Center a tribute to Judge Damon J. Keith's lifetime pursuit of civil rights
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100513/SCHOOLS/5130449/Center-a-tribute-to-Judge-Damon-J.-Keith-s-lifetime-pursuit-of-civil-rights
Michael H. Hodges
May 13. 2010
When Winnie and Nelson Mandela came to Detroit in 1990, Judge Damon
J. Keith called Rosa Parks to see if she needed a ride to the airport
for the welcome ceremony. Her caretaker, however, said the two of
them hadn't been invited.
"You're kidding!" said an astonished Keith, telling them he'd be by
shortly to pick them up. When the Mandelas got off the plane, they
made a beeline for Parks, bypassing the governor, the mayor and the
president of the United Auto Workers. "Rosa Parks!" they cried,
throwing their arms around her.
"You see," said the 87-year-old Keith with a smile, "that was the
face they knew."
On Monday, Wayne State University Law School will break ground on the
Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. The tribute recognizes the
towering stature of the judge, whose landmark rulings over more than
42 years on the federal bench redefined civil rights and civil liberties law.
"The First Amendment is alive and well in no small part because of
Judge Keith's efforts," said Robert M. Ackerman, dean of Wayne
State's Law School.
Keith, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals, is the judge who
rebuked President Richard Nixon on wiretaps and stopped secret
deportation hearings under the Bush administration. He's the judge
who desegregated Pontiac public schools, leading to one of the first
mandatory busing programs outside the South.
Yet it is his many kindnesses to Detroit and its residents --
relocating Parks after she was mugged in her house, and saving the
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History -- that may
constitute his most enduring legacy locally.
"Judge Keith is an amazing person who really cares about this
community and has worked tirelessly to make sure that it lives up to
its potential," said the Wright museum's executive director Juanita Moore.
Small wonder Keith's office is crowded with photos showing him with
presidents, senators and Supreme Court justices.
Worked his way up
Keith was born on the Fourth of July in 1922. His father worked in
the Ford Rouge foundry. Young Keith graduated from Detroit's
Northwestern High School, and then attended West Virginia State
College -- at the time, an all-black institution.
It was a life-changing choice.
"It wasn't till I got to West Virginia State that I saw black
professors," said Keith, who notes he'd never had a black teacher in
all his years in Detroit. "It took the cataracts off my eyes."
Upon graduating from Howard University Law School, his first job,
Keith said, was "cleaning the floors and toilets at The Detroit News"
while studying for the Michigan bar. His big break was a job with
Loomis, Jones, Piper and Colden, the African-American firm that would
train some of Detroit's best black attorneys in the '50s and '60s.
In 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Keith -- whose
grandfathers were both slaves -- to the U.S. District Court. Ten
years later, President Jimmy Carter elevated him to the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Keith is famous for old-fashioned graciousness. When one of his
clerks, a young woman, brings him a memo, he says, "Thank you,
darlin' " like any grandfather.
Many of his clerks have developed life-long relationships with the
judge, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
In an e-mail exchange, Granholm -- who will attend Monday's
groundbreaking, along with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder -- told
The News she calls Keith "my mentor, friend, father and center of energy."
Historic decision
A number of Keith's decisions have entered the legal canon, said Mark
Rosenbaum, who teaches constitutional and civil-rights law at the
University of Michigan Law School.
"Judge Keith," Rosenbaum said, "is among a handful of the most
important federal district court judges in American history when it
comes to enforcing civil rights and civil liberties. He's a great man."
Ask Keith what his most important decision was, and he doesn't
hesitate -- U.S. v. Sinclair, or the "Keith Decision," as it's come
down in history. The 1971 case involved national security wiretaps
without a judge's warrant that the Nixon administration placed on the
radical White Panther party, headed by Detroiter John Sinclair.
"The case was about whether one person, even the president, can avoid
the demands of the U.S. Constitution," Keith said.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed -- unanimously -- that such
surveillance is illegal. In a concurring opinion, Justice William O.
Douglas wrote that far more than mere privacy was involved: "Also at
stake is the reach of the government's power to intimidate its critics."
One of Keith's lines, from his 2002 decision thwarting the Bush-era
secret deportation hearings, has entered the language: "Democracies
die behind closed doors."
On civil rights, three cases cast looming shadows. A 1970 decision
found that Pontiac had deliberately segregated its schools -- one of
the first such judgments against a Northern district, and one that
led to what used to be called "forced busing." In 1971, Keith found
that Hamtramck, under the guise of urban renewal, had engaged in what
he tartly called "Negro removal." Two years later, he ruled that
Detroit Edison had systematically maneuvered to keep blacks out of
managerial jobs.
"I'm a great believer," said Keith, "in the four words inscribed on
the Supreme Court -- 'equal justice under law.' "
Help for Mother Parks
Yet Keith's passion for his hometown and the civil rights movement
has bulked every bit as large as his legal decisions. After "Mother
Parks," as he calls her, was mugged in her home in 1994, Keith
immediately called his friend, real-estate developer A. Alfred Taubman.
Taubman recalls the judge explained that Parks lived in a bad neighborhood.
"I said, 'All right, Damon -- do you think she'd like to live at the
Riverfront Apartments that Max Fisher and I own?' " Taubman said.
"And he said, 'Oh, she'd be delighted.' She moved in and spent the
rest of her life there."
When the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History hit the
financial skids in 2004, it was Keith who called movers and shakers
across Metro Detroit to raise $1 million to put it back on track.
"He called community leaders to a meeting in his chambers," said the
museum's Moore. "And people showed up. They didn't dare not to. He
told them, 'We will not let this museum fail,' " adding that it was
too important to Detroit, the nation and all Americans.
The urgency of the situation apparently made the judge quite stern.
"It's my understanding," said Moore with a laugh, "that he didn't use
the most polite words either."
Impressive legacy
Wayne State's new Keith Center is hardly the first honor bestowed on
the legendary judge. In 1998 he won the Devitt Award, the highest
accolade a federal judge can receive, and in 1993 Wayne State
dedicated its seminal collection of African-American legal papers in his name.
The Keith Center, however, will cement the judge's legacy in brick
and mortar, with programs focused on civil rights. The
10,000-square-foot building will house conference space, the
university's Journal of Law in Society, a 60-seat lecture hall, an
exhibit on Keith's life and career, as well as the school's legal
clinics that offer free advice on issues from political asylum to
disability law.
"Through a variety of activities," said the Law School's Ackerman,
"we hope to promote the ideals of Judge Keith."
Those who've known him say there could be no worthier goal.
Said Taubman, whose $3 million gift to the law school will underwrite
much of the center's construction, "Damon's a wonderful man with
great ethics. I'd follow him to the end of the earth."
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