Transcript:

I had a personal experience. I did a lot of my own personal experience. When I went to Cal, undergraduate, uh, there were only 15 students there. It was a very lonely place. Thousands of students. Only 15 African American students. 15 African American students at the entire university. And this was an undergrad.
This was undergraduate. And so I used the experience that we had, what I wished they had had for us there in these kinds of things. And I had a very harrowing experience. And I’m lucky I survived there because I went to summer school before I started at, at, at Cal. And I understand that they told you that in order to be admitted, you had to pass Had to pass two classes in summer school and get C’s in them.
And my first class was History of Western Civilization. My first exam that summer I still remember it, was Give the Significance of Napoleon’s Blockade. of the English Coast. And I had studied. I was This was a midterm. Huh? This was a midterm. It was a midterm. It was a midterm exam. And I had studied.
I was up here by myself. The school hadn’t started. There were no other blacks. I had a rooming house that I stayed with on Bancroft Way. And I did nothing but study. Read, read, read. And on weekends, I’d go down on Shattuck Avenue and go to a movie. And that was about it. So I took the exam and But, you know, I know I got a C, because I had never in my life gotten less than a C in school.
And I got a D. A D minus. A D minus it was. With a note from the professor to come see him. This wonderful man, who really saved my career. And he went in and said, son, I gave you a D minus, I should have given you an F. Because you didn’t, you didn’t answer the question. And I know you studied, that’s why I gave you a D, a minus, because we’re using my textbook.
And what I did, what he was referring to is, I just, I had never had an essay exam. All I’d had was true, false, or multiple choice. And I read to remember things, not to analyze them and give the significance of things. And so I was writing in there everything I could think about about Napoleon and the English coast and the blockade.
I just gave fact. Napoleon was short. He married Josephine. The English coast was this long, and they used this many ships. And I was just writing. Because to get this, where you’d gone to high school, you’d never taken an essay exam. I’d never taken an essay, I’d never heard of an essay exam. And through my whole career before Cal, through the L.
A. school system in the black community where I grew up. So, it was foreign to me, the concept even. So, this kind man was he said, Well I told him I was up here to play football, and he said, well, will the athletic department pay for a tutor for you? And I said, I’ll go check. And they said, of course we will.
And I went back to him, and he got his teaching assistant, who would help grade the papers, and get to be my tutor. And the first thing he did was to show me four A exams. Four exams that had gotten A’s on it. And I always refer to that reading of those exams as the scales falling off my eyes. All of a sudden, Oh, this is the way you do it.
This is what you wanted me to say. This is an essay. And it all started building from there. And so the next exam, I was able to get a B. And pulled my grade up and got a C. For the summer and I passed that and then the other one was a geology course that I took and that one was simple because it was multiple choice.
You know, what kind of cloud is a cumulus cloud, you know, and I could take that exam and hit the right things and I got in and I’ve often thought. If I hadn’t gotten that break from that professor who cared enough to talk to me, get me a tutor, I would have flunked out and I would have, you wouldn’t be here talking to me now.
Good afternoon. My name is Rick West and I will introduce myself a little bit more fully in a moment. But I want to signal a journey this afternoon that is a very important one for all of us in the classes of 1970 and 1971 and for the Stanford Law School entitled How Diversity Came to the SLS Fifty Years Ago.
What is interesting are a couple of historical facts. Although the Harvard Law School graduated its first African American. In 1868, 1869, excuse me, Stanford did not until 1968, almost a full century later. And this is a story about how that changed at a particular point in time, until 1968. I think it’s fair to say that Stanford really did not have an approach to handling and addressing issues of diversity that could ever be confused with the with the adjectives intentional and systematic.
And that all changed with the arrival of six students in the class of 1968 and Assistant Dean Felton Henderson. And this is the story of that transition. So think of this afternoon as, by reference to the following metaphors, if you will. A mosaic, a collage, Looking at experience in time and space through multiple cubist lenses of voices that were here at the time and that defined what the situation was then, as well as what it became, and what it is still becoming right now.
And that is indeed a very important journey. It is a story that has relevance to me personally, as I am a member of the class of 1971. I’m also a citizen of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes in the state of Oklahoma where I was raised. I am currently a member of the Southern Cheyenne Society of Peace Chiefs, our traditional and historical governing instrument.
As were my great grandfather, a great uncle, and two of my uncles. So this has relevance to me too. And I would like at this point to introduce the first presenter. Which described really the context of the times, what it was that we were all facing at that time at the Sanford Law School. And it is that context described by the Honorable Adores Hazard Cordell JD, 1974, who will discuss with Michael S.
Wald, the, the Jackson Eli Reynolds Professor of Law Emeritus who began his career here in 1968. what the SLS was like before Felton arrived. How Felton changed the SLS and how and why those changes came from students that were involved.
Stanford is founded in 1893. You come in 1967 and that first black graduate graduated in 1968. So given all of that, what was. What were things like when you came to the law school with respect to you’re coming in? I’m assuming you’re really young, then you look young now, but 1967 what was going on then?
And what was the sense about just having students of color at the law school? UN until the ni mid 1960s, Sanford was actually like all major national law schools in terms of the lack of any efforts to identify and recruit African American, native American, or Hispanic students. In fact, all, although Yale had had a number of graduates, I graduate from Yale, there were only five minority students in my graduating class at Yale.
While there was no active discrimination, unlike in many southern law schools where it was actively separate schools, there were no affirmative actions. And as you know as you just mentioned, it was not until 1965 that Stanford admitted its first African American student, Sally Ann Payton.
Beginning in the 19, mid 1960s, as a result of actions by the administration of President Lyndon Johnson universities all around the country had to explore affirmative action, and Stanford began to do that. However, When I joined the law school in 1967, there were no programs or policies in place focusing on affirmative action or on increasing racial and ethnic diversity of the student body.
And to my recollection, at least in that first year, there just were not discussions about it. It was basically an all white, almost all male population. And that was true of the faculty as well. Is that right Michael? I, I, I just remember when I was there, I entered in 1971. I don’t recall any black faculty.
There were no black faculty. When you came women faculty, there were just a whole lot of men who were chosen because they had hard grades in law school. Were you, was that a shock to you when you came? No, because it actually wasn’t that different from Yale where I have been. So it was typical of law schools.
I was not surprised. Okay. So everything is white and male, everything’s going along fine. And then some students of color, so Sallyann Payton and then others come in and then students then start to kind of raise the issue. about what’s going on here and why aren’t there more of us? So what do you recall about that?
Stanford was like most other universities in the country in that the impetus for stronger policies, and there was policies going on at the university, and there were affirmative action committees, but there was just not much movement. It was not till efforts generated by students, often through rallies and even sit ins that, that the faculty had to pay more attention and become more active.
In 1968, a group of six students approached Dean Bayless Manning, who was then new to the law school, seeking a commitment to stronger action and asking him to meet with Felton Henderson, who was then in East Palo Alto. legal aid program attorney. Thompson had a number of meetings with Dean Manning, who was committed to diversifying for an affirmative action and through those set of meetings.
The law school made a commitment to do more recruitment and support of minority students and actually the most important step to hire and Felton as an assistant dean to head a program to actually undertake these activities. So in one respect, having students take the lead was not unusual, right? I mean, I, I recall that happening at a lot of universities.
It wasn’t necessarily administrators or faculty. Usually it wasn’t, it was usually students. Is that what you think? That is true. I mean, the student culture, not only on affirmative action but that was a time of anti Vietnam protests, and there was a great deal of student activity. And remember a lot of the act the actions Freedom Riders and and what was taking place nationally outside of universities was led by students and by other young people.
So when we come to Felton who eventually But, you know, Bayless Manning says, Okay, I think this is the way we want to go. It’s really, you know, one person. that can come in, and it can change the direction of everything. And I sort of see Felton as the game changer. He’s the one that comes in, and then things start to happen.
People start, and that is on the faculty administration start to see what the issue is. And I guess it was important then very important that he had the support of the dean, obviously and hopefully faculty to come in and do what here, which was bringing in, doing some active recruiting to bringing in students of color.
So that’s my sense about Felton that, and I don’t know if you can talk more about your experience and what he brought to this white male institution. So I think You cannot give too much recognition to the fact that it was Thelton who really made everything happen. He, there was a support of the dean, of the faculty, and the students, but it was Thelton his force his personality, his way of thinking about things.
He had been in the South as the first Black attorney in the Civil Rights Division in the U. S. Justice Department. His ability to make institutions and people move is really unparalleled in my experience. And so Stanford Went from being a total laggard to a national leader, which never would have happened without them.
And he silently built many, many aspects. I talk with them almost daily for the three years after he came on all of these issues. And it was his. Thinking broadly, his ability to have lunch and talk with all of the faculty members and to build in the community and the students that really made it possible.
It was aided by the fact that Stanford’s faculty started changing after 1967. Although I was still the youngest we were getting many new people with commitment, but Fenton was critical. When you say the faculty also began to change again, felt as the impetus in what way? Well first of all, the faculty hiring occurred bringing in people like Paul Brest who had spent the previous two years in Mississippi working on civil rights issues, then bringing in Tony Amsterdam.
Who had been working as a head lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. And it was, Felton would just meet with them and talk with them and plan strategy and and, and, and therefore made everything happen. That’s really fascinating because, you know, my experience is that systems, all kinds of systems, institutions are resistant to change.
And oftentimes it takes one person, but that person has to be able to navigate across all of these lines with students, with faculty, with administrators, and not many people have that ability. And Felton is one, I think, who was genuinely possessed of that talent and that ability because he absolutely made it happen in an institution that hadn’t seen this kind of change ever.
Right. And, and it was because of Felton’s qualities that Dean Manning and then later Dean Ehrlich were happy to give him total authority and to just let it happen, knowing that he would make things move, but in a way that made the faculty that believed they controlled everything happy that this was all going on because of the way Felton was able to do it.
So now you know the the context, and the context was complex, both internally and externally. And what I’d like to do now is turn to some of the plaintiff witnesses, if you will, Felton and some of the others, because in 1968 there was a multiracial group of six students. And that was not an easy slide at Stanford in those days.
There was nothing particularly multiracial about the student population of the Stanford Law School. But it was a group of six students. And it included, and I will just tick them off, Sally Ann Payton, B. A. at Stanford, 1964, and the first African American graduate from the Stanford Law School in 1968, Vaughn Williams and Leroy Bobbitt, class of 1969, the first African American males to be graduated from the SLS, Owen O’Donnell and Ed Steinem.
Class of 1968, white students who were themselves also catalysts in starting the student discussions. And it also included Luis Nogales a Latino who unfortunately was unable to participate in this conversation. But let’s hear the story that they had to tell.
I never completed my my applications to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, Northwestern, and Michigan, which were the other schools on my list. And without an application, I got accepted to all of them. So, well, it was, you know, it was the 60s. African Americans with my LSAT score were apparently in short supply.
And All of those other schools were very anxious to get african americans into the school. And stanford, it turned out was equally anxious. And I picked stanford over the other schools because frankly as a former football player, we used to play stanford. And they had black guys on the football team.
So I just assumed because it was California, because they had African Americans in the undergraduate school, they would, that there would be African Americans in the law school. And frankly, I thought. the opposite of Harvard. It turned out I was exactly wrong. Harvard having graduated more black lawyers than any other school in the country other than Howard.
And I didn’t find out until I was already enrolled at Stanford. And I met Sally Ann. And I found out that Stanford has graduated no African Americans to that point. So I got there under a false understanding of where I was going, but I don’t regret it. We came from all white schools. I mean, I grew up in Chicago, but I wound up in the suburbs.
Owen lived in Northern Virginia. Until I went south, until I started doing civil rights work, you know, I didn’t know this, but I assumed that this is the way all schools were. Obviously, maybe Vaughn and Leroy and Sally Ann were a little more attuned to what was going on. My job was to do my job at Stanford was to be an outstanding student so that they would want some more like me.
I wanted all those white professors to be able to say, Oh, can we get another Sally Ann? OK, and that was my job. And I did that job for them. I love the way Sally Ann just described what she saw as her job, because that’s how I went to Stanford. I felt very much the same way. But what I realized quickly was that, you know, the first black to matriculate, Sally Ann, had joined the Law Review Leroy did extremely well, Luis did extremely well, I joined the Law Review, and then I became head of the Law Review.
So it struck me that the pipeline argument was just not an accurate argument for Stanford, and that it must somehow be more, problems more internal to Stanford. And those were the things that had to be addressed by Dealing with the Stanford Dean and the Stanford faculty. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree with Vaughn Moore.
You know, I have heard the argument for so many years that we’d love to have some of them if we could only find those that are qualified. And that’s, that’s always been hogwash. And, and you know, it was the, the, the, the kind of argument that, that you got from people who weren’t looking. And that was true at Stanford.
Now, having come from a background in a small Midwestern town in Michigan that was predominantly white, I had integrated the Boy Scouts. I integrated the varsity marching band. I was the first black quarterback they ever had on their football team. So it was not a big step for me. To look at increasing the numbers of African Americans in the law school, because that was something I had done all my life and, and I don’t remember the first people I talked to about it.
It may have been Ed and Owen who I knew quite well and, and certainly shortly thereafter Vaughn and, and Sallyann and You know, together we decided, and Luis and I have become quite good friends, by the way, by that time and we decided that we need to talk to Bayless Manning the dean of the law school and had some success in speaking with him.
The difficult, the bigger difficulty in getting Stanford to change its orientation was the faculty. Now, the way I got to Stanford wasn’t that I started at the law school, that I started as an undergraduate. But the pipeline from Dorsey High School ran to Stanford, and so there was, there would have been no point for Dorsey High School to have excluded me from their pipeline in order to, in order to not have an African American student, because I was an African American.
So I, I was there at, at, at Stanford undergraduate with a number of people from my high school and from Los Angeles. It was a pipeline. It was a pipeline. And the problem, to repeat, is that the law school did not have that kind of pipeline. They had not nurtured it yet. They needed to nurture it. As a matter of fact, we have nurtured it over time.
But that’s how you get those students. They don’t just pop up out of nowhere. You know, we were fortunate enough that in the case of Ron and myself, we were both from L. A. And we both were familiar with Stanford. He’d gone to Harvard and all. So we were in the mix to begin with. But other people aren’t in that mix, and there’s got to be a pipeline.
Sally, I just want to challenge you for a second, if I can. Because in my class, More than a third of the class were from places other than California. So the law school, the law school was clearly engaged in outreach. So Bill Baxter, for example, Bill Baxter came to Harvard to interview students. There clearly was outreach for the general community.
But there was no specific outreach for the minority community. That’s probably right, but again, in my case, they didn’t have to have Outreach specifically for the minority community because I was in and I had, I was coming out of Stanford to begin with, and before I came out of Stanford, I came out of Dorsey High School, which was one of the premier, at the time, was one of the premier academic high schools in Los Angeles.
And Dorsey High School had a teacher who was in charge of funneling students to the proper university. So Mrs. Blanche Garrison took care of me, and she is the one who made sure that I knew the right people and took the right courses and all of that sort of thing, so that I got into Stanford as an undergraduate.
And from there, frankly, it’s an easy jump over the wall if you do well as a Stanford undergraduate. The ability To reach out to try to expand the law school’s base was there because they were doing it with respect to students from every part of the country and every significant school. And they were particularly recruiting at Ivy League schools because Stanford wanted to have and had and continues to have that national reputation.
They did not use that same attitude toward diversity on a racial basis. Bayless Manning, the dean, was from Yale, and when he came to Stanford, he brought a number of Yale faculty with him. So Stanford Law clearly had a global sense in those years. It just wasn’t an even handed sense. We all realized at some point that Stanford had done a very bad job.
And when I went to the professors about this, what I heard was, well, if they meet our standards, we’ll admit them. And I thought to myself, could you imagine the football coach at Stanford saying, well, if the football players that applied to Stanford met our standards, we will accept them. No, they don’t.
Accept them. They go recruit them. And I think the point that everybody’s making is that stanford was out recruiting people from all over the country but they said with regard to black students What you’re talking about is affirmative action and that means we have to lower Those standards and my point was affirmative action.
In my view, two parts. The first part was that maybe in some circumstances you did that. But the other part was that you had to go out and recruit. And what I was saying to them is that you know what the school do is go out and try to aggressively promote it. Stanford as a place for black students to come.
And Sally Ann and Vaughn had proved conclusively that they could not only do the work, but they could be on the law review, which I didn’t make. So they were better than I was. And. All you had to do, guys, was to go out and try to recruit some of these bright African American students, and then you’re gonna get some diversity.
I also had a bit of a plan, and the plan was to hire a black assistant dean to do that recruiting. And that’s how we started having the conversations about Felton. But, knowing Felton I brought his name up. And Jack Friedenthal, who to this day takes credit for it and and could find no problem, no problems with him brought him into to Dean Manning and, and Delton went through the process and ultimately got hired and it was through his efforts that he went out and and found African American students And Mexican American students and even a few Native American students to bring into the law school.
That that’s really how the diversity program got generated. And so, as I understand it, is that Leroy, you and Luis especially played an important role. And I wanted to say something about Luis. I understand Luis was different from all of you. Is that Luis not only came from a farm worker camp family. He was a farm worker.
He worked in in the fields. And when he got to Stanford Law School, he was very dedicated to the idea of diversifying the law school and that he worked especially with you, Leroy in in trying to push that that’s That’s definitely true. Luis and I became pretty fast friends. You know, in law school in the early days, and we used to talk about this all the time.
And so it was natural for us to work together. In trying to to generate more diversity in the law school. Absolutely. The person who had the real influence on those students was obviously Felton and knowing the fact that he was there and and and in the administration as an assistant dean, I think was one of the reasons that people began to feel as though it would be more of a welcoming situation.
And Felton, because he was so good for them. At continuing to relate to students once they came. Yeah, Danford. I think that’s what made the program work. It was so interesting felt. It’s unlike a lot of other programs at other schools felt and did not see the program is a numbers game, nor did you see it as an admissions project.
He saw it as a project of providing support for students all their way throughout law school. And he was particularly able to do that because as a person, he was dignified. He was accessible. He’s smart. He was a very attractive friend to have. So a lot of a lot of this initial success really is due to Felton.
His personality was perfect for it because he just was a very wonderful guy and it was easy to relate to him and he also didn’t scare people. I. e. didn’t scare white people. Ha ha ha. You should not assume that all colored students, which is what we were still until 1968, Were interested in going to Stanford or were interested in, in putting, in putting their time into Northern California where neither they nor their family nor their extended, extended associations exist.
Everybody wants to go to Stanford is really not the case. Stanford’s not an attractive place for black people. It wasn’t then, it still isn’t, but we made it an attractive place by putting part of our community at Stanford. It’s another way of saying that you have to mobilize the community. What Stanford is, is a community.
And it has outreach, it has tentacles. And so its tentacles reach in all kinds of different ways. We have to recognize that it’s the Attitude of the Stanford people towards the incoming people that makes all the difference in their experience when they’re at the school. Felton would not have been hired at Stanford Law School, but for you, the six of you.
I mean, there’s no question about that. And that’s where it came from. And that it would have happened maybe sometime later in some way if you hadn’t done it. But the answer is you guys did it. It happened because of you. It was not going to happen from the faculty. No, they weren’t going to do it. But it became from you six students.
who saw the problem. And as I think is, is when I had the conversation with Ed originally, as he said, I said, Well, why did you get involved? You said, well, It was the problem was obvious, and I said obvious to you, but not to the vast majority of Stanford students, and not only did you realize there was a problem, you realize that something had to be done about it, and you guys can pat yourself on the back till the cows come home, as far as I’m concerned, because it happened because of you.
And now we’d like to talk about the second half of the calculus more, particularly Thelton Henderson himself. And just a personal observation going into that. When I was a student here, I also worked directly with with Thelton about native recruitment into the law school. We had not been a part of these kinds of discussions because at the time they occurred there were no native students at the Stanford Law School.
I was the first one in quite a while. Almost a good 25 years or so. But I’ve always thought that Felton’s special gift was his ability to make personal intention also institutional. And he had the good fortune of having not one, but two generations of leadership, both Dean Manning, as well as Dean Manning’s successor, stand quietly, for the most part, to the side as he worked his magic with this program.
So let’s see how Felton went about that.
The thing that interests me is in our conversations with all of these incredible things that you’ve done, it seems to me that you have a special pride about what you did. at Stanford with all among these many things. And so first, am I correct that this really stands out for you? You’re absolutely correct.
It stands out it stands out as one of, my sense of achievement, one of the things that I’m most proud of, one of the things that I personally invested myself in. And it’s enduring. It’s the people that I got to get, come to Stanford have gone on to do wonderful things. I’ve been in touch with most of them.
So yeah, it’s been a lasting thing, not just a one shot kind of thing that I moved on to things. I’ve brought this along with me, and I’m hugely proud of it. And you’ve been able to change so many people’s lives. It is amazing to me, and I always use this statistic, Harvard Law School graduated its first African American student in 1869.
And Stanford graduated its first African American student in 1968. A hundred years later. A hundred years later. Wow. How, how is that possible? That’s, that’s an interesting question. And I, I’ve thought about it a bit. And I think that no one ever thought about it. I think that. It was a top rated school, and if you saw the picture, uh, Paper Chase, you know, there were no blacks in Paper Chase, and I think the people at Stanford came through the system, went to law school themselves, there were no blacks around, and so things were normal, and I think they were satisfied that Anyone with the kind of admissions requirements they had could come.
And if blacks wanted to come and had those qualifications, they would come. But it was much more complicated. And I think until I went over and began talking to Bayless Manning, they didn’t think of it that way. And at some point in our discussion he quite innocently, I thought, said Well, we don’t discriminate Mr.
Henderson. We’ll we’ll take any black who has 3. 7 GPA and a 90 plus percentile score on the LSAT. We don’t discriminate. And I thought that was an interesting statement. And I knew it was much more complicated than that. That everybody, and I know Stanford’s a top rate school. And he He finally hit a phrase that I could grab and run with.
He said, well, you know, we have to have people that we can live with. And I seized that and we talked about it. I said, well, let me, I was getting increasingly involved in this as we talked. And I said, well, would you let me look at your admissions for the previous two years? Last year and the year before.
So that I could get a sense of who you can live with. You were able, coming in, essentially off the street with no connection with the law school, to sit down and educate Bayless Manning and to change his mind. Yeah, I think so. I think that would be an accurate statement. Pretty amazing. Yeah, and he wasn’t resisting it.
I think he was open to it. I think he wanted it to happen. I think until we had the talk. He just thought it would happen naturally through the course of human events without any, any planning or, you know, intervention on the part of the program. And as I understand it, you had a series of meetings, three or four with him.
I think between meetings he was doing a little research and talking to people, and and I think each meeting he was more enthusiastic and brought a little more to it, and I think he was excited that Maybe this is going to happen and maybe it’s going to change things. So at some point in one of these meetings, a third or fourth meeting I guess, has he turned to you and said, let’s do it and why don’t you be the head of it?
It’s a curveball. It caught me by surprise. And the more I thought about it, I thought maybe in some way I could serve a bigger purpose, especially since it was a half time job. When you were offered this job and accepted it, your qualifications for the job were? That you were black, that you were a lawyer, and you had a passion about this.
That was it. Those were the only qualifications I brought to it. I knew nothing about admissions. I knew nothing about recruiting. You’d never run an organization like this? I’d never run an organization. I’d never done anything in an academic setting except go to school, be a student. Completely unprepared for it, but willing to give it a shot.
How did you even figure out what am I going to do and how am I going to go about reaching out to people? Yeah, well I had to I had an athletic background and I sort of treated it like you do if you’re looking for football players at a university. You know, you go out and you find it. One thing I realized very early on was that when you recruit football players, minority football players, especially.
One of the ways you do it is if you have some players on the team. You know, they say, come on in, the water’s fine. You know, and the players you’re trying to recruit want to know what it’s like there for a minority player. So that’s why. Leroy Bobbitt and Luis Nogales were important to go out. So I, I was introduced to them, and I wanted them to go out and beat the bushes and, and say, hey, come on over.
We don’t have many of like us here at Stanford, but they’re very receptive. They’ve got this new black assistant dean, and you know, and he’s gonna do right by you. We’re going to have scholarship assistance, we’re going to have programs, and you’re fully welcome here. So that was the initial strategy.
Kind of naive as I look at it 50 years later, but that was the starting strategy. And so, how did you see your role in, in, in, in all of this? Just making it work. My role was to find them, get them in. And have a an atmosphere, a situation that would be welcoming and help them succeed. And so, I, I did it piece by piece.
And when you had the position at Stanford, is you were looking for students like you? Yeah, I was looking for students like me. The main The main thing I thought they had, they had to have a certain baseline of accomplishments, but they also had to have desire. They had to want it as badly as I wanted it.
That was sort of my model. Yeah, and, and proved to be right. There were two students of those original six, who were particularly working with you and that was Leroy Bobbitt and Luis Nogales. Right. Could you talk about what they were doing? Yeah, they were, I got to know them and they were good students going through, having no trouble, and they were enormously interested in it.
They had as much of an interest as I did. And I told him my view, and Leroy, who was an ex athlete, too, and he, we agreed on, you know, the athletic approach, how you get athletes to come to a school would be useful here, and so he and Luis agreed to go out and beat the bushes And I should mention, this is very important, in 1968, there were not that many minority students coming through the pipeline of our colleges to getting ready to go to a top school like Stanford.
So, you know, you had to cherry pick and sort of look for them and find them, and then, interest them in going to law school or going to Stanford. And they took that on and they agreed. And they started finding people and bringing them to me and introducing it. At the same time, I went out and I called people that I knew at schools and said, you know, here’s what I’m doing.
Here’s what I’m looking for. If you have anybody. You know, let me know and I’ll come out or I’ll fly them here. I want to meet them. I want to interview them. I want to introduce them and spread the word. So that, that was a start and for the Native Americans, I actually went to New, New Mexico. They had a center, a cultural center there that I started to, to help me get in contact with Native Americans that would go to the school.
And as I said, it was a work in progress. I learned as I went, but that was the initial thing. And Luis and Leroy were crucial to it. Yeah. And so the first two students that you recruited became members of our class in our second year. And that was Steve Stevens and Jim Robertson, both of whom have passed away and aren’t able to be with us.
But can you talk about Steve and Jim? Yeah, they were exceptional in very different ways. They were both exceptional recruits, I was so proud of them. Steve, Steve was real, real people. And he let you know it, he didn’t. He didn’t try to polish up and talk like the other kids. He was himself, and I admired that.
And, you know, and I said I was looking for people that were determined and were willing to commit. And I, Steve, you just, it, it just worked. oozed out of him that, that he was committed. He was going to make it. He was going to make it. Not only make it, he was going to make it on his own terms. He was going to stay Steve.
Even if he went to this elite school he was going to do it on his own terms. And he did. Steve stayed Steve throughout the thing, including his last statement in the yearbook when he graduated. It was about, you The risk that blacks take at living in a predominantly white society. And I don’t know if he meant the larger society or the white environment at Stanford.
But it was a very well written, well thought out statement. And and then he ended it. I’ll still remember it. A few men will take this risk, but then there are few men. in this world, and it was Steve. He’s enough to take that on. And Steve then, as additional students came on in the classes, and Calvin, Steve founded the Black Law Students Association.
Yeah, he founded it, yeah. And there were like five or six blacks there. Mm hmm. But he founded that. He founded it, yeah. With the idea of bringing racial justice to Stanford. Yeah, and marshalling, and organizing, and having a platform, and you know, being able to go to the dean, or to go to me, with needs and demands.
Yeah, that was the way he thought. Jim Robertson was a polar opposite. Very polished. He was a court reporter, and had been for many years a court reporter. Top flight court reporter that they would call for the big cases where you needed someone competent that could handle the complexities of a trial.
Very smooth, very well spoken. At the, you know, and he was a real fine. Because he had a much broader range. He came in sort of understanding law in, in ways that I didn’t when I went to law school because as a court reporter, he not only could type down it fast, but he listened and he learned and he saw the dynamics of cross examination and all.
So he came quite well polished. And as I got to know him He was a little older himself than the other students, and he invited the black students and me over to his house on two occasions. He was an excellent cook, cooked a gourmet meal for us and served it. So he was the polar opposite of Steve in all of these ways, very polished, very smart.
And the students that I’ve talked to from back then universally say that one of the things that really assisted them is they had you. to go to. Yeah. Whether it be problems with their studies, or, as Calvin said, if he had a fight with his wife. I would go around, I would even go in and sit in the back of classes that had the black students to see what was going on and talk.
And I wanted to keep in touch with the faculty because I wanted them involved. Because I knew I might sometimes need their help. So I was very involved in their lives. And then, after eight years. You decided it was time to leave? Yeah, eight years. Actually, I had, when I agreed to take the job, I really thought I would take it and get it started.
And I was thinking I would leave in three years at the most. That was my original plan because I, I still viewed myself as a lawyer. And one of the One of the changes that my eight years at Stanford did was give me other views about what you can do with the career. But at that point, I thought, three years, I’ll set up the program, and then I’ll go back to practicing.
Probably not at Legal Aid at this point, but someplace in private practice. But I started learning about institutions, and this carried over. Knowledge of institutionalizing something to make it last, carried over into my judicial career. When I made these huge changes in the prison system, the medical system from the Stanford experience, I realized that you have to institutionalize these things.
You can’t just set them up and then go about and leave them alone. They’ll collapse unless you’ve got them in long enough. During that time, some interesting things happened. Some of the less enthusiastic faculty started dropping around and saying boy, good job, Felton. Don’t you think we have enough now?
So, you know, let’s slow down there. But one of the things I was proud of by the time I did leave, as you mentioned earlier, 20%. I think it might have been 22 percent of the entering class was minority and I figured my job was done at that point and I left to set up my own law firm in San Francisco.
And I understand that you’re in touch with a lot of your former students from Stanford. Yeah, oh yeah. A lot of, kept in touch with many of them over the years and still do. Gary Williams down, who’s down at Loyola we’ve been in touch for the years. I’ve kept up with a lot of the students, yeah.
And you mentioned LaDoris’s name, and we’re also going to be having a conversation with her, but she’s the one who had been a student in your, in, in your, in your program. Yeah. And then she took over the program. Yeah, she took over. She succeeded me. And, you know, she’s very high energy if you’ve met her.
And she, you know, and I’ve often said it was great. You know, I was flowing down and I was a routine on the job. And she kicked a lot of new energy into the program and a very innovative person. Yeah. She did a great job. In our recent conversation. I pointed out to you that, of course, when you came, the minority part of the student body was less than 2%, and when you left it was 20%, and I told you that today that people of color make up over 40 percent of the Stanford Law School.
That’s astounding. I’m utterly astounded with that. I just, when you told me that, I thought How could that be? But it’s wonderful. It’s wonderful. And it traces right back to what you did in 1968, coming in, not knowing what you were doing, and starting this that continues to this day. Yeah, and it’s a part of institutionalizing it.
It is institutionalized. It’s just a part of what Stanford is.
And now we’ll have the first of, of several views into what happened amongst the student population itself. Beginning at a time that’s very close to the time that you’re, you’re seeing here at the beginning of the program. It’s an interview that was held with Calvin P. Johnson and me. Regarding our time at the Stanford Law School from 1968 to 1971.
And just one very quick sidebar. In the course of this interview, to the point that the world is probably really only two degrees of separation, rather than six degrees of separation, we determined that Cal actually comes from a very distinguished African American family that has roots in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Which is where I am from, too. And so, you’re listening to not just one Okie from Muskogee, but two Okies from Muskogee in this interview.
Once I got to Stanford the learning experience is, is, has multiple parts to it. It is going to classes and listening to the lecture, taking notes, but it’s also being able to Compare your compare thoughts with other students and as African Americans it was often hard to be a part of a study group because there, when you were by yourself, there’s not, you know, many people you can go to to say, you know, try to figure you find your way through property or evidence If, if there are issues or points there that you, that you, that you can’t understand.
So the early days meant that it meant having to, uh, breach a lot of borders and, and, and break down a lot of walls that other people didn’t expect. The person in the dean’s office, who shall remain unnamed, and has long since departed from the institution, basically said, Well, understand, you got here on your own.
You went to Harvard Graduate School. That’s all you need. Well, that’s not all I need, and that’s not all Stanford needs. They should have been looking at other things at that time, as to reasons why. The population, the student population at the law school should be diversified and expanded in a diverse way.
Felton reached out quite quickly after he found out that indeed there was a native student sitting there in the first year of class. And over the next couple of years, we worked rather diligently trying to I’m trying to make sure that those in the Native community who were interested in law school knew about Stanford and indeed, the year after I graduated, the entering class at Stanford had three Native students in it.
And and there have been numbers of Native students that have gone to Stanford since then. Some of them with distinctly rather brilliant and luminous careers. They’ve done very well. And Stanford has done well by them. And they did well by Stanford. So, he and I tried to sort out how it is that you make connections.
With, with Native students, recruiting Native students to a place like Stanford is probably rather different than recruiting some other culturally diverse students. Native students were often from reservation territory, from Communities that sat outside of cities, towns. And so that was a distinctive factor in itself.
And you had to figure out what the path was to recruiting Native students. And so Felton was very, very helpful to me in making that a priority of the law school. to try to figure out how it was we reached out to places where we stood a good chance of recruiting Native students either working or coming out of undergraduate into the law school.
The Black Law Students Association came about I think basically in my third year. Prior to that time it was, it was the, it was a Black and Brown Law Students Association because we didn’t have enough. of any one group to make us, make any kind of a substantial effort on campus. So we had to, we needed to be together in the things that we were trying to do.
I think that there, hopefully, is always an affinity. among those who come from diverse cultural communities to be supportive of one another in this kind of endeavor. One of the lessons that Stanford learned is that it is not always the support you provide In the classroom itself, it is the huge surround the cultural surround, and the distinction between growing up in Indian country and being on the university, on Stanford University’s campus, that you have to keep in mind when you’re figuring out how to successfully diversify student populations at a university, in a law school, in a graduate school, whatever the sector may be.
Telton was very helpful to me. He was there as a, as a, as a mentor just to help in any way he could as a sounding board if you got, if you were depressed or felt like the world was closing in or whatever might be going on in your life. Have, have a fight with your wife . I could stick my head in, in Dalton’s door and get somebody that would, would listen and, and and to certain extent, commiserate and to a certain extent cajole to improve.
To just to, you know, get, get you, keep you on the right track. Felton was, wasn’t just a professor Felton was a friend and a, a good guy. A lot of, of what I think people ran into in, at that point in time was a, a lack of understanding as to what African Americans that people of color were able to do, could do.
How they perform, what it took, how, how they could perform. And it, it, it, you, you basically had to break down some doors in order for people to see what you could, what you could accomplish and, and be given, get the credit for having accomplished it. Just the name Stanford opened doors and gave me presented opportunities that I, I, I, I was able to take advantage of.
And now we come to a closely associated question, which is namely Increasing the diversity of the faculty itself at a place like Stanford Law School. It is honestly almost a tougher question sometimes. I remember some of my rare frustrating times as a member of the Board of Trustees of Stanford is when we were talking about The ability to recruit and be successful in a serious way in recruiting on tenure track positions folks from, from the minority, cultural minority communities onto the faculty.
And I’m proud to say, and I want to, I want to note this, that Stanford now has its first tenure track native professor. At this point, it’s the first time they have ever hired somebody on a tenure track position who comes out of the Native community, and I’m proud of that. So let’s turn to a conversation with William P.
Gould IV, Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law Emeritus, and the Honorable Richard L. Morningstar. Bill Gould was the first African American professor at Stanford Law School and they are discussing his arrival at the SLS, his reception here, and Felton’s impact on SLS.
Let’s start talking about the work that Felton did. We’ve already heard a lot about it. You came in 1972. Felton had been at the school at that point for, I guess, four years. And did you quickly become aware of what that what he was doing and what the recruitment program was? And how did how did you feel?
Yes, I, I wasn’t initially aware of the program when I was invited to join the faculty and I came out and spoke to a number of the faculty in the fall of 1971. And I’m not sure precisely when I became aware of the program, most probably when I arrived here, I arrived here in the summer of 72 and probably that fall when I began to have contact with a number of black students, some of whom were in my class.
And also Bill Keough who was an assistant dean who worked I was to discover with Felton on this on this program and the a number of the young students I remember from that time Gary Williams is one of them who has gone on to be on the Loyola faculty made me aware of the program that Felton was really responsible for.
And it it became clear to me that it had a major impact on the law school. And had promoted the recruitment of a number of very able. Black students who were in the law school at that time. Have you, have you been surprised at the huge increase in minority students since that time?
It, it’s really, to me anyway, quite, quite remarkable that the work that Felton did and then the follow up work and, you know where we are today. Yes. Yes. It, it was, really remarkable what felt and did what the program did it it grew and it was quite successful in my judgment in bringing a number of very capable students in both black and Latino students many of whom I had a good deal of contact with.
And then I got to know Felton at some point during that first year, 72, 73 and we became good friends and in fact, we’ve worked on some class action employment discrimination matters together and his achievement in the law school is a, is a remarkable and important one.
Great. Let me, let’s talk a little bit about your experience coming in as the first African American law professor. What was it like? What were what were some of the positives? What were some of the negatives? Did you feel like you belonged? Did that did that take awhile? What were some of the things you were dealing with?
Well, the I think on the positive side, there were a number of individuals. I always recall my father talking to me about then Senator Kennedy, who would become President Kennedy. He said, I think he’ll be on our side. And there were certain people on the law faculty who were on our, were on our side.
The ones that come to most immediately to mind are The dean at that time, Tom Ehrlich Paul Brest who was enormously helpful to me personally, as well as to the law school when he became dean down the road, Jack Friedenfall was another guy who was very important and very welcoming Mike Wall the, these guys were people I think that who helped make the law school experience, the Stanford Law School experience, the beginning of it quite helpful to me.
Of course everyone was not like those individuals and there were, there were some negative things that happened. I’ve talked from time to time about One particular faculty member who said to me, well, you know, we got you from a special list. And I said, well, he said, you know, he said, you know that, don’t you?
And I said, well, I really didn’t know that. I had assumed that in the, in this period of time a number of the major law schools were looking for their first black faculty member who wanted to and were trying to recruit. Black and minority students as well. And it seemed to me that you know he, he wanted me to know that he was up there and I was in some other category, but you know, when you compare this to what the previous generation went through, you know, my, my father is the product of a generation where it was not unusual I don’t want you to walk into corporate doors and be told to your face, we won’t employ you, we don’t employ Negroes here at this corporation.
So you know, this is like years different from the experience of previous, previous generations. I don’t want to you know, glide over some of the unpleasant, but It was a very different kind of experience in contrast to what my own father experienced in the 1920s, the 30s, and the 40s.
This is a different country that has, in some respects, by no means all improved. And Stanford Law School thanks to, in particular, this program that Stan, that Felton was involved in initiating. Has improved with it. And, you know, the late Barbara Babcock who, you know, all of us, many of us knew and respected so much came around the same time as the first woman faculty member and things progressed over the years as there was more and more of a diverse faculty.
Was that something you felt was moving along at a. At a positive pace and did that help help a feeling of community at the law school? Well, I wouldn’t say a positive pace. I would say that you know, it’s probably in the first decade or so, as the Supreme Court said in 1955 with all deliberate speed, but but it, but it did happen.
It did happen. And we have a more we had other black and minority faculty. We had in 1977, we had our first Latino professor melt Miguel Mendez, the late Miguel Mendez with whom, who who was a very good and dear friend of mine and who made an enormous contribution to to the law school.
And ultimately in the 80s and particularly in the 90s we began to see more diversification. And I think that’s helped our law school in many respects. Well, that’s terrific. And this has been a, this has been a wonderful conversation. I, I do want to emphasize, you know, Rick talked a little bit, Rick West about, you know, your, your biography and so on.
And I just want to emphasize what an incredible career that you have had. And even apart from being such an important member and respected member of the law school faculty. And I certainly remember when we were, we were colleagues in the Clinton administration when you were chairman of the national labor relations board and many other things that you’ve done.
You’ve had just a phenomenal career and it’s been a real, it’s really been an honor talking to you today. And so thank you very much. Well, thank you, Dick. It’s a real honor to speak to you. To speak with you as well,
and now we’ll move on to another vignette of students and a little bit later in the course of these reforms that we have been talking about, and it involves a conversation amongst Al Pick with the Honorable now retired Carlos P Moreno and Miriam Rivera. Retired Justice of the California Supreme Court, Carlos Moreno, and, and Silicon Value Venture Capitalists focusing on diversity as they experience it here at the Stanford Law School.
At Stanford, I, I was quite pleased, one, it was California. And if I’m not mistaken, in my entering class of 1975, which entered in 1972, just two years after you graduated. I was pleasantly surprised to see how diverse the school was both in terms of people of color, as well as women. So I think in my class of 1975 at Stanford, somehow, I think we had around 15 Latinos or Hispanic, you know, that included Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans and other Hispanics and that represented, I think, just maybe a little bit under 10%.
African Americans were probably about the same for me. Stanford Law School was it was kind of a beacon just in the sense that it was already a very diverse community and it was a very progressive community in terms of people of color. And I think there was a level of support and community for people of color and.
You know, when we found each other, like all of us were scholarship kids at Stanford. So even before there was the first generation, low income kids, we were somehow finding one another. And I think that did help us to succeed and to stay at Stanford where. You know, I remember going to my freshman dorm and one of the kids came in driving a Porsche, and I was like, wow, this is really different.
You know, and I could barely afford a bicycle. There was already a salsa group at Stan at law school when I started and was very modest group, and we just continued with that as. As our numbers expanded, you know, I’m very happy to say that at the law school is where we, I’m not sure what it was 19 must have been 1974, maybe 75, we started a, a celebration, a sink with a mile celebration that still goes on at the law school, but I can remember the very first thing for the mile celebration there at the, at the basketball courts between brothers halls and the other hall that’s across the way from it.
First of all, I came to school and I needed a work study job, so I got hired at the Career Center because I figured I’m going to have to figure out how to pay back the student loan. And it kind of makes me laugh now because I had only 5, 000 in student loan when I graduated undergrad from Stanford. When I graduated from the JD MBA program was like over 100, 000 of debt, so I was probably worried a little too prematurely.
But the, the connections that I made in terms of developing relationships with alumni were always very important in terms of getting opportunities. You kind of need the support of a community to be able to thrive in a world that is not diverse. When I came to Stanford, I didn’t know anyone here.
I had never been in the state of California, and I came to see it on my first day arriving from Chicago. And so I feel like some of the things that you mentioned, Carlos, about the connection with alumni was really important for me and in terms of my career. In terms of lawyers, I understand the Latinos only form about 5 percent of the American Bar Association lawyers.
So I think we’re way behind in terms of accessing All of the places where Latinos need to be represented for us to be for us to have a voice that’s commensurate with. our populations, with our impact on the economy. And, you know, frankly, it’s in almost every area of life. But it’s certainly within the law.
When you think about kind of our over representation in the criminal justice system, then you’d expect there to be way more lawyers. That would be people of color, because I think that’s an important part of getting access to justice for many people. It’s a real pleasure to see Jenny Martinez as the dean of the law school, and I think that.
That would not have been possible, but for the changes that have been wrought over these long years since the 70s, I’m proud to see the work that Jenny Martinez has done to try to hear students talk about these difficult things and to bring the community together because I, I believe that America is one of the greatest countries because we actually Are one of the big experiments in the world in terms of can you put people who are different together and have them work better together than they would apart?
But I think there’s, there’s still an inexhaustible supply and an inexhaustible need for more Latino lawyers from the full spectrum, socioeconomic spectrum that they represent. So, I don’t think it’s time. It’s to take our foot off the pedal in terms of diversity and diversity for its own sake is, you know, very important essential, I would say, to, to the profession for the education of the profession.
We don’t do diversity just for diversity sake, but because of the long run, I think it provides for a more equitable and fair. Justice system and for providing greater access to justice from people who are still very, very marginalized. So I think to the extent that Stanford is still have that vision and and the value it sees the value of diversity then that’s a very good thing.
And it’s, it’s, it’s not time to rest in our laurels by any. By any stretch of the imagination. As far as I’m concerned, I want to see a day where we are in every area. By which we are both impacted and by which we have an impact in this country.
So now if we may, we’d like to return to LaDoris and Mike Wald. LaDoris, when Mike Wald left in 1982, of course, took the program over. And here there is a conversation in which they discuss some of the evolution and further development of the program.
LaDoris, you came actually back to Stanford Law School since you had. Stanford Law School earlier in 1978 in the role that Felton had played at the beginning of the program. It was now about 10 years old and Could you tell us a little bit about what was happening then, or whether there was still momentum, or whether things were dragging a little bit, and how the context that you faced during your time there might have differed from what I described as the time when Thompson came there.
Sure. I finished a Stanford in 1974. And the time that I graduated, I was the only African American woman in my class. So there was a break between the time I graduated and then Stan and then Felton left at a certain point. And then I come in in 1978. You know, Felton’s presence. There was a testament to how one person can really make things happen.
And when he wasn’t there, things just weren’t kind of moving along as had happened when he was there. So when I came in and was asked to be the assistant dean to fill his position, there had been a period of time where kind of recruitment, kind of the emphasis on trying to bring in students of color, it kind of lessened.
So when I come in, there’s a real push to say we really need to get back. To where we were when Felton was here. And because of Felton, I was given authority from the dean and other administrators to fashion my own kind of program to bring people in. So what I did differently was to, to get out and actually go visit various colleges and universities where thought, where Stanford had never recruited.
So for example, stanford had never actually gone out in person to recruit at historically black colleges and universities. And I felt that we needed to increase the pool from which students could come to apply. So I found myself at Jackson State, at Spelman, at Morehouse, I went to Texas, I went where I could find a good number of students.
So what I d really get out and I was just doing outreach to sa West Coast. It’s a really why don’t you apply? And once I did that, the appl a lot of students of color were applying and from places that students didn’t normally attend college or universities. So when students were admitted my next job was really to involve faculty.
And so I had to recruit faculty, administrators and alumni and current students in the recruitment of those who had been admitted to get them to come. So I assigned faculty to particular students who had been admitted. I called up alums to ask them to call particular students and the same thing with current students.
And as a result of that, in addition, I actually traveled and actually personally met with every single. applicant of color who was admitted. So, and one day I remember I traveled to three states in one day meeting people in the morning afternoon, hop on a plane and ending up in Rhode Island meeting someone.
As a result, at the end of the first year of my work as assistant dean, Stanford led the nation. And the enrollment of black and brown students from all major law schools. And so the next three years I wanted to prove it wasn’t a fluke, wasn’t a mistake. And indeed the number stayed high and Stanford was getting a lot of press, good press about the fact that there were these many students of color now enrolled at a law school where the first black graduate had been in 1968.
So So, you know, my point was to say that if you put in the effort, you can easily find qualified students of color in this country to come to these top law schools. All it takes is really effort and having the law school really behind the effort to really be supportive. And in doing that, you, as you mentioned, you began to recruit at a lot of places where Stanford had never been recruited before, right?
The first two African American students had to Harvard and Stanford as undergraduates. Many of the students that were recruited by Felton and afterwards had gone and had the same background. Sallyanne in the interview mentioned, you know, we were, we were the same as all the other students, but a different color in terms of you looked at background.
You were bringing different students and an issue that is now still on the table about how do you get it. Diversity, not only on race and ethnic, but on socioeconomic and sets of experiences. Did you get pushback? Did you find that there were issues of integrating into the community? Students with very different kinds of experiences?
You know, what I recall was that I did the same thing that Felton did, that once the students actually came and were admitted and came to Stanford, Felton didn’t disappear. He was there. He was always there for us, someone we could go to. And I saw that as critical to my certain my existence at Stanford when I was a student.
So I endeavored to do the same thing. And I didn’t find that I found that. Sure. I mean, everyone has to adjust. I came from Antioch College. There had never been an Antiochian admitted to Stanford Law School. Why? Because Antioch didn’t have grades. So how are you going to get into a top law school without grades?
That was Felton. And you know, I’m not. Convincing, you know, admissions people that I should come. So I’m I see that and, for example, the first admittee from Spellman came during the time I was an assistant dean, and she ended up going to be a public defender in Los Angeles. The adjustment shirt.
There’s an adjustment. She came from an historically black college. To the Stanford environment. So I think that, you know it. You know it. It took effort to make sure everyone felt. thought that they could make it here in a very competitive environment and were wanted here. And for the most part, I found that, you know, everyone, you know, acclimated to it and adjust it.
And of course, there are going to be people who have a rougher time. But in the main I found that no, you know, once you have someone and an administration and faculty who want these students here, the atmosphere is tends to be a very positive one. And did you find that the administration and faculty were supportive uniformly of these efforts or were there some pushback?
Uniformly. No. Was there pushback? Were there pockets of resistance? Yes. You know, I recall one particular interaction I had with an administrator and you know, actually was the dean. It was the dean at the time. And I just got called on the carpet for doing too much. for, you know, putting in an effort that was bringing in these larger numbers of applicants and for generating a lot of positive attention in the media around this.
And actually, I got called on the carpet and told, you know, you’re doing too much and getting too much attention, meaning to this program. I found that very unsettling. I found it disappointing. But it didn’t discourage me. So I remained until I decided it was time to move on to continue doing the work.
So yeah, I mean, change does not come easily. And I’m sure that Felton has his own stories. He’s perhaps maybe you know, more polite about talking about these things. And I am. But of course, when you’re particularly around issues of race, you’re not going to find, first of all, unanimity, and it’s always changes heart.
There are going to be people who push back. But the point is that there were more people at Stanford faculty administrators who wanted a program like this to be and to be successful.
And now a a brief look that is much more contemporary in nature in terms of student experiences, resilience, and excellence. It is ALPIC’s conversation with Leanne Worden, J. D. 09, and Biola McCauley, B. A. 16, and J. D. 19, who will discuss their experiences in the law school.
My class was actually a pretty small class. There was only about 11 or 12 students who identified as black. So you know, I think it kind of met my expectations. And so I, I had the sense that we had work to do. That was the, that was the conclusion I drew very quickly after my first semester, since we were still.
On the semester system at that time was that we had a lot of work to do. And that was actually something we engaged the school on in my 1L year was, you know, we have to do better with admissions. And I think in my class, we only had two black males. And that was a big focus for us. It was, why did we not have more black males?
I guess I was fortunate in that because I was on Stanford’s campus and I was in the Black Pre Law Society, I got to interact with BALSA at the law school. I, like, interacted with people, so I knew that, like, BALSA existed, was, like, a pretty strong community, even though it was, like, smaller numbers wise than, like, Harvard.
I also had heard about Harvard. They have double the class size of us, so they just obviously have more, like, students of color. And so I was familiar with the idea that like, even if there wasn’t a large number, I would still be supported and it would be fine. And I also, because I was an undergrad at Stanford and I was like pretty involved in the like broader Stanford black community, there’s also like a pretty strong Stanford African community.
So I wasn’t too concerned about the diversity at the law school in particular, because I knew that my broader Stanford experience would still be pretty diverse. One of my, my Distinct memories of law school was, you know, sitting at the table with other black students, Asian students, Latinx students, and talking about why this, why increasing admissions was important.
I will say that just one note that I think often is not acknowledged is that, you know, we were engaging these conversations in addition to our work. And I think that’s often incredibly underappreciated. I mean, we took time out of studying to go meet with school officials because we believed it was incredibly important.
And and I think it’s a burden that students of color carry that Other students don’t necessarily. And so it’s just something that I think makes the process harder for us, but I think also demonstrates the incredible resilience that we bring and the importance. Of, of just having these having this representation because we were not only able to, you know, graduate and complete our coursework, but we did that with an additional burden of consistently advocating for our communities, the school at the time.
Felt that it had done enough outreach. It was just that in the end, the number of students that actually matriculated were not represented representative of their efforts. And so I think the school has come a long way in terms of how they think about diverse recruitment and thinking about, okay, how can we leverage alumni?
How can we leverage students more? Give them more partner with them more in the recruitment process. But during my time, it was, it was much more of a defensive response. Also my 3L year, we had a group of 2Ls from all different student groups. Including like white students, like a whole bunch of different.
Group of women primarily took initiative to Put these posters up all around campus with just like quotes that they had solicited from students of just really racist things that had happened, either like in classrooms and clinics random things that people had said, just like anonymous quotes, all like verified, like someone had actually said this to another student just to be like, racism is a thing that exists on this campus and needs to be addressed.
And there are like various things that we need to do as an institution to like reconcile this and fix it. And That was just kind of like a thing that they had done as like an active. Frustration but it turned into this whole movement, right? Like, so it ended up being called racism lives here too.
And that sparked a lot of discussions and the school implemented a working group which then professor Martinez, now Dean Martinez was the chair of. which included a number of faculty and also a number of students from like various walks of life. And we came up with different recommendations for things around recruiting, things around faculty hiring, things around classroom management just all sorts of different areas.
It ended up being, to Leanne’s point about how a lot of this work goes kind of like unappreciated, uncompensated, and is work that kind of falls on students of color. This was made like an actual like class. So we treated it as like a clinic, but like a, one of the other kinds of like experiential learning classes.
So we got like credit for being in the class and coming up with the report. And the report was like a writing sample that you could use if you like needed it for like future, like interviews and things like that, even as an alum, I was aware of the racism lives here to movement. I followed it to the extent that I could, we have alum that have really disconnected from the school, even they are paying attention.
When issues. And so it’s really an opportunity for the school to bring alum who have disconnected back in and to engage with them if they can continue to show that this is something that they’re serious about and, and that they’re, they’re taking steps to address. My understanding is that after the Doris was hired, they didn’t like filled or after she left Stanford, they didn’t hire someone to fill that role again kind of under the feeling that like, Oh, we’ve kind of like reached our diversity goals and we’re doing great.
We’re going to like move on and focus on other things. And so, because no one was specifically focused on those issues. It kind of fell on the students to handle. So just like the difficulty in getting in contact with alum, if you didn’t like personally overlap with them and for a time the law school wasn’t the most helpful with enabling those connections to be made.
Which again, like, with the creation of the Alumni Association and, like, people like Pedro, like, is getting, like, a lot better. The students and students weren’t able to, like, connect with their predecessors to get more information on what had happened before them. Things just really didn’t happen. So, part of the challenge was, for us, was that We had to think about who do we, who can influence these areas and who do we need to talk to because there wasn’t a centralized person or designated person.
My perception is that the efforts did plateau for a while, and I think they’re picking back up again. I think to be a list point creation of the director of diverse communities role that Pedro has for alumni is great. That’s an opportunity to bring alumni, get them organized. and engage them. I think the creation of the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion role is also really important to make sure that there is someone with ownership of helping to drive some of these initiatives at the law school.
So I think these are good steps. And I think there’s still much more to do. And my, my thought is, you know, for people who might ask, you know, have we done enough? My answer is, it depends on what our goals are. What is our goal? And I’d love to see the law school really articulate what their goals are in terms of diversity, equity, inclusion, because that will tell us if we’ve done enough.
And honestly, my goal as the president of the Black Alumni Association is not simply limited to Recruitment of diverse students. I want to see a diverse faculty. I’d love to see that the clinical work that we offer is thinking about race and and, and ethnicity and how it. intertwines with our legal system.
And I, this is all from a very deep seated belief that law schools have such an important role in shaping future politicians, future judges, people who are designing Really, the infrastructure of our nation. And I think we have such a deep obligation to at least expose all of the students to the complexities and race in America is one of the complexities that we absolutely have to be aware of.
It is It’s something that I think is part of our obligation as a law school to provide that insight. Not everybody will agree, but we have to at least analyze it and think about it and think about what is the society that we are helping to create and to evolve. So it’s just something that I feel is is in particular.
An obligation of law schools to to prepare students for the world and the responsibilities they will have and the influence they will have. So I just hope that the law school actually will think about that and really own. What it’s diversity and diversity, equity and inclusion goals are and say, you know, we’ve thought about it.
And this is why it’s important to us as an institution. And here’s what we want to achieve and proactively share that and measure themselves against that. And then we will know whether we’ve done enough, but absent that it’s.
Should I start now? Yeah. Yeah.
Go for it. Okay. Start now, Pedro? Yes. Okay. Good afternoon to all of you. And I’m so sorry I can’t be with you in person. But I’m glad that they were able to hook me up remotely so that I can talk to you and see you, see some of you. I could not possibly have been more pleasantly surprised than when out of the clear blue I got a call from Al Pick inviting me to be a part of your 50th class reunion.
What a wonderful chance to revisit old friends and acquaintances as well as to rekindle old memories of one of the most pleasant and productive and rewarding periods of my life. I had started working at Stanford. On a halftime basis in 1968 with the help, with the goal of helping the school recruit minority students.
After which it was my firm intention to return to my full time job of directing the legal aid office in East Palo Alto. But after a year or so at the law school. During which time I became deeply involved in finding and persuading minority students to come to the law school, I decided instead to go full time at Stanford rather than return to legal aid.
And I did so in 1970, so that this class, the class of 70, your class, was the first one at the law school that I really got to work with and know. And in a sense, as one of my duties was the Dean of Student Affairs, to be a part of, in a sense. Working as an assistant dean at a law school was a decided change in the direction of my career.
And indeed, in the direction of my life. My first job out of law school was with the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department where I found myself filing voting rights cases in the states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. And eventually monitoring the civil rights demonstrations be led, being led by Dr.
Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and John Lewis and the other civil rights leaders in the South, all of whom I got to know and admire tremendously for their courage and commitment to their cause. And as I’m sure some of you know. As I watched Sheriff Bull Connor in Birmingham and Sheriff Jim Clark in Selma.
young black demonstrators down the street with powerful fire hoses. And as I watched them, heard the demonstrators away into police vans using electric cattle prods. And as I saw them attack the demonstrators with police dogs, I became so thoroughly and brawled in my own job that I ended up losing it as a result of lending my government rental car.
to a young black preacher in Birmingham who was having trouble with his car so that he could safely drive Dr. King through Klan country that it took to get to Selma for an important meeting. Up until the time I came to Stanford, my career goal had been to be a civil rights or public interest type of lawyer, filing lawsuits on behalf of the underdogs in our communities.
writing wrongs, helping those who can’t help themselves, and doing things of that sort. And I had expected that I would just stay at the school a year or two, that it would take to set up the minority admissions program. What I didn’t fully understand at the time was that, what an immensely important step this was.
Most certainly for the law school, but for the students attending the law school as well for your class, as an example, and for the classes that followed. And of course for the students that I would end up bringing to the law school. And finally, of course, and quite to my surprise, I say, of course, but it was quite a surprise.
I was, it was immensely important to me. Before I knew it, eight very meaningful and gratifying years had gone by. Now, to be entirely candid, I really had no idea what I was getting into myself or how to go about recruiting minority students to one of the top law schools in the country. At that time, there were not a lot of minority students coming through the undergraduate pipeline.
And for many of those who were, law school was not on their radar, no, it’s not on their agenda. Having myself been recruited to Cal many years before to play football, I knew that in the athletic world, they used black athletes on the team to recruit other black athletes. The idea being, in effect, to say come on in, look I’m here, and the water’s fine.
And it was a great recruiting gimmick. Stanford had just graduated its first black in 1968, so there was very little water to brag about or to come into. But after teaming up with Leroy Bobbitt and Luis Nogales we started beating the bushes and spreading the word. And as the saying goes, the rest is history.
I understand that as part of this 50th reunion, you’re remembering class members who are no longer with you. One of those is Steve Stevens, one of the two blacks in your class. For those of you who got to know Steve, you know he is a prime example. A prime example. Someone who If given a chance, if given a fair shot, is more than ready to seize and embrace that opportunity and to do so on his own terms as he goes forth to make his mark in the world.
And I thumbed through your yearbook in preparing a few remarks about Steve. And there he is, in a picture with the members of the International Society. And there he is again, in a picture with members of the Legal Aid Society. And again, there he is, in a picture with the Law Review. How about that? And there he is yet again, in a full page picture.
And I looked through the book, but not that carefully, and I, it will be that Steve is the only student who has a full page picture of him by himself there. But anyway, there he is, with a full page picture. Standing in that black suit and tie that he wore so often, and he has a tall Uncle Sam hat on his head, and his right fist is clenched above his head, not unlike Tommy Smith and John Carlos, the two Olympic runners who had just recently shocked the world.
By giving that very same black power salute as they receive their gold and bronze Olympic medals for the 200 meters dash. And then, there he is again, in this individual photograph that you all had in your yearbook. And adjacent to it was a statement each of you made. And his is a remarkable and memorable personal statement, unlike anything else.
That was written by any of you next to your class photo. It’s fairly long, so I’ll only repeat a portion of it here.
Give a man a goal worthy of his ambition, and it will become the spur that will make him struggle with destiny. Attacking such social bears as bigotry, class distinction, economic and social suppression, is a task worthy of anyone’s attention. This task is often more difficult for a black man surrounded by a raging sea of discrimination drenched in the muddy water of poverty and infected by the polluted air of an inferior, inherently inferior, segregated education.
If he stops trying. Economic and social death is his reward. And of course, Steve never stopped trying. So very personal. Such a powerful message. So very, very Steve Stevens. He loved this school, he would tell me that often. He loved the opportunity it gave him. He never hesitated to tell me how amazed he was to find himself at Stanford Law School.
But he also had no intention of letting it change who he was deep inside or how he presented himself to the world. Very special, one of the most memorable students I met. During my time at Stanford, I learned a great deal as I muddled my way through my new job at Stanford. I learned that there were racial and ethnic subtleties of which I was not yet aware, and that I could not simply make a call to an institution back east, as I was doing, and say that I’m trying to recruit Chicanos for Stanford Law School.
Because I quickly learned that at that point in time in our history, some regions of the country, as well as some individuals, were offended by usage of the term Chicano. I learned that many of the people I approached took the attitude that Stanford was coming in with too little, too late. Where have you been all this time, they seemed to say.
I was very fortunate. at my own civil rights credentials helped me to sail through some of these rough spots and to open some doors. And I learned also that I could just, if I could just get a student, say, from the East Coast to visit the Stanford campus. In let’s say early March, early mid March, when it was still likely to be pretty chilly back in their hometown, or maybe even there was some snow on the ground.
If I could just get them here and take them for a sunny stroll down that palm tree entrance to the Stanford campus, they were much more likely to attend. And as I said, I did that often. And I learned as I went while I was on my learning curve. If I couldn’t. Tell you how heartened and appreciative I was to have so many of you students drop by the office to welcome me to just say hi.
Just to get to know me and to make me feel welcome and to offer your help in making the incoming minority students welcome. It was so, so wonderful. It was so invigorating to have you do that. It’s a very important part of my breaking in experience. It was also, I was also heartened by the support I received from many of the faculty, such as Mike Wald.
Who at that time, I thought, when I first met him, was a student himself. He was about the age, or looked the age. And later on, Paul Brest, and Bill Gould, Barbara Babcock, and Tom Gray. And when I look back at my start at Stanford, I, I think it’s fair to say that Stanford hired me due to a combination of idealism and pressure.
They most definitely wanted to do the right thing, but had not yet figured out how to do it. They certainly knew something was amiss. The school had not graduated a black student until 68, as I’ve already said. But hadn’t seen the need to change anything in their admissions process. They didn’t know what to do or how to go about it.
But there was also a lot of pressure from within, from the students themselves, such as Ed Steinman, Owen O’Donnell, Sallyann Payton. Vaughn Williams, Leroy Bobbitt, and Luis Nogales, to name the ones I remember most clearly. There was outside institutional peer pressure as well. My alma mater, Old Hall, had graduated its first black in the 1940s, as did UCLA and USC.
Stanford’s Ivy League rivals, Harvard and Yale, were many, many years ahead. in terms of minority admissions. Despite all this and this slow start, there can be no denying that once they answered the call, once Stanford answered the call, I think they went about it the right way. By the time I left the school, 1976, 22 percent of the entering class were minority.
And I’m told that these days, approximately 40 percent of the entering classes is comprised of students of color. And the Stanford Minority Law graduates are now, over these many years, spread themselves throughout the country and throughout the world, indeed. They are prosecutors and they are public defenders.
They are bankers. They are sports and entertainment agents. They are businessmen and women, they are partners and associates in large law firms, and they are founders of their own law firms. They are the heads of many important federal and governmental state agencies. They are law professors. Jim Ware, one of my first admittees.
Eventually became a colleague of mine on the Northern District Court and on and on and on there exactly what the law school and I had envisioned in those early formative years. And I simply must add at this time that way back in 1968, it was simply unimaginable to me or to anyone else, I dare say.
That there was a little three year old Chicano, Latino girl then growing up in San Francisco that would someday become the dean of Stanford Law School. I apologize if this is sounding like a recitation of wonderful things that Felton Henderson did for Stanford Law School and for its students. That’s not at all my intent.
Nor is it my reality. My stay at Stanford was always a two way street, and to this day, I continue to reap the benefits of my years at Stanford. The wonderful relationships with the students, many of whom I’m still in touch with. The faculty friends I’ve made and learned from. Some of whom I’m still in touch with, and I look forward, for example, to, soon as the pandemic is over, to returning our visits to the San Francisco Jazz Center with Mike and Johanna Wald.
The many entrees and connections I made at Stanford were very valuable, and the way this eight year experience changed my career and my life trajectory. I’m convinced, in fact, that my Stanford experience was a huge contributor to my becoming a federal judge, something I never imagined or aspired to at the time.
Years later, when Senator Alan Cranston was considering me for an appointment to the federal bench, Conway Collis, a Stanford grad whom I had aided in getting into the law school, Though he was not a minority student, he wasn’t a minority member group. He was Alan Cranston’s finance and campaign director at the time and vigorously supported my candidacy from within.
And I’ll never forget the night I got a call from LaDoris Cardell, who was a close friend of Conway’s, relaying a message from Conway telling me that the senator had just made his selections for the two opening openings on the court that evening, and that I was one of them. I don’t think I slept a wink that night.
Many of you, I know, remember Professor Robert Girard, Bob Girard. He, too, was close to the Senator, and was a principal fundraiser and campaign manager for him. I know that connection was extremely helpful to me. Finally, at one point, I got a call from your classmate, Colleen Gershon. Who by then was married to Bob Haas of the Levi Strauss family.
I asked her if the family might be able to help. She informed me that they would write a letter to Cranston encouraging him to appoint me. I still have a copy of that letter someplace. And it began something like this, and I’m paraphrasing. Dear Alan, the family wants you to know how pleased we are with all that you’re doing and that you can continue to expect our full support.
As you go forward, but right now we’re writing to urge your support for a wonderful friend of the families who has been considered for a federal judicial appointment. Wow. I never fully understood politics until that moment, and I knew that in that understated letter, a very powerful message was being sent.
And so I owe Stanford so very much, and I’m only touching on a few of those things right now. I do it in so many ways, as we all do, as we all owe Stanford. So again, Thank you, Alpik. You and your colleagues have done a fabulous job of putting this reunion together and making it so very meaningful, very significant, very powerful, certainly meaningful to me, and I’m sure for everyone in attendance, and I’m deeply honored to be a part of it.
And congratulations again on your 50th reunion.
Hi, I’m Dick Koons. I graduated in 1967, a few years before most of you, but we have a lot in common. I worked with some of you at the Legal Services Office in East Palo Alto, but the most important thing we have in common is the privilege of knowing and learning from the person you’re honoring today, Felton Henderson.
Hi, Felton. Hi, Maria. I met Thelton in the summer of 1966. He became my friend and mentor as I worked with him first as a student volunteer, and then as a young lawyer in East Palo Alto. Thelton is an incredibly bright, empathetic, humble person with an unflagging sense of humor. And although he’s too modest to admit it, Felton is solely responsible or almost solely responsible for most of his achievements.
For example, he had no role model for the invaluable work he did when he was the first black lawyer for the Justice Department in the South in 1963. As you know, he had no role model when he created and institutionalized the minority admissions program at the law school. And Felton had no role model when he turned a wedding ceremony into a roast, which he did some 20 years ago when he presided at my marriage.
To everybody’s delight except mine, he used the occasion to talk about what a scoundrel I was. Well, fortunately for you, Felton, I don’t have time today to retaliate with some of the stories I know about you. So I’ll just say thank you to the classes of 1970 and 71 for honoring Thelden. And Thelden, congratulations.
Thank you for being such a good friend over the years. Dalton. It’s Marcia Sims. I’m so sorry I didn’t have a chance to have dinner with you at the L. I meeting last year. Another casualty of the pandemic. I’ve chosen to talk about what Stanford Law School meant to me and did for me. I went to law school not intending to practice law.
I graduated from college in 1974 in the middle of a recession in New York City. During my, the second semester of first year of law school there was a notice on the bulletin board saying that the law firms in the Stanford, San Francisco Lawyers Committee were interviewing first year students of color for jobs at law firms.
I knew nothing about law firms. So I decided to stick my head into your office and ask you if you thought this would be a good idea for me to interview. You just kind of smiled and said, Marcia, I think you should go ahead and do it. So I did, and I walked into an interview with Harvey Hinman, Stanford Law grad and a partner at Pillsbury Madison Sutro.
I told him I didn’t want to be in California, didn’t want to practice law. But, you know, here I am. And he just kind of smiled and said, okay. Called me a few months later. A few weeks later and said, come work for us and we’ll change your mind. Fast forward the end of the summer, they made me an offer. And I said to Harvey, gee, you were right about most things.
I didn’t want to practice law. I really enjoyed the law firm, but I didn’t want to be in California. So I came to New York. I spent my entire career. at two very large law firms, had a ball, practiced in the banking and finance area, doing some of the biggest deals that were ever done in the world. But I never forgot you, Pelton, and I never forgot Stanford.
And there were many times when I was so glad that I went to Stanford Law School. Thank you so much. My name is Fred Alvarez, class of 1972. I have to say that me and my Chicano colleagues way back when were a raw and rowdy bunch. We had needs and demands and big ideas, but we didn’t have a lot of touch.
My most enduring memories of Felton, and maybe my most endearing memories of those days, was the very subtle and clearly pained look on his face as we’d storm into someone’s office. usually the deans, and come up with a dumb or over the top argument for something or the other that we were demanding that day.
Felton would listen and know that we had good and simple winning arguments, and would hope that we’d calm down and figure them out. But we were young and raw and rowdy and needed to learn just a little about diplomacy and strategy, and that had to be painful for Zelton to watch. I knew he never regretted letting us in, but you could tell that he was always anxious for us to grow up some and get a little smarter about what battles we’d choose and how we’d fight them.
We always knew that he was rooting for us. And we’d, and that we’d find a way to succeed despite ourselves. We grew so much during those days, but that had to be hard for Felton to watch. Most importantly, we always felt that he had a personal stake in our success. And that has never gone away. Over the many decades I’ve had the privilege of knowing him and marveling at the many truly important contributions he’s made to our community.
At Stanford, in private practice, on the bench, he always seemed to delight in whatever we have accomplished over the years, since he gave us the opportunity to come and the tools to succeed. At the Stanford Law School. I can’t imagine where I’d be if not for Thelton encouraging me to come to the law school in 1972.
If not for the tutoring program he set up for us that helped us begin to understand the very strange world we were inhabiting. If not for the huge chance he took thinking that someone like me could be a Stanford lawyer someday. It took a while for me and some of our colleagues, like Justice Carlos Moreno and others, to cook.
Felton was playing the long game with us, and I just hope he realizes how critical he was to all of us, and to the things we’ve been able to do with our Stanford Law degrees. Thank you, Zeldin, for being so patient with us. Hi, my name is Tameka Butler, and I graduated from SLS in 2009. When I think about why I came to SLS, sometimes I’m still surprised.
And not because it’s not a great school, but because I remember going to Admitted Students Weekend, going into Fay’s office and saying, I don’t know that I belong here. I felt like I was this black kid from the Midwest. I didn’t go to a fancy school. I felt too queer. I didn’t know if it was the place for me, and I was really lucky to meet folks in the public interest office, and specifically Diane Chin, who spent a ton of time talking to me, and I saw in this woman of color, someone who I felt like I could be who I wanted to be, who inspired me.
She continues to inspire me today, continues to be a big part of why I stay engaged with the SLS community, and I think many of us who went there have that person, you know, whether or not it’s her, Professor Banks Professor Rohde, who we, who we just lost. These folks who touched my life forever and saw things in me that I didn’t even see in myself.
And it was such a special place, and I know that I worked hard to get there, but I also know that there are a lot of privileges that come with going to a place like Stanford and getting that cachet. And in many circles when people see me they still just see a black face they still just see a gay kid, and they don’t know what expertise I have.
And when I say I went to Stanford, people start to listen, and they look, and again is that fair? Thank you. Is that the way that privilege and power should work? I don’t think so. I think there are many people who look like me who have way more to offer, but I can’t deny that I feel very honored to have had that privilege and carry SLS with me everywhere I go.
And really try to open up the same doors for others that were open for me. And, and part of what makes SLS so special is the community. Whether or not it’s a signal chat, a WhatsApp chat, or social media, I have lifelong friends that I made during those three years. My wife who went to law school at UCLA says all the time, man, you Stanford people really stay in touch and have these big friend groups and travel for weddings.
And those are things that make me happy and I’m also happy that the alumni network is so strong. I got my first job as a Skadden fellow at Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center in San Francisco now Legal Aid at work. Because Sharon Terman, another great role model, who was an alum at Stanford, came for a mock interview.
I was able to get a job. I was able to get a fellowship. And the Legal Aid Society then connected me with Judge Henderson, who swore me in. I was one of the few people in my class who didn’t pass the bar. And I was discouraged, and I didn’t think I would make it as a lawyer. And I’ll never forget the way that all of those folks in my Stanford community believed in me, encouraged me, took it again, passed, and it felt like it was just the right time.
Having someone who I had looked up to and admired from afar, someone who blazed a trail at SLS, who made it such that it could be the experience that I had, swearing me in. It made my day my year. I still think about it and smile. I was so lucky that Bill McNeil, a legal aid at work, one of the black attorneys in San Francisco at the forefront of civil rights, new Judge Henderson connected us and again saw in me something I didn’t see in myself.
I continue to remain grateful to all of those people to Stanford Law School and to Judge Henderson for being himself for not being afraid to always stand up for what’s right and for swearing me in so that I could be a Stanford alum, a barred attorney, and someone who continues to try to live in his legacy every single day.
Congratulations on this anniversary and thanks for letting me participate. My story began with my coming to Stamford and meeting I mean, I guess I should say Judge Henderson, but meeting Delton and and Dean Keough, Delton, Dean Keough was very instrumental in my stay at, at Stamford. I, I have to admit Stamford was not my first choice.
I was going to the University of Virginia, and I had two friends in the medical school and a friend in the MBA program, and they convinced me to come to Stanford. I will admit, having gone to an HBCU when I first arrived at Stanford, I was a little blown away because of the dirt of minority representation.
In the student body. And so one of the things that that helped me if I see something I don’t like, I always try to change it. And so one of the things we did was we started an effort with I’m Dean Manning. I know felt was brought in to increase the diversity. But Stanford Law School really didn’t understand what diversity was.
And I went to Dean Manning one day and I said, Do you realize Do you understand what critical mass is? And he said, What are you talking about? And I’m going when a minority student sits in a class of over 100. And he or she the only one in that class. That does. People have some some mental problems they have to deal with.
And so you really can’t do what you need to do unless you really have a critical mass. So Delton and and Keogh were very instrumental in helping us understand the admissions process at Stanford and help us try to get the dean to understand it. That if Banford was really interested. And I was just so impressed with diversity of at the law school that they’re gonna have to do some things that were different.
And you know, I was extremely impressed. They’ll you know, because he’s so low keyed and everything that he did, and he would just it was just a wonderful person. He and I got along very, very well, because remember. I was not a JD student. I was I was a graduate student. So I already graduated from law school.
And so Felton and I related to each other very, very well. And we, we stayed in touch, even after he left Stanford and even after he went on on on the bench. I remember once I was in in San Francisco, and I went by to see him. And he said, you know, since I’ve been on the bench, I don’t hear from you that much.
And I said, Well, I figured you were busy and you didn’t want people bugging you all the time. And he said, You know, Jim, that’s the funny thing about it. He said, Not that I’m on the bench. The people that I want to hear from think I’m too busy to deal with them. The people I don’t want to hear from call me all the time.
So and you know, he’s just a wonderful, pleasant person. Bye. Bye. He and then kill because I left Stanford and especially when they find out I was going into legal education really helped me and gave me some guidance in a lot of what I learned from them and being killed when I was at Stanford guided my professional career.
in the last 50 years. See, people look at diversity now, and they don’t realize what was happening 50 years ago and how difficult some of the things that we discuss now, you couldn’t even discuss without almost a fight back then. So, Delton was a trailblazer, and I think he helped make Stanford Law School what Stanford Law School is today.
Hello, my name is Alma Robinson. I graduated in the class of 1975 from Stanford Law School, and it gives me such a thrill to recognize the role of Judge Felton Henderson in my life. I distinctly remember getting a call from him in the summer of 1972 saying there was a spot for me at Stanford Law School in the entering class.
I had been on the waiting list. And I was working in Washington as a journalist. I was really torn about what decision I should make, but he was, as usual, extremely charming, no pressure, think about it, get back to me, and I obviously made the right decision. I came to California and joined the class of 1975.
Judge Henderson then became one of my mentors. As he was one of the teachers leading the clinical law program in juvenile law, and I got to ride up to San Mateo juvenile court with him on a weekly basis where I presented my client’s best cases. He gave me advice and critiques, some of which I kept with me as lifelong learning.
And fast forward to my present work as the Director of California Lawyers for the Arts, where we were starting an Arts and Corrections evidence based research demonstration project in 2011. When he was supervising the receivership of the California State Prison System I had several meaningful conversations with him around that time, and we’ve continued to be in touch, and I value him as a lifelong friend and mentor, and would love to congratulate him on the success of his career throughout his work at Stanford and beyond on the federal bench.
And now in retirement. Take care and We love you, Felton. Judge Henderson, I am Cassandra Knight, Stanford Law School class of 1994. And I want to thank you for being such an inspiration to me and many other BALSA students over the years. It’s an honor to be part of this video tribute to you, saluting you and your many years of Stanford Law School service.
One of my classmates, Heywood Gilliam, is an incredibly close friend. And of course, you know Heywood well from his years of clerking for you, and now serving as a judge in the Northern District of California, which I’m sure pleases you greatly. Heywood did me the great honor of officiating my wedding last month.
His friendship was one of the many close ones I formed out of BALSA at Stanford Law School and part of your great legacy. Thank you again for everything you’ve done for me and all of the other BALSA students of Stanford Law School. Congratulations. Hello, my name is Heywood Gilliam, class of 1994, and I’m a United States District Judge based in Oakland, California.
When I was asked to say a few words about Judge Henderson’s profound contributions to the diversity of the Stanford Law School community, I realized that topic could be a days long seminar. But I thought I would share with you just one story about my own path. At the beginning of my second year of law school, I started thinking about whether to apply for a clerkship.
Like many folks, I didn’t know much at all about what a clerkship was or how to get one. I didn’t grow up with any lawyers in my family, but I knew that I needed a faculty recommendation. And so I went to Professor Barbara Babcock, my civil procedure professor from first year. And honestly, I just hope she would remember who I was.
Those of us who knew Professor Babcock remember what a true legal giant she was. And we remember even more how genuinely she wanted to see all of us succeed in our careers. and in our lives. I’m grateful for her support to this day, and I miss her terribly. So in that meeting with Professor Babcock, I explained my situation, and she thought about it and then said, I think there’s a district judge in San Francisco.
You’d really get along well with that judge, her close friend and former Stanford Law School colleague, Dalton Henderson. As usual, Professor Babcock turned out to be exactly right. I had the honor of a lifetime clerking for Judge Henderson, who has no close competition for the title of the best boss I’ve ever had.
And my career path that started in Judge Henderson’s chambers in 1994 Came full circle when in December 2014, Judge Henderson swore me in as a district judge in the very same office where I worked with him and learned from him 20 years earlier. And as the folks in this room know, my story is not unique in this regard.
Judge Henderson planted the seeds of diversity and inclusion during his time at the law school. He nurtured the roots, establishing lasting relationships and fostering connections between the law school, the bench, and the bar. He built a foundation for us not to just survive at SLS and beyond, but to thrive.
And without those patient and determined efforts and without Judge Henderson’s deep ties to and care for our law school, I can say with certainty that the path of my career and my life would have been very different. And I’m just one of the many beneficiaries of the mighty oak. that grew from the acorn that Judge Henderson planted.
As just one reflection of that legacy, I could not be more pleased that my two incoming law clerks this term are both Stanford graduates, an African American man and a Latina woman. I am thrilled to have the chance to work with a new generation of superstar SLS grads of color as they start to make their way as lawyers.
And find the path that will be authentically meaningful for them in our profession. It isn’t hard to trace the line from Judge Henderson’s pioneering work straight through to today. And all of us in the alumni family owe Judge Henderson a huge debt of gratitude for setting it all in motion. So I’ll close today by saying thank you to my mentor, my inspiration, and most importantly, my dear friend, the Honorable Felton E.
Henderson, for all that he has done to make possible the achievements and contributions of generations of diverse graduates of our law school, including me and congratulations to the 50th reunion classes. As you celebrate this joyful anniversary.