Lawyers: Harassment in the South

It was no small sacrifice for Attorney Richard B. Sobol to help defend Gary Duncan, a Negro boat captain accused of cruelty to juveniles in Plaquemines Parish, La. To handle Duncan’s case and to aid other Southern Negroes, Sobol gave up a comfortable $24,000-a-year post with a top Washington, D.C., law firm and joined a group of attorneys who are serving the civil rights movement.

Following standard procedure, Sobol, who had not been admitted to the Louisiana bar, argued the Plaquemines case in association with a local lawyer. After appearing four times without objection, he was suddenly arrested and charged with practicing without a license. Another lawyer took over the defense, and Duncan was found guilty because he touched a white boy on the arm while breaking up a threatened fight. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually reversed the conviction. Meanwhile, Sobol decided to fight his own case and went to federal court to get his trial stopped.

Once a Year. Recognizing the importance of the issue, a number of interested bystanders—among them the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense Fund, the Justice Department, and a group of 30 of the nation’s top law firms—filed briefs in Sobol’s support. They were also speaking for all the lonely Negroes in remote Southern jailhouses, the people for whom the presence of lawyers like Sobol has often meant the difference between life and death. Early in the civil rights movement, Southern lawyers tacitly accepted visiting lawyers. Few local white lawyers wanted to defend Negroes anyway. It was not until the out-of-state attorneys won a substantial number of victories on their own that some Southern states began trying to ban the intruders.

Mississippi’s state bar, for example, withdrew a resolution welcoming out-of-state lawyers. In Alabama the threat of prosecution for practicing without a state license has kept visiting civil rights lawyers away for more than a year.

Forceful Representation. Sobol’s lawyers argued that if Negroes asserting their constitutional rights have trouble finding local attorneys, they must be permitted to retain out-of-state lawyers. And in federal court, Sobol’s first witness gave stark testimony about how difficult it is for a local attorney to represent a Negro. New Orleans Lawyer Lolis Elie, himself a Negro, told how his law office was bombed two years ago. Then he recalled the greeting he received in one courtroom. Said Judge (now U.S. Representative) John Rarick upon Erie’s arrival: “I didn’t know they let you coons practice law.”

Obviously, agreed the court, it is unduly difficult for a Negro to get representation, particularly in Plaquemines Parish. “The circumstances convince us that Sobol was prosecuted only because he was a civil rights lawyer forcefully representing a Negro.” Although it halted Sobol’s prosecution, the court did not go so far as to find the state’s legal-practice statutes unconstitutional. But even so, Sobol feels that his case will serve as a healthy precedent. “The decision,” he says, “makes pretty clear that an out-of-state lawyer properly practicing this kind of law can’t, be punished by local authorities.”