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By Root 874 0

to one reporter’s account, “an air of exhilaration and anticipation.” For me it showed a promise, a promise of inclusion. I was thrilled by the whole meeting. Yet the highlight of the meeting, for me, came when I had the opportunity to meet Justice Thurgood Marshall. The occasion was an evening program in his honor sponsored by the ABA Section on Individual Rights. The event was sold out and I was fortunate to be seated at a table near the front. Professor Stephen Carter, a former Marshall clerk and a friend of mine since law school, gave one of the tributes to Mr. Marshall. Just prior to the dinner he introduced me to the former justice or, as Mr. Marshall preferred, the retired justice. I stammered something completely inarticulate about how I was honored to meet him. I was certain that he must have thought me a blathering idiot. So awestruck was I that words, meaningful words, failed me at that moment. Later I learned, to the relief of my embarrassment, that he probably had not heard my idiocy over the noise in the room. I sat with Enola Aird, Stephen’s wife, and mutual friends, George Jones and Loretta Pleasant, also contemporaries from Yale Law. The entire program was inspiring. Stephen’s tribute was characteristically eloquent. I was especially moved by a tribute given by Karen Hastie Williams, another of Marshall’s clerks. She spoke of the great contribution which Justice Marshall had made to the lives of many in the room and around the country. In part she stated that, without Justice Marshall, there would be no Stephen Carter, no Karen Hastie Williams, nor an Anita Hill. I could not have agreed more, and certainly she said it better at that moment than I could have.

When Justice Marshall spoke, he did so with an honest graciousness that made me admire him even more. As he often did, Mr. Marshall told a story on that evening. His storytelling reflects a rich tradition in African American culture. Yet it was more than mere entertainment; more than the reflection of a skilled trial lawyer. Justice Marshall’s stories and his storytelling were part of the basis for his jurisprudence. Both set a social backdrop against which the consequences of law could be measured. On that occasion he told of a young black man in an Arkansas pool hall. This man engaged the then attorney Marshall in conversation. The young man asked Mr. Marshall if he knew anything about reincarnation. After a brief discussion on the subject, the young man declared, “If you ever find out anything about it, tell ’em for me when I come back in the next world. I don’t care whether it’s a man or a woman, human or goat, animal or what, just don’t let it be black.” The story illustrates the depth of self-hatred and despair commanded by Jim Crow laws and socially imposed segregation in the South. Clearly, the law had failed. The promises of the constitutional amendments enacted after the Civil War were meaningless and hollow—even a mockery of this man’s realities. The protections of the Constitution meant nothing to this man whose dream was to escape racism and prejudice in another life, in another form.

When women around the world began to tell their stories about harassment, we realized that the law prohibiting it had just as certainly failed. Every time someone told of a job she quit or was fired from because of harassment, we learned something new about the problem. When thousands of women began to tell their stories, we all declared that we had had no idea it was so widespread. When we read about girls like Christine Franklin, we admitted to our embarrassment that we had had no idea it was so vicious. When we heard about harassers who were promoted while their victims were fired, we knew that there was more to accountability than the enactment of the law. A sense of achievement is mixed with disappointment when matters are settled under the condition that the victim keep quiet about what happened. Each result reminds us that social change is necessary if the law’s promises are to be fulfilled. One measure of social change is found in politics. It is