Northern District federal bar, judges reenact Brown v Board of Education

To commemorate the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, the Federal Bar Association's Northern District of California chapter presented a historical reenactment of the decision, and the cases leading up to the ruling that found racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

Thursday evening's program at the Phillip Burton U.S. Courthouse ceremonial courtroom in San Francisco included federal judges, attorneys, and high school students who won this year's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals' civics contest. They played the roles of important legal figures and parties involved in Brown v. Board as the event traced the history of the five cases that came together to challenge racial segregation in public schools. 

The reenactment -- cosponsored by the Charles Houston Bar Association; Keker Van Nest & Peters LLP; Morrison Foerster LLP and Kazan, McClain, Satterley & Greenwood APLC -- was researched and scripted by bar association officer Jonathan Lee and the organization's programming and events coordinator, Alex Murray. 

Lee said he started working on the script in January and regularly returned to the source materials and court transcripts so that the production accurately depicted the testimonies and oral arguments of the litigants and their lawyers. Lee played Lester Goodell, the lead trial attorney for the Topeka School Board. 

"The story is so rich and important that telling it was awesome. Almost anyone could do it, but I feel like our group really put a lot of effort into it and really thought about it. People were trying to deliver the content as it would have been heard, which I think made it seem more powerful to the audience," Lee said. He said he met with Thurgood Marshall Jr. in July and spoke to him about the program. 

"I told him that we are venerating and celebrating his father's advocacy under very difficult circumstances, and I wanted him to know that his words are living on in our community," Lee said. 

Played by Assistant U.S. Attorney Abraham Simmons, Marshall argued before the Supreme Court in 1954 for the plaintiffs in Brown v. Board. He later became the nation's first Black Supreme Court justice. 

Among the cast of characters was the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whose announcement of the court's unanimous ruling was reenacted by U.S. District Court Judges Rita F. Lin, Trina L. Thompson, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers and Haywood S. Gilliam Jr. 

The part of Judge Walter Huxman, who wrote the opinion of the three-judge panel in favor of the school board in Brown v. Board, was read by U.S. Magistrate Judge Kandis A. Westmore. Judge Julius Waties Waring's dissenting opinion advocating against South Carolina's segregation laws in Briggs v. Elliot, one of the cases consolidated under Brown v. Board, was read by U.S. District Court Judges P. Casey Pitts and Araceli Martinez-Olguin. 

"The courage that people had to have shown then was enormous. It was just enormous and that keeps me going," Thompson said. The judge reflected on how her mother would go to school on buses not as comfortable as those for white children during pre-integration Arkansas. 

"These stories that are being shared, you begin to see that there are real people behind them and this is not a fairy tale. We're still within the generation" of people alive before the Brown v. Board decision," Thompson said. She added that the Federal Bar Association brings together members of the legal profession and reminds them of the community they serve. 

Holding these events in the ceremonial courtroom illustrates how the courts are for the people, Gilliam commented after the reenactment, adding that the bar association's Northern District of California chapter worked hard and took a lot of initiative to bring such programs to the community. 

"It's tremendously important as you can see from all the judges who participated," Gilliam said.