and especially working with the studios, correct?
Correct. And, and will you, will you continue to be in contact with Bill as your career progressed? Was there much interaction you had with him? Periodically. I mean, Bill and I, on occasion would have interaction, not regularly, but periodically. And then he wants did me the honor of inviting me to speak at his class, which I did which I found to be a very rewarding experience.
So, yeah, I mean Periodically, I can’t say I, I was a pen pal. That’s for certain. But certainly I was incredibly happy and proud when he was appointed as the chairperson of the NLRB. And then I had to ironically approve him being appointed to arbitration panels in the entertainment industry on behalf of my company, given approval, which I did, of course.
And Gary, we’ve already talked with you about how significant the bill was in your career that at Both helping you get the job at the California agriculture labor board originally, and then, and then when you were decided to leave the ACLU and he first proposed to you the idea that you would teach, which hadn’t occurred to you previously.
Right. I would not be a teacher today were it not for Bill. He really encouraged me. I, I had this interesting situation because I loved working at the ACLU. I really did. But when my second child was born, I wanted to have. some time to spend, you know, while she was a newborn with her and as a litigator at ACLU, that wasn’t working.
So they had a program where I could take a leave for a year. And so I was, I knew I was going to do that, but I didn’t know what I was going to do because ACLU wasn’t going to pay me. They just. would take me back. So I called Bill and said, you know, I’m in this position. You have any ideas for me?
Because Bill was my mentor. I mean, I really stayed in touch with him throughout. And he says, well, have you ever thought about teaching? I said, no. And he says, well maybe, you know, let me scout around. In fact, that’s how it went. Let me scout around and see if there are any openings because sometimes temporary positions open up where law schools have a gap.
And he founded the place, which was loyal law school that had a person who was leaving for a year, excuse me, who taught in areas where I had practice experience. So then the next thing was, well, okay, here’s this thing. And I’m saying, well, but I’ve never taught. I don’t know anything about that. And he says, oh, you can do that.
I can just hear him. Oh, you can do that. You know, you’ve been practicing in that area. So based on really that, I went ahead and took the plunge and then the rest is history. I fell in love with it. Once I started doing it and fortunately I was reasonably good at it. So Gary, this is great. I, I have a huge jazz fan myself.
And although I’m a little bit younger than, than Bill is that my taste run mainstream jazz is something that that I appreciate. So, and, and, and this is the one. Conversation. I’m going to have that. I’m really totally unprepared for because I don’t know what you’re going to say it. And but I’m sure it’ll go well.
So let me begin by saying, so when Bill and and we figured out the various kinds. Of panels that we would put together in terms of putting it there as a panel about how bill affected my career, for example, or, or Bill’s impact as being a great teacher is that one of the ones that he suggested was that Jazz is so integral to his life and so important to him that he thought it would be good on this and he settled on you as being the expert Bill Gould and jazz.
So take it from here. Sure. So I guess the way I should start, I was already by the time I got to law school, really a jazz fan. My love for jazz probably began midway through high school. So I was already, you know, familiar with a lot of the, the great artists of the day, made it a point, especially in undergrad, to get to performances and so forth.
So when I got up to Stanford, as I’ve mentioned Bill was one of the people I absolutely wanted to meet and I made it a point of doing that. During my first year, and I think my, well, there’s two ways that my familiarity with his love of jazz occurred. One was going to his office, because whenever I went to his office if he was not otherwise occupied meaning.
Something where he needed to have quiet. He had jazz playing. So in addition to the fact that he was such a wonderful support, I, I could always count on enjoying my visit with him because I knew there would be some good jazz on and our tastes run pretty similar. And then during my, yeah, it would have been my.
third year I became his research assistant and that’s when it really became apparent to me how deeply jazz was part of his life because when I would go to work with him in his office there was always jazz on. as I began to visit with him and his family at home, there was always jazz on, and usually it was someone that I was familiar with, and we would wind up talking about that individual or group, and Bill had a real expertise, so that while I love jazz, Being involved with him really increased in many ways, my knowledge about jazz and some of the artists.
And the other thing is that as I began working with him we would sometimes sit down and instead of working, or maybe after working we would listen to something that he had in his office. So it was very clear to me he was a serious, serious jazz fan. And so after I graduated and especially once I started working at the Agricultural Labor Relations Board, well, Sacramento, I was headquartered in Sacramento, and Sacramento’s culturally, it would, at the, in those days, it was basically a cultural backwater as far as jazz was concerned.
So I would come down to the Bay Area. when I wanted to go hear some jazz and go to one of the clubs. And so one of the things I started doing once I started doing that was I would reach out to Bill and if he was going to be in town, we would get together and go to one of the jazz clubs. Timing wise, I’m not sure I remember all the different places, but we would do that.
And have a wonderful time and it was a great time to catch up with Bill. And as I said, one of the great things was our taste in jazz was very similar. Miles Davis Freddie Hubbard people along those lines were people that he enjoyed and I enjoyed and we would spend time just talking about it.
So anyway eventually I wound up moving back home here in LA. And so when Bill would come down because I’m going to get this maybe a little bit turned around. At least two of his sons lived in LA, maybe three, but certainly two. So he would come down periodically. And when we would get together, when he would come down, we would do one of two things.
We’d either go to a baseball game or go to a jazz club. And we would hang out and that was always a great time. And His son, Bill, also is a jazz fan, and so we would often be a threesome and go out to Catalina Bar and Grill before it closed down. We’d go to the Jazz Bakery. and hang out there and just again have a good time, you know, waiting for the music and talking and catching up and then enjoying the music.
So it is a real important part of Bill’s life. I guess the last thing I’ll share right now, just, you know, sort of talking about it I wanted to find a way to really thank Bill for being such an important influence in my life for pushing, pointing me to the academic career which I have tremendously enjoyed.
So my annual tradition now is I always find something in the way of a collector’s edition of one of those artists to share with Bill as his Christmas holiday present. And invariably, I get either a phone call or an email which literally and figuratively is basically a big smile and a big thank you because He has now spent a couple of hours listening to whatever and enjoying it.
How do you think that his love for jazz ties in, if it does, with the other things that we know about him? I think, well, one of the ways I can think about it is, it is for him, one of the ways that I think he, he, One of the ways in which he stays connected with the black, if you will, cultural life you know, academia, and I can speak to this myself, it can be a very different environment, especially from what I would call black community kind of concerns.
And so, you know, being connected with jazz going out to jazz events. It puts you in back in contact with a very important stream, if you will, of influence in the black community. And I think that that’s one of the ways in which I think it influences Professor Gould. Also, I think it is another way of reflection of what everyone has, that I’ve been involved in these conversations has talked about, which is his just his openness and his humanity, so to speak.
I think that that is the, the love for jazz is a reflection of that because jazz is a music. That is community in the sense that number one, the musicians are communicating on the stand in a way that is unique to jazz. You know, to be able to improvise and do things and play with people on the spot is part of that tradition.
And I think that Bill’s his connection with his classes, his connection with the students, some of that comes from his love of jazz.