>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:04 [ Silence ] ^M00:00:23 >> Pam Jackson: Welcome. So I thank you for joining us today here at our Books and Beyond talk, and today we are cosponsored with The Daniel A.P. Murray Association. I'm Pam Jackson. I'm director for the the Center for the Book. And I welcome you. At the Center for the Book, we are committed to making a productive and lasting difference in the world of reading, promotion and literacy. And as a part of the new national and international outreach division within the Library of Congress, it's our mission to nurture and empower the network of organizations with whom we partner to strengthen our capacities, to serve communities, and to provide the broadest access to the vast, diverse and rich collections that are here at the Library of Congress. We promote books in libraries, literacy in reading, poetry in literature, knowing that they are the best tools for creating and sustaining informed and engaged societies. And also the best weapons against intolerance and ignorance. So the Center for the Book's mission is carried out nationwide with the assistance from our affiliated Centers for the Book. There's a state Center for the Book in every state, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. We have a partnership of a network of more than 80 organizations that are also focused on reading, promotion and literacy. Additionally, we play an important role with the National Book Festival. This year, the festival is September 24, at the Washington Convention Center here in D.C. And I urge you to attend this wonderful event in celebration of reading and literacy, and you can visit us on the web to learn more about that at loc.gov/bookfest. A few logistics before I introduce today's author, we would like to have the conversation go undistracted, so if you could take a moment, look at your phone and make sure it's turned on silent or vibrate, we would appreciate that. Also we are recording today's event so if you ask a question you should know that you'll be part of our webcast. And it's exciting for some maybe. We do have our webcasts available. We have at the Center for the Book, we have more than 250 so far, of author discussions of all genres of writing, and you can visit read.gov to check those out as well. Today's author's book will be for sale here at the back of the room, and following the presentation she'll be available to sign her book at the table here to my right. And you'll have a chance to talk with her about her work. So we're excited for today's conversation and glad she's being generous with her time. The chief criteria for deciding which books to feature in this series is that there must be a strong connection to the Library of Congress and in most cases it means that the writer did the research here, and that's true for today's author. Amina Hassan has authored the book Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist which discusses one of the nation's most important but perhaps not widely studied civil rights attorneys. Loren Miller was a legal strategist who challenged the nation's racial order, effectively abolishing housing covenants, restrictive racial housing covenants, arguing cases before the Supreme Court. And one of those cases Shelley versus Kraemer from 1948 is taught in nearly every American law school today. Mr. Miller also played a key role in Brown versus The Board of Education, alongside Thurgood Marshall which ended legal segregation in public schools. So I think Dr. Hassan will tell us more about Mr. Miller so I'll tell you a little something about her. And it's an extraordinary honor to have you here with us today, we thank you for your presence. Amina Hassan is a highly accomplished citizen. She's an independent historian and an aware winning public radio documentarian. She has produced many nationally distributed works including an NPR radio series on how race, class and gender shape Americans' fort, and she's also produced another notable documentary, among many of her accomplishments, on the Bill of Rights. She's a native of Los Angeles. Dr. Hassan has received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California Berkeley and her PhD from Ohio University in rhetorical criticism. I'd like to welcome her to the stage now, to discuss with us her new book. Her first book, as it happens. Thank you. ^M00:04:58 [ Applause ] ^M00:05:01 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Well, I certainly want to thank Pam Jackson for that wonderful introduction, and I want to thank her other staff which was Ann Bonnie who helped make this talk possible, and I thank you all for coming, for taking time out of your day. So let's start with me telling you a story. A story of a man more introvert than extrovert, who made America better not just for himself alone. A man who knocked down the last legal crops of segregated housing and segregated education. Loren Miller's legacy and his legal accomplishments as his well as his journalistic accomplishments, are the subject of today's talk. I hope today when you walk away. you'll have a better understanding of Loren Miller as a man, and beyond that, as a champion of equality. Today I will present a description of Miller's early life, then follow that with his importance and his accomplishments on civil rights, and his impact on America. You'll see 2 letters I found in the Library of Congress here between Loren Miller and Thurgood Marshall. You will hear of his friendship with Langston Hughes, and their trip to the Soviet Union in 1932. His marriage and his legacy as a journalist. Then at the end, I will be happy to answer your questions. So why is Loren Miller important? Why is a man who died in 1967 relevant today? Imagine yourself being sued by your neighbors because you moved into a neighborhood where everyone looks different from you. Imagine the community using the court system to force you to move. This situation might sound outdated, but discrimination is not obsolete in 2016. Miller is relevant today because he brought an end to racial segregation in America. Because the struggle for civil rights still continues today, because our ability to promote progress cannot happen without our court system, our current freedoms, or lack there of, are rooted in the past. Future changes depend on previous court decisions and battles. Loren Miller's story is a story of an extraordinary man, an unsigned hero who changed the course of history. A story that most people today are unaware. Federal Appeals Court Justice A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., in paying tribute to the black lawyers of our country, Higginbotham said in 1979, that one man who would have been, should have been on the appellate court or the U.S. Supreme Court was a late Loren Miller. Others felt that he was barely second in importance to the late Thurgood Marshall. Let me read briefly from the opening of my book. "Loren Miller died on Vasteel Day, a fitting coincidence for a man dedicated to storming the hush hush of court room injustice. The coolness of the summer evening of July the 14th, 1967, a Friday, he succumbed to pulmonary emphysema. By noon on July the 19th, thousands of people overflowed the capacity of the Methodist Church. Filling the pews or crowding out doors, was virtually every back lawyer and most of the judges in the city. A multitude of greats, near greats, among them dignitaries and just plain Joes, came to pay final respects to the great man. Lena Horne, the show stopping beauty of film and song, blacklisted in the 1950s for her political views, spoke at the ceremony and later acknowledged hundreds of letters, condolences, and telegrams. Mourners came from far and near to attend the rites of the longtime civil rights leader and prolific writer, lawyer of intimidating rectitude, and key strategist in the legal campaign to overturn racial discrimination, particularly in housing and education. A man, who by sheer force of will and determination, improved the lives of those on the periphery of justice." ^M00:09:55 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Although Miller became one of the nation's most prominent and influential civil rights attorneys of the 1940s to the 1960s, he grew up in a mutable, unbearable poverty on farms in Nebraska and Kansas. He wrote in his unpublished autobiographical novel of his childhood, that one night, there was a sudden clapping of the trap, and the squeal of the rat. Before the night ended, his mother had caught 14 rats. They were what might be called a family of itinerant squatters. And here, I am going to return to my book and read about the kind of world Loren Miller was born into. "Loren Miller came into the world on the western edge of the Omaha Indian reservation in Pender, Nebraska, on January 20, 1903. He was born during the American coal famine of 1902 to 1903, when fierce industrial warfare erupted in the coalfields of Pennsylvania and caused a fuel shortage with a broad ripple effect. In Nebraska, people turned from burning coal to burning corn to hear their homes and cookstoves. In neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa, fuel-starved factories threatened to shut down. Public schools in many states were closed as coal supplies dwindled. In Indianapolis, along the railroad yards, poor people scavenged lumps of coal and hauled them away in wheelbarrows and sacks in broad daylight in full view of guards with rifles. Eventually, the federal government intervened, turning from the strikebreaker to peacemaker for the first time in US history. Perhaps, the atmosphere of social, political and economical unrest surrounding Miller's arrival presaged what lay ahead for him, a life on the front line of justice where he would shine a light into the dark shadows of racism and inequality." Miller was soft spoken, slightly built, intellectually brilliant, extraordinarily sensitive, and scholarly looking. The FBI reported he had a small scar on his chin. Born in 1903 in Nebraska, he was a son of a former slave who married a white woman. He wrote that his mother's love for his father was so great that it led her to cross the color line. However, the hard scrambled life, living in abject poverty, sometimes took a toll on his mother, a former school teacher. It was during these times that she leaned heavily on her bible to keep cheerful despite the hardships. As a child, he was shy, small, easily intimidated. He played ball just enough he said, to keep from called a sissy. He grew up on a farm, but he didn't like killing chickens or hunting. He cried at the sight of his father bating a fishing hook with live sparrows taken from their nest. Before Miller entered school, he had taught himself how to read. By the time he was 10, the townspeople, who happened to be mostly white, began saying that 10 year old Miller was the brightest child in school. When Miller was a boy living in Nebraska, his father worked at the courthouse as a janitor. His father would take him to work where Miller would sit in the court room and listen to the trials, watching and learning. Whenever people asked him what he was going to be when he grew up, his answer always remained the same. I'm going to be a lawyer. This is what his father had hoped him to be, and he did. Eventually, Miller's family moved to Kansas. Displeased with his new school, he wrote to complain to his former school teacher back in Nebraska. In her reply, and this is 1914, she said don't you get discouraged Loren about your school work. If you do your best, you will surely become far greater than the teacher who won't give you for credit for what you do. Maybe you will be our president someday. But if you do not become president, you will surely feel some other good place if you do your best. 100 years ago, it was impossible for a black boy to even consider becoming President of the United States. But this school teacher, who happened to be white, believed that one day he would do something very important. Determined to succeed, Miller returned to his studies and worked harder than ever before. He went to college where he studied to become a lawyer. In 1928, he graduated from Washburn College in Kansas, with a degree in Law. Although Miller trained as a lawyer, what he really wanted to do was be a writer. To write novels and poems. But he was born at a time when educated black people had 3 choices. In 1929, following the death of his sister, Miller set out for Los Angeles from Kansas. He was a freshly minted member of the BAR who preferred political activism and writing to the practice of law. Straddling a career as a lawyer and journalist, when he arrived in Los Angeles, he quickly found work as a newspaper reported for the largest black newspaper at the time. Very quickly, he became the newspaper's city editor. In 1932, using his clout at the newspaper, he invited his friend and prominent writer, Langston Hughes, to Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, they decided to drive to New York and travel to Russia to make a film about blacks in America. That trip sealed their friendship for the next 40 years. However, 5 months later, the project ended for political reasons and Miller returned to the United States without the movie ever being made. Soon after returning to Los Angeles, Miller married Juanita Ellsworth, who in 1927, graduated from the University of Southern California, where she studied to become a social worker. After his trip to Russia, Miller, urged by his new wife, returned to the practice of law. Although he sought to pursue the writer's life, the need to put food on the table at the height of the Great Depression propelled him to work as both lawyer and journalist. He admitted that he was dragged kicking and screaming into the practice of law, because you in those days he said, a negro could be a doctor, lawyer or school teacher and that's about all. He sacrificed his dream, not a man given to brooding or self pity, Miller accepted the career path he chose. Miller and his wife Juanita maintained a circle of friends which included, among others, the singer and actor Lena Horne, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Ralph Bunche, the Harlem Renaissance painter, Aaron Douglas, and Carey McWilliams, editor of The Nation Magazine and one of the Hollywood ten attorneys who defended black listed film makers during McCarthyism. As Miller's legal work focused increasingly on civil rights, he became friends from with prominent attorneys from the NAACP and The American Civil Liberties Union. His reputation as a skilled and brilliant attorney grew from local prominence to national recognition. Miller became known locally in Los Angeles as the go to guy, if you were turned away from an ice skating rink, a movie house or a restaurant. He started taking on higher profile cases that impacted national issues. During World War II, when President Roosevelt authorized the interment of Japanese Americans, Miller and his ACLU colleagues took a very unpopular position. A position that not even Jewish organizations or the NAACP would take. Although Miller and his friends fought hard to halt the curfew and interment of west coast Japanese, their efforts failed. When the army trucks and soldiers came for Miller's neighbors, he did more than watch as they were carted off to the camps. He had already arranged the whole [inaudible] of his Japanese neighbors until they returned after the war. What is not so widely known, is that in 1946, before Brown V Board of Education of Topeka Kansas, Miller was part of an important class action suit in California. It challenged the constitutionality of segregating Mexican American children from California's public schools. ^M00:19:47 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: On behalf of the National Lawyer's Guild, the NAACP and the ACLU, Miller submitted amicus briefs, friend of the court legal briefs, in support of Mendez V Westminster. It was the first case to hold as school segregation itself as unconstitutional and violates the 14th amendment, the constitution's equal protection clause. What is important about the Mendez case is that it was the first case to use sociological and psychological evidence to show how segregation damages children. And this was before Brown V Board of Education. The uniqueness of Brown, is that it too used sociological data as evidence. That strategy led to the historic decision to end racial segregation in America's public schools. Although Loren Miller did not stand up in court to argue the historically famous Brown case, he drafted most of the legal briefs that lead to this monumental victory. At the same time that Miller worked on the Mendez case, Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to receive an Academy Award. She won an Oscar for her role in Gone with the Wind. She was being sued because she had audacity to buy and live in a house in Los Angeles's exclusive Sugar Hill district. It was thought that there was little possibility that a black movie star would be forced to move. However, this was a time in Los Angeles, when the only way a black person could live in a restrictive area, was as a servant. It was a time when the black residents of Los Angeles, long fed up, filed more suits contesting the validity of restrictive covenants than in any part of the country. On December the 5th, 1945, Hattie and her 50 co-defendants and hundreds of sympathizers, appeared in court in all their finery. One writer said, that the stylist atmosphere in the court was such as to make one wonder if the judge would pour tea during the afternoon recess. Ultimately, Miller won what considered the first restrictive housing case on constitutional grounds. Afterwards, Miller wrote a friend "I rushed home to try the Sugar Hill case, and succeeded in pulling a rabbit out of the hat by inducing a local judge to hold race restrictive covenants unenforceable on the grounds that such enforcement would violate the 14th amendment." The Sugar Hill victory was a monumental moment. For Miller, it was the first of many high profile cases. Because Miller argued more segregated housing cases than any attorney did, 100, he earned the title of Mr. Civil Rights of the Western United States. By the mid 1940s, Miller was part of a group of brilliant NAACP legal defense fund attorneys led by Thurgood Marshall, who changed the course of history. Miller argued two landmark cases before the US Supreme Court. In 1948, he argued the famous Shelley V Kraemer case that all lawyers study in law school today. Alongside Thurgood Marshall and Charles Hamilton Houston, Miller overturned racial restrictive housing covenants. This meant that it became illegal to stop people from living where they wanted because of their race. However, before the Shelley case ever came to court, the NAACP held several meetings across the country to determine which cases, which strategies, and which attorneys should stand before the US Supreme Court. On the screen here, in this April 1947 letter from Loren Miller to Thurgood Marshall, found here at the Library of Congress, Miller suggests that "They seek outstanding lawyers from all over the nation to join forces" and naturally he adds that he'll be glad to do whatever he can to assist. In this next NAACP letter, dated October the 27th, 1947, Thurgood Marshall confirms that Loren Miller will argue one of the four cases before the Supreme Court. According to Marshall, he is under extreme pressure to select a big shot attorney, not someone like Miller who had never tried a Supreme Court case. In page 1, paragraph 3 here, Marshall mentions there has been a lot of discussion on what lawyers will be selected. But here he says I am not for having a person simply because he is refuted to be a big shot. Then on the second page, Thurgood says there is a tremendous amount of fast foot work going on and these cases are too important to tolerate any shenanigans. He stuck with Miller because he had more experience than any attorney did. ^M00:25:14 [ Silence ] ^M00:25:21 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Thurgood Marshall remained unconvinced, in this particular case, that the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment was the best strategy. Miller unflaggingly persistent, convinced Marshall that the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the 14th amendment are intertwined. When the Shelley case finally did reach the Supreme Court, it included nonlegal, sociological materials on the affects of segregated housing. Miller said "The question before the Supreme Court was a simple one. What the court decided was that no state could enforce any law that deprives its citizens of life, liberty, or property without due process and equal protection. In other words, restrictive covenants violate the 14th amendment." Thurgood Marshall said that the Shelley case was unquestionably one of the most important in a whole field of civil rights. Aware that Miller's strength lays in his command of the English language, Marshall again turned to Miller. This time to write the majority of the brief in Brown V Board of Education. Six briefs to be exact. Because of Miller's contribution, segregation in America's public schools became illegal. These cases laid the foundation to end segregation in America and fueled the civil rights movement and the passes of laws like the Civil Right Act of 1964. Yet, during the 50th and 60th anniversary celebrations of Brown, Miller is not even mentioned. His erasure from our collective memory is a real travesty. Loren Miller lived a well rounded life. While he focused much of his life on legal battles, he never fully abandoned his love of writing and journalism. By the 1950s, Miller owned his own newspaper, the California Eagle, publishing the news for and about the black residents of Los Angeles. Brad Pie, the sports writer who worked for the California Eagle Newspaper wrote how Cuz, as Miller was affectionately known around the newspaper, enriched his life. Using sports metaphors, Pie wrote, in the civil rights field, to me he was a Jim Brown of the legal profession, knocking down racial barriers all around them. He dribbled through the courts of the land like Elgin Baylor and scored as many points in the legal field as Wilt Chamberlain does on the basketball court. As a lawyer, journalist, author, publisher and scholar, he was an all around man as Willie Mays is on the Diamond. Towards the end of his legal carrier, in 1964, he became a judge. Although Miller's intelligence, admired by virtually everyone he met, he had a tendency towards razor sharp outspokenness. His asset whip was quick to burn holes into the toughest skin and eat right through double talk hypocrisy and posturing. I would like to conclude by saying Miller was committed to making democracy work for every American. He said "It goes without saying that I am opposed to any discrimination of any kind on racial and religious grounds, or on any other grounds. I think that we must do that, not only in simple justice to minority groups of any kind, but out on a realization that the majority has as big of stake, if not bigger, than the minorities. Either we shall have to make democracy work for every American, or in the last analysis, we shall not be able to preserve it for any American." ^M00:29:28 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Loren Miller died in 1967 at the age of 64. His words ring out just as loud today. His impact on all our lives and freedoms is experienced when we can live where we want, study where we want. His legacy laid the foundation for today's ongoing progress for civil rights. In recognition of his many contributions to the field of law, the state BAR of California in 1970 established the Loren Miller Legal Services Award, a lifetime achievement award given annually to a lawyer who has demonstrated a long term commitment to providing legal services to the poor. We owe much to this great man and we shall celebrate him as a true American hero. Thank you, and now for your questions. ^M00:30:22 [ Applause ] ^M00:30:30 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: So just pop up there. Yes. >> Thank you very much for your presentation. I was impressed by your research, especially at the Library of Congress. I noted that you used several judicial papers and NAACP records. You mentioned earlier that you had an unpublished autobiography. Where did you find that? >> Dr. Amina Hassan: His family donated his papers to the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and earlier the family, a couple years before that, had come across papers that Loren Miller had of Langston Hughes over their many years of corresponding. And that group was donated first. And then finally the latter group. I got really lucky, I wasn't really decided if I was going to do a Loren Miller book, but I want to the Huntington the very day that the curator was signing the receivership of the papers. He had not even seen them. He said you want to go down to the basement and I said yeah. And so he let me look for like three or four hours, and I was just in awe, I said I'm going to do this. I saw a lawsuit against him from the newspaper publisher when he had bought the newspaper [inaudible] and I said oh okay. And so I did a great deal of research there. I also did an amount of research at the National Archives as well as interviewing people but the Huntington had the basis of it because they had his papers, and like you mentioned, the unpublished autobiography. Yes? >> I'm not from the United States, I'm from the Caribbean. ^M00:32:14 [ Inaudible Question ] ^M00:33:13 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: He was quite critical. 10 years after. ^M00:33:15 [ Inaudible Question ] ^M00:33:17 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Yeah, because he basically was on the delivered speed, because most of the briefs that he wrote were for Brown 2, because there's a Brown 1 and Brown 2. And yes, he wrote, he criticized people for basically sitting on their morals. He said there's a lot to do and it's been 10 years and these kids aren't even the schools yet. And so he was very critical of that and that was like his personality because I think maybe he wasn't so well known because he kind of burned some bridges because even though he owned a newspaper and all of that, and he was involved in so much especially in LA and all, but because he didn't promote himself, he wasn't an opportunist in that sense, I mean, he ran for congress and lost, he didn't get past the primary. But only because people were pushing him to do that. And there's a long letter in his files about that, about how he didn't exploit himself for other people, you know to promote himself in that way. Because basically he was a [inaudible] kind of guy. His wife was more the society maven, and she was involved in a great deal, women's organizations, black women's organizations, literary organizations in California, and she and someone else started an organization called the League of LA Arts in Los Angeles when Langston Hughes in 1939 could not find a theater to put on one of his plays and out of that relationship they started this literary organization which continues today. >> Let me ask another question. ^M00:35:00 [ Inaudible Question ] ^M00:35:26 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: I'm sorry, I can't quite hear the question. ^M00:35:28 [ Inaudible Question ] ^M00:36:05 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Well, he supported Pan-Africanism I think intellectually, and also because in the 30's, he was much more to the left. He mellowed out by the time the 40.s and the 50's happened, because he belonged to the John Reed Club and that's why he also had an FBI file that started in I think in 1941 or 42. So in fact his becoming a judge took a long time because he was so close to the communists because he wrote for a great many communist publications. In the 60's, he supported the Freedom Now movement, he wrote several articles particularly in the nation, and one is called Farewell to Liberals, which is basically saying okay, you've helped us white people, you've got us this far, but now we need to lead this movement ourselves. So he was very clear there. Also in 1963, after a shootout in 1962, he represented I think 14 black Muslims in Los Angeles. Actually, something very similar is going on now, with the police force is that there was a shoot out and one man died, I think 7 were shot and injured, and there was case where 14 of them went to court. They lost but Miller was one of the attorneys handling that. So even though he sort of distanced himself from the left in a particular way, he always was the Marxist and I think his distancing himself from the communists later in the 50's and stuff was just sort of self preservation because of what had happened to other attorneys in that era. But this woman back here, she wanted to ask something. >> Can you speak a little more to his relationship with Charles Hamilton Houston? >> Dr. Amina Hassan: He was very critical of him, and there was a particular case, I think it was called the George Crawford murder trial, and in 1935 or around there. Even though he belonged to the local branch of the NAACP in Los Angeles as one of the legal team, he was critical. Nationally, during the time of the Scottsboro Trial, he took the side of the communists against the NAACP about how that was being handled and then because of that era, Charles Hamilton Houston was quite involved with the NAACP, so he was very critical at that period but by the time the Shelley case comes up in the mid 40's, he sort of changes his tune to the point that, I can't remember what was the reason he wrote a letter to him, but he compliments Houston on some particular thing, so he had kind of mellowed out, but he was quite critical earlier in this one particular case that had gone, he thought he had sold out this black man in his murder trial. Yes? >> Was he a published author? Did he publish any books? ^M00:39:15 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Yes, he has a definitive study, it's called The Petitioners, the History of the Negro in the United States Supreme Court. And it came out about a year before he died, 1966, and it started the definitive history of the interaction between African Americans and the Supreme Court. And it's quite interesting in one respect, because in it, he doesn't mention his involvement in several of the cases that he mentions in the book. He doesn't, he didn't say oh I did this. No, it's very distanced in that sense. And it's something that new lawyers that are studying different aspects of the law read. It's sort of a primary text in that sense. So it's a very interesting thing. And that's where I also found out he had this grand uncle who had a case that went to the Supreme Court, I write about it in the book, who had a Supreme Court case, a public accommodations case that wound up in the Supreme Court in 1883. And so this very cantankerous grand uncle of his, he went into a hotel restaurant, sat down, and this was in Kansas, to be served and they refused to serve him and it even made the papers. And he marched immediately to the Kansas US Attorney General and complained, and that case would up going to the Supreme Court and was bundled I think with 4 other cases, and what the Supreme Court said, the decision was, it said that Congress had no right to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1875. So there was that. But the same man, his uncle, grand uncle, he was in the civil war, along with two of his brothers. And he fought for his pension for years, his veteran pension, for about 9 years or something like that. And then he, I hope this isn't offensive, and then he's quoted as saying, you know he was fed up at that point, that he can't get his pension, he loses in the Supreme Court and he says I'm going off to live with the heathens and he moved to Oklahoma. ^M00:41:44 [ Laughter ] ^M00:41:49 >> Dr. Amina Hassan: But it comes from this family that won't lay down, they'll challenge it. Yes ma'am? >> Thank you so much for this presentation. >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Oh, thank you. >> I see Lester Grainger's name here, and I wanted to know the nature of that relationship and also whether Loren Miller was a mason because Lester Grainger was and [inaudible] was, Thurgood Marshall, and there was a behind the scenes cavalry of masons that supported the Civil Rights Movement. >> Dr. Amina Hassan: I'm not sure if he was a mason. I think he might have been. I didn't find anything but then you know, his files are massive. I do know spoke at some Mason Hall's. Lester Grainger. He and Lester Grainger, were political buddies, they belonged to some of the same organizations, political organizations, leftist organizations, and when Loren Miller went to become an editor of the New Masses and another newspaper in New York, Lester Grainger and Miller were like roommates, and they kept a really long friendship. And I think Lester Grainger had come to California with the Urban League first, before he became the head of the Urban League later on, and so they were really good friends and I think Lester also wrote columns when Miller bought the California Eagle in 1951 that Grainger wrote. And every time Miller and his wife would go to New York, he would visit Lester Grainger and his wife and family and all of that. So they were very, very close. In fact there was one letter that Grainger writes him, wanting him to sort of endorse something with the Urban League, and Miller writes back and says you don't want to use me. I still have that pink tinge and you'll do more harm by having me write a letter of endorsement or something like that. And it did follow him for a long time. Any other questions? Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you Dr. Hassan. Just for clarification, because Mendez versus Westminster also is marginalized in history much like Miller. So, within that case, is Miller arguing for violation of the 14th amendment or is he arguing that officially, Mexican Americans are legally classified as white and therefore shouldn't be subjected to separate? >> Dr. Amina Hassan: I believe it was just the 14th amendment. And he was just an amicus brief, but he happened to belong to the NAACP, he belonged to the National Argue and he was also a member of the ACLU. And so, he wrote and submitted briefs under those three organizations but he didn't argue it. I was wrong at one point, I say it in the book and I'm wrong, that he argued it because I did come across a document that said he argued as an amicus which is sort of rare, but he didn't and I stand corrected. I don't think, and I haven't really read the Mendez case carefully to see if they use the Treaty of whatever, Hidalgo something or other, that for those that don't know, in California, Mexicans traditionally have been known as, are designated as Caucasians, white, and even though they're ill treated, it has something to do with the history of California being originally under the ownership of Mexico and Spain, and the whole sort of history of that. But I don't know. I haven't really read it carefully to know, because when I research I'm just looking for stuff for Miller. Yes ma'am? >> What is your next project you're working on? >> Dr. Amina Hassan: Well, I am having trouble with that. I was going to do something on Agustus Hawkins, who's the first African American and Congressman from the west. He was in the California Assembly for 20 years and then he became a Congressman, and he lived a long time, and he was very important in terms of labor and education. There's a Humphrey Hawkins Bill and I went to UCLA where his papers are about a dozen times and I just couldn't get fired up about him as a personality. What I liked about Miller is that he wasn't just committed to black people. He was just about what's right and what's legal. And that's why he's associated with Mexican Americans in California, with Japanese Americans, just very close to Jewish American community in California, particularly southern California. And that's what made him so interesting for me. And so I played around with the Agustus Hawkins thing for a while. Now I'm thinking something else, it just sort of popped up in my head the other day. So I think I might ask someone else to kind of give me their opinion about it because when I find that there are books that haven't been written like Loren Miller, there wasn't any, and I thought more people knew about him even though I didn't know very much about him. But as I've been speaking to people, I found that really, I'm just surprised that he's in because he really had done so much, there's an elementary school in Los Angeles, there's a park named after him. He is the co-founder of the Los Angeles Sentinel Newspaper in 1934. It is still functioning today. It has like over 150-175 thousand readers and he doesn't even get credit for that. It's his cousin, Leon Washington gets the credit for being the founder of this ongoing newspaper. He wrote editorials for it all the way through the 40's. He was always the legal consultant and when his cousin Leon Washington had a stroke, he took over this paper. But he also helped found it. In fact he brought his cousin from Kansas to Los Angeles. But he doesn't get credit for that. And that's really interesting. So yeah, there's another thing. I know California a little bit better, even though I live here, and I live part of the time in California. I know it a little better. But because, also I'm interested in the west because there's so much written about African Americans, it's mostly in the south or the east coast, not too much even from the Midwest. But you are seeing more and more things about African Americans and their contributions to the history of the country in northern and mostly southern California. More books are coming out, and so I kind of have more of an affinity for that, and I always like people who have been overlooked, or the kind of radio programs I used to do, it's always about people who are disenfranchised some kind of way. That always kind of gets my juices going. Any more questions? I think we're kind of close on our time. You want to come up here? Oh okay. Thank you. ^M00:49:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:49:31 >> Pam Jackson: So, thank you so much for sharing yourself and your work, your expertise. I just want to make sure everyone knows that we have the book for sale in the back and that Dr. Hassan will be signing books and available to talk a little bit more and sign the book in the back as well. And to again say thank you for being here. Books and Beyond hosted by the Center for the Book in partnership with the Daniel A.P. Murray Association. Thanks for being here today. Take care. ^M00:49:58 [ Applause ] ^M00:50:00 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at llc.gov.