- Good evening.
Now that we have our honored
guest this evening seated,
we will begin the program,
and I'll sing for you "There
Is A Sweet Sweet Spirit,"
Dr. Derrick Bell's favorite song.
(piano music)
♪ There's a sweet, sweet
spirit in this place ♪
♪ And I know that it's
the spirit of the Lord ♪
♪ There are sweet
expressions on each face ♪
♪ And I know they feel
the presence of the Lord ♪
♪ Sweet holy spirit ♪
♪ Sweet heavenly dove ♪
♪ Stay right here with us ♪
♪ Filling us with your love ♪
♪ And for these blessings ♪
♪ We lift our hearts in praise ♪
♪ Without a doubt, we'll know ♪
♪ That we have been revived ♪
♪ When we shall leave this place ♪
(audience applauding)
- Well that was truly beautiful.
Thank you for starting
the evening that way.
Welcome to all of you.
It is a great honor of mine
to welcome you to NYU Law School
for the 22nd annual Derrick Bell Lecture
on race in American society.
(audience applauding)
This lecture has quickly become one
of the most important
intellectual events here
at the law school every year,
and certainly one of my favorite as well.
As Janet knows, I have to
get on a plane for Madrid
in a couple of hours,
but didn't wanna miss at
least some of this evening.
It's always tremendously
enjoyable and inspiring.
We're delighted to see so
many of Derrick's family
and friends here with us this evening.
We're joined by his sister Janet Bell,
his sons Carter and Derrick the third,
and of course his widow, Dr. Janet Bell.
(audience applauding)
I've said on these evenings in past years
that I did not have the pleasure
and honor of knowing Derrick.
He passed before I
joined the faculty here,
but I see his influence,
his presence really,
everywhere in the school still today.
He had a profound impact
on this law school,
on its faculty and students,
but of course on law and
society more broadly,
and I know that none of you
here tonight needs convincing
on that point.
I know that you are here
because of the work that Derrick did,
because of the work that he inspired
and continues to inspire.
He was truly a tremendous
figure in constitutional law
and in civil rights law.
His leadership as a scholar, teacher,
and activist helped foster
a dialogue on the progress
of racial reform in the United States,
or in many cases, on the lack of progress
in racial reform in the United States.
And his steadfast sense
of integrity permeated truly every phase
of his celebrated career as
scholar, lawyer, and teacher.
We are are tremendously grateful
that Derrick eventually
chose NYU Law School
as his ultimate academic home,
where, as I say, he was admired
by faculty, administrators,
and students alike.
He was here, too, a
celebrated teacher in 2012.
We posthumously awarded him
the law school's Podell
Distinguished Teaching Award
for his outstanding achievements
as a constitutional law teacher,
and that's just one of the
innumerable examples I could list
of the many well deserved honors
that Derrick received in his lifetime.
So tonight we gather to celebrate
and carry his extraordinary legacy forward
and to continue to enhance
and expand upon the work,
and really the work agenda,
that he set out for the country
when it comes to race
in the United States.
The mission of this lecture
series is to examine the role
of race in American society,
and it has served as an important platform
for leading scholars and activists
to share their work on racial
justice and civil rights.
We welcome back tonight a
number of past Bell lecturers,
including Sherrilyn Ifill,
(audience applauding)
also Emma Coleman Jordan,
(audience applauding)
and Kendall Thomas.
(audience applauding)
Kendall was my
constitutional law professor
at another law school,
(audience laughing)
and it's wonderful to see
you back here, Kendall.
In a short while,
Ted Shaw will present
this year's Bell Lecture,
"Race and Rights in a Time of Madness:
"What Would Derrick Do," WWDD?
Ted will be introduced
formally in just a moment
by Vincent Southerland,
the Executive Director
of our new Center on Race,
Inequality, and the Law,
but I do just wanna say personally, Ted,
how thrilled we are that
you're here with us tonight
and how much we're looking
forward to hearing from you.
I also want to say how
pleased I am with the launch
of the Center on Race,
Inequality, and the Law
under the leadership of
Vincent and Tony Thompson,
its factory director.
I wanna recognize both of them
for the tremendous leadership
that they've exercised.
(audience applauding)
As you know, the Bell
Lecture is now housed
within the Center on a
permanent basis, and we know
that it will be an annual
critical event for the Center.
And the Center is doing tremendous work
in a number of ways already,
including involving our
students in its work.
And I'm just thrilled with that,
but now it is my great pleasure
to introduce Dr. Janet Bell,
who has been an integral member
of the law school
community for many years.
The Bell Lecture series was her idea.
It was conceived up by Janet
as a gift for Derrick's 65th birthday,
and it's not surprising
that Janet would think up
such a compelling event,
given her own professional
and personal commitment
to education and communication,
as well as to civil rights and justice.
Her career has, again unsurprisingly,
also been marked by an enduring dedication
to volunteer service and
to promoting initiatives
that increase diversity
and equal rights for all.
An indispensable member
of the NYU Law community.
We are grateful to have
you back with us tonight.
Dr. Bell.
(audience applauding)
- Good evening, everyone.
- [Audience] Good evening.
- I find it such a privilege
to be able to thank Trevor Morrison,
a great dean of this great law school,
who has been so supportive
institutionally and personally.
Thank you, Trevor.
Derrick lived to teach, and
teaching kept him alive.
For him, it was always students first.
That was a mantra in our household.
In that universal encyclopedia,
his portrait is next to
the definition of mentor.
For him, there was no
higher calling than teacher.
It is always gratifying and humbling
that students here this year,
who never met him in person,
are still very much his students,
continuing to carry on his work
with integrity and dedication.
Let me acknowledge our three sons.
Derrick Bell the third.
And y'all stand up.
I'm not gonna say this to everybody.
Everyone, I say your name, stand up.
(audience laughing)
Douglas DuBois Bell is not here tonight.
And Carter Robeson Bell.
(audience applauding)
I always point out the
significance of those names.
Our family wit is Carter-bound.
He always points out that he
actually has three last names.
Carter, being in honor of
one of Derrick's mentors,
Robert L. Carter, and his wife, Gloria.
The late Judge Carter argued
the first Brown v. Board case
before the Supreme Court
and taught at this law school.
By the way, Derrick's other mentor
was the late civil rights attorney
and judge, Constance Baker Motley.
I like to especially acknowledge
Derrick's baby sister,
Janet A. Bell, who
traveled from Pittsburgh
(audience applauding)
to be with us today.
Thanks, too, to our adopted daughter,
Lisa Marie Boykin, NYU Law '95.
(audience applauding)
Woo hoo!
A first among equals,
who remains a faithful
and incomparable standard
bearer of the Bell legacy.
I especially want to lift up the memory
of Derrick's first wife,
Jewel Hairston Bell,
a phenomenal woman
(audience applauding)
who died before Derrick and I met.
As partners in all things,
she and Derrick set the standard.
Years ago, there was a group of people
who helped found this lecture.
You know, you do not do this alone.
Judge Robert L. Carter,
Paulette Jones Robinson,
Valerie Cavanaugh, and Bill Kerstetter,
who are here tonight.
People wanna see you.
Stand up, stand up!
(audience applauding)
Valerie and Bill represent an illustrious
and fierce group of social
justice and legal advocates.
In our village, too, is
the international lawyer,
one of Derrick's first students
at Harvard, Alice Young,
(audience applauding)
who along with Charles
Ogletree, Harvard professor
and Derrick's student at Harvard,
helped endow this series.
Thank you.
We've had recent major assists
from Dr. Kitty M. Steel
and Lewis Steel, and
from Ted and Nina Wells.
Lewis Steel and Ted and Nina
Wells are with us tonight.
I know you're there!
(audience applauding)
Bell Lecturers have been
consistently wonderful
and brilliant, and there
is no exception tonight.
I'd like to say personal thanks
for this 22-year-old series,
one of the first of its
kind in the country.
To former dean and university
president, John Sexton,
a Bell student at Harvard,
who championed this
series from the beginning,
and successor, the very shy Ricky Revesz,
who is here somewhere.
(audience applauding)
He's in the back!
Got him!
With enduring thanks to LACA,
the Law Alumni of Color Association,
and its president, Rafiq Kalam Id-Din.
(audience applauding)
Special thanks, too, to
the Office of Development
and Alumni Relations for
taking the care and attention
to this series year after year,
and I especially would like
to acknowledge the Associate
Director, Kelley Spencer,
for going way beyond the call of duty.
(audience applauding)
Now on behalf of the Bell
family and extended family,
I continue to pledge our commitment
to this wonderful law school.
Derrick loved it.
Represented in part by this lecture series
and the courtyard bench with
a plaque in Derrick's honor.
Derrick also donated his
archives to this school.
And other scholars have been using it,
so I encourage you to do so.
There are now almost 170 boxes cataloged
in the Bell archives with more to come.
Derrick was prolific.
(audience chuckling)
I would like to tonight,
given all that's going on in the world,
to really point out David Goodman.
I didn't tell him I was doing this.
David, where are you?
- [David] Here.
(audience laughing)
David Goodman, in the back.
(audience applauding)
David Goodman's brother,
Andrew Goodman, was assassinated
in Mississippi by white supremacists,
along with James Chaney
and Michael Schwerner.
David has remained a
social justice leader.
Thank you, David.
(audience applauding)
David and others took a stand, or a knee,
(audience laughing)
for justice.
I love this part.
To thank, he gets so
embarrassed, the brilliant,
he's falling under his chair,
kind and humble Vice Dean,
Randy Hertz, who is the--
(audience applauding)
You know him!
Who is the faculty liaison for this series
since Derrick's passing.
Students, everyone loves Randy.
He is so humble.
He is student focused.
Now it's my great pleasure
to introduce someone
who really needs no
introduction, Anthony Thompson,
Tony Thompson, who is the
founding faculty director
for the New York University
Center on Race, Inequality,
and the Law.
Can I have an amen?
- [Audience] Yeah! (applauds)
- A renowned professor of clinical law,
he teaches courses related to
criminal law and litigation.
His scholarship focuses
on race, offender reentry,
criminal justice issues, and leadership.
His book, "Redeeming Prisoners,
Redeeming Communities,"
is an in-depth look at the
issues of reentry, race,
politics, and media.
His article "Stopping
the Usual Suspects: Race
"and the Fourth Amendment"
is a substantial contribution
to the field and frequently cited
by legal scholars and the media.
He has many awards,
among them teaching awards at this school,
the NYU's Podell
Distinguished Teaching Award
and the university's
Distinguished Teaching Award.
He received the EL award from El Diario
for his community service.
Now Derrick loved music.
Almost every program includes music.
Tonight we have,
you've heard him earlier
tonight, Roscoe Boyd.
Wasn't he fine?
(audience applauding)
And pianist Kenneth Hanson.
Now every year, some of
you do not get the memo
(audience laughing)
that we're doing the Stevie Wonder version
of "Happy Birthday,"
because this is not only
a serious lecture series.
It's a celebration of
Derrick's exemplary life
of meaning and worth,
and it's a celebration of his birthday.
(audience laughing and clapping)
(piano music)
♪ Happy birthday to ya ♪
♪ Happy birthday to ya ♪
♪ Happy birthday, happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
(audience applauding)
- Good evening.
- [Audience] Good evening.
- Lot about the law's timing.
Last year at this event,
Sherrilyn Ifill made it a point
to tell me not ever to
be on the stage again
when that song was sung.
(audience laughing)
So I know to wait to come up.
(audience laughing)
(laughs) We are so pleased this evening
to have you all here, and part
of this evening will happen
after Ted's important comments,
when we get to unveil the
Derrick Bell portrait.
We are very excited about that.
(audience applauding)
Derrick would be so pleased tonight,
my friend, my mentor, my colleague,
to have in the same room
Sherrilyn, Elaine Jones,
a history that bridges us
through the civil rights era.
We can't tell you how
pleased we are you're here.
12 years ago, I got a
call from a former student
and a mentee of mine.
He said there was a young
lawyer that I should talk to
up in the Bronx, and
we had a conversation.
And in the ensuing time,
that young lawyer became
a very good attorney
under Sherrilyn's tutelage at the LDF.
He handled issues of racial
justice and the death penalty
and the intersection of
race and criminal justice.
He went on to become a fantastic
young federal defender,
and for me, he represents the future.
I've seen him in those 12
years become a great husband,
a great father.
He represents the best in all of us.
Join me in welcoming my
Executive Director at the Center
of Race, Inequality, and
Law, Vincent Southerland.
(audience applauding and cheering)
- Good evening.
- [Audience] Good evening.
- And thank you for those
very warm words, Tony.
So as he said, my name
is Vincent Southerland.
I'm the Executive Director
of the Center on Race,
Inequality, and the Law.
We attack racism in the
institutions that govern our lives
through public education, research,
advocacy, and litigation.
We seek to put critical
race theory into practice
and rest our work on the
notion that not everything
that is faced can be changed,
but that nothing can be
changed until it is faced.
I have the distinct honor
of introducing tonight's
lecturer, Ted Shaw.
The title of his lecture, "Race and Rights
"in the Time of Madness:
What Would Derrick Do," WWDD,
(audience laughing)
is, as typical of Ted, perfectly stated.
We seem to be living in increasingly mad
and maddening times.
White supremacists are gathering
for White Lives Matter rallies in places
like San Francisco and Berkeley
and Murfreesboro, Tennesee,
and Charlottesville, Virginia.
They're emboldened and countenanced
by the current occupant of the White House
and those who support and guide his agenda
and find allegiances with
those who, for the moment,
control the levers of power.
It's against that backdrop
that we have gathered tonight
to hear from Ted, to be
privy to his wise counsel.
Informed by the prolific genius of one
of the country's most foremost
minds on race, Derrick Bell.
Ted comes to us
as the Julius L. Chambers
Distinguished Professor of Law
and Director of the
Center for Civil Rights
at the University of North
Carolina School of Law,
Chapel Hill.
But the fact of the matter
is that Ted comes to us
from the battlefield.
Of course, the state of
North Carolina has seen more
than its fair share of
struggles with race and justice,
and Ted has been at the
forefront of those struggles
for a very long time.
Since 2014, when he took the
current (stutters), excuse me,
when he took the position
he currently holds,
when even though he's
been engaged in a battle
for the better part of the last year,
as UNC's Board of Governors
has played politics
with the civil rights of those
who Ted and the Center seek to vindicate.
Voting to bar the litigation activities
of all the UNC centers,
the only one of which
that actually engages in any
litigation is Ted's center.
But that battle continues.
And of course, Ted's time at
UNC is just the latest stop
in a career that has been defined
by struggles for justice in the pneumatic
of what Professor Bell would
call meaning and worth.
He was born, at the risk
of revealing his age,
when Brown v. Board of Education
became the law of the land.
And when he graduated
from Columbia Law School,
he immediately set out to
advance the principles enshrined
by Brown and his progeny
in the constitutional
underpinnings through the work
on civil rights and racial
justice as a trial attorney
in the Department of Justice's
civil rights division.
In 1982, at another time of madness,
he joined NAACP Legal Defense Fund,
America's counsel on race
and one of the finest civil
rights law firms in the country.
Over the next 26 years,
Ted did just about everything one can do
as a lawyer at the Legal Defense Fund.
Where race and the law intersected,
you would find Ted Shaw
with his keen intellect,
sharp wit, and wise
judgment doing the work
to hold America to the promises made
in its foundational documents.
Following a few years spent
teaching at Michigan Law,
he went on to serve as
Associate Director Counsel
and then Director Counsel of
the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Until 2008, when he left
to help Barack Obama's justice
department find its sea legs
and do the type of work that
was so desperately needed
after an eight-year hiatus
imposed by the Bush years.
There is much more I could
say about all the things
that Ted has done throughout his career.
His various teaching positions,
all of the professional
honors and accolades,
awards and activities,
but let me just say this.
Wherever Ted has been, from the halls
of the Justice Department
to the halls of academia,
from the storied civil rights law firms
to international gatherings and convenings
on race and human rights,
Ted has been a drum major
for justice, human and civil rights.
I also happen to know that
he is an incredible father,
a wonderful husband, and
an all-around great person,
one dedicated to his
family and to supporting
and nurturing those who aspire
to follow in his footsteps
and can only hope to do 1/10 of the things
that he has done and will continue to do.
And that's why I am so
very proud to welcome him
as he adds one more chapter
to an incredibly storied legal career,
delivering this year's
Derrick Bell Lecture.
Please join me in welcoming Theodore Shaw.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you, Vince.
I just told Vince that
that was very kind of him.
I couldn't have been more flattering
if I had written it myself.
(audience laughing)
I'm honored to be here tonight.
I want to thank Kelley Spencer.
Where's Kelley Spencer?
Somewhere, okay.
So I wanna thank her,
because she spent more
time than she should have
in trying to shepherd
me toward this evening
(audience laughing)
while I was focused on many other things,
some of which I'll talk about tonight.
And so I am very thankful to
her for all that she has done.
I also want to say
thank you to Janet Bell.
I was listening to you, Janet,
and I was thinking about,
I hope you don't mind me
saying this, but I was thinking
about how much grace and dignity you have.
(audience applauding)
And I was thinking about
your love for Derrick,
and Janet, you really
demonstrate in everything you do
and what you are that love doesn't die.
And so I wanna thank you for your part
in letting me be part of this evening
and to remember Derrick.
So I am also conscious of the fact
that there are so many friends here
that I'm so tempted to call out names,
but you know if I do that,
I'll be in deep trouble.
(audience chuckling)
I will offend people for
not calling out their names
when I intend to.
I do have to acknowledge the presence
of my sister, Vivian Buckingham.
Where are you, Vivian?
(audience applauding)
Somewhere.
Oh, there you are.
You know, I embarrass her all the time,
and I take great pleasure in doing it.
(audience laughing)
Vivian Buckingham of the
Manassas, Virginia Buckinghams.
(audience laughing)
And somewhere my brother, Christopher.
I was looking for him as I came down here.
Chris, where are you?
He's somewhere in here.
I don't quite see him.
And finally, but certainly not last,
and I won't explain this.
I don't have time to explain it,
but believe me, it's in my heart.
And I wish I did.
Reverend John T. Meehan, who
is sitting back over this way.
Father Meehan, just raise
your hand for a minute.
(audience applauding)
All I can tell you, in the
best sense of the word,
I would not be who I am and
where I am, but for that man.
So let me see if I can get through this,
because I know that we have an unveiling.
And I also know, as I am conscious of,
once I start, I can go,
(audience laughing)
and this is the wrong time to do that
and the wrong place to do that.
So let me share some
thoughts with you, if I may.
And I usually don't read speeches.
I'm no good at doing that.
Although I did a lot of writing here,
I don't know how much I'm
gonna actually deliver
that I wrote.
But I am deeply honored
to be here tonight,
and there's been a great line of people
who have given this lecture,
most of whom I know pretty well,
some of whom are my dearest friends,
and some of whom I'm thinking
about a lot these days.
So Derrick has been gone
from us now since 2011,
so for six years.
And in many ways, the country
that he left us with is not
the country that we have now.
In fact, it's hard to recognize
the country we have now.
And I'm conscious of the
fact that Derrick Bell lived
to see the first African
American president
of the United States.
I'm glad he lived to see that.
Since his passing, many
of us have found ourselves
in a time that challenges our souls,
and it is a time, I think,
increasingly of madness.
I've thought many times
about the opening lines
of Charles Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities."
I'm sure many of you have.
And so if we can reimagine his
opening lines for a moment.
I think that it's appropriate.
We can apply it to the present.
It is the best of times.
It is the worst of times.
It is the information age.
It is the age of fake news.
It is the epic of scientific knowledge.
It is the epic of scientific denial.
It is the season of light.
It is the season of darkness.
It is the spring of hope.
It is the winter of despair.
We have everything before us.
We have nothing before us.
As Dickens wrote so long ago,
"We are all going directly to heaven.
"We are all going direct the other way."
We are in post-racial America.
We are in an America that is as infected
and driven by racism as it has ever been.
In short, the period
is so unlike any other
in our nation's history
that many of us are unsure
about the survival of American
democracy as we know it.
We have had a twice-elected eloquent
and constitutionally steeped
African American president
of the United States
whose signature achievement
was national health care.
(audience applauding)
We have had an African American president
who was respected as a
leader throughout the world,
who exemplified dignity and grace,
who was a role model for tens of millions
of African Americans and
all American children,
whose administration was
remarkably scandal free.
(audience chuckling)
And we now have, and let me preface this.
(audience laughing)
I don't come here lightly or easily
to deliver a partisan polemic talk.
Really, it's not what I would want to do,
and in fact, as a lecturer
in this series, Janet,
I struggle with whether I should talk
about law in an academic address.
But I cannot be here
tonight without talking
about where we are in
this country right now,
and by definition, it will
sound partisan in some ways.
All I can do is assure
you that there are times
when I don't love Democrats either.
(audience laughing and clapping)
But having said that, having said that,
we have a mentally and
emotionally unstable,
narcissistic, and bellicose president.
- [Audience Member] That's right.
- Who has defended and
harbored white supremacists,
who has unapologetically said
racist and misogynist things
to the people of America,
who is boorish and crude,
and I don't have to
tell you why I say that,
who openly disdains the rule of law,
whose administration is
oblivious to the ways
that government and ethics operate,
who forces us to explain
things to our children
that they shouldn't have to hear,
especially from the President
of the United States,
who is an embarrassment
on the world stage,
and who is unashamedly
ignorant or uncaring
about how our constitutional
design was intended to work.
Now I apologize.
I couldn't say some of those
things without stumbling.
(audience laughing)
If Dickens were to return and write a tale
about early 21st century United States,
it might be entitled "A
Tale of Two Americas."
One is the old America,
which for 232 years
elected an unbroken chain
of white men to be president.
Grover Cleveland, of course,
served two nonconsecutive terms,
and so you have to
consider that in account,
but you get the point.
The new America's
reflected in the election
of our 44th president,
Barack Obama in 2008
to the first of his two terms,
and appeared to usher in an era
in which it was finally
true that any child
in America could grow up to be president.
Yet the current president,
the current occupant of the White House,
that's usually what I call him,
however, owes his
position in no small part
to the fact that President
Obama is an African American.
The cause of an immense tidal wave
of opposition, extraordinary opposition,
to the very legitimacy of his presidency
and to the very idea
that an African American
could become president.
To be sure, not all of the opposition
to Barack Obama's presidency
was rooted in race.
We have to acknowledge that.
Bipartisanship and ideological
opposition is a defining
and a largely healthy factor of life
for every presidential administration.
Bitter partisanship has marked politics
throughout American history.
Those who believe the United
States is more divided today
than ever before simply
don't know history.
And I say that, because in
the early days of the country,
all we have to do is remember,
and some of you have seen a
depiction of this recently.
I haven't been able to afford it.
(audience laughing)
A sitting Vice President
of the United States shot
and killed a former Secretary
of the Treasury in a duel
across the river in New Jersey.
All we have to do is think
about, of course, the Civil War,
which apparently is not yet over.
(audience laughing)
Although it could have been
avoided, apparently, also
(audience laughing)
if there was a compromise.
Many Americans, I among them, believe
that the United States may be
facing an existential crisis.
Some say that that's too
pessimistic, too dark,
and I wanna share with some of you,
with all of you, rather, but
apologize to some of you,
because some of you have seen this before.
Something that I wrote in
January, on January 31 of 2016,
and I don't do it in a
I-told-you-so kind of state of mind,
as much as maybe because
when we say things,
we find that they're a
balm for us (laughing),
because we said it the way we wanted to.
But one night, I woke
up, and I couldn't sleep.
Couldn't get back to sleep.
And I wrote something.
You have to remember that
this was in January of 2016.
The primaries were even
not fully under way,
so it wasn't clear what was gonna happen.
"In my early 20s,
"I read William Shirer's 'Rise
and Fall of the Third Reich.'
"It is a massive documentation
of how Hitler came to power,
"of the Nazi era, and
how it came to its end.
"Hitler fed on Germany's humiliation
"in the aftermath of
the Treaty of Versailles
"and promised to make
the German people strong
"and their nation great again.
"He demonized and scapegoated
minority groups, Jews,
"Roma, that is Gypsies,
"Africans, disabled, homosexuals,
"and others in the
terminology of the time,
"and rode a wave of ultra-nationalism
"and popular sentiment to power.
"In its early years,
"the National Socialist
party was not perceived
"to be a significant threat.
"They were a fringe group of extremists
"whose leader, Adolf Hitler,
"was a carnival barker
supported by a group of thugs.
"After all, Germany was a quote
civilized end quote nation
"that, while on the losing
side of the first World War,
"had added a great deal
to European culture.
"One of the most profound moral questions
"of the 20th century was
how the Nazis came to power
"in one of the greatest European nations
"and how in our time, and even those of us
"who were born after World
War II, it was still our time,
"how in our time, they engaged
in genocide and mass murder
"on an almost unprecedented scale.
"To be sure, genocide and mass murders
"in the name of nationalism, religion,
"and ethnic and racial
superiority remain a hallmark
"of the human condition.
"As Americans, we like
to think of ourselves
"as immune from these threats.
"After all, we were on the
quote right side end-quote
"of World War II, a
quote just war end-quote.
"And indeed, it was true.
"It was a just war, as far
as any war can be just.
"In any event, it was necessary.
"Now we find ourselves in another century
"in a yet more technologically
advanced civilization.
"The United States has seen the election
"of its first African
American president twice.
"The demographics of our
country have changed,
"so that its historical majority is being
"numerically overtaken.
"Some take these changes in stride
"and even celebrate these changes
"as evidence of the strength
of America's diversity.
"Some are deeply unsettled,
some even unhinged.
"We are in uncharted territory.
"There are many who cry out
"to quote take our country back end quote
"and who are ready to follow one
"who claims to be able to restore
"what they are told is
America's lost greatness
"and strength.
"An American carnival barker has risen
"to be the front runner of
one of our two major parties,
"which in recent years has
increasingly become a party
"of intolerance and has harbored racists,
"ultra-nationalists, and others,
"who claim legitimacy
at the expense of those
"from whom they differ.
"At first, many did not
take seriously the idea
"that Donald Trump was a political threat
"to win the Republican
nomination for the presidency.
"His presence in the race was a crude form
"of political entertainment.
"Regardless of political differences,
"we told ourselves the Republican
party would assert itself
"and end this political circus
"and the unthinkable possibility
of a Trump presidency.
"Meanwhile, Trump has demonized Mexicans
"as criminals and rapists,
"called for building a wall
on our southern border,
"engaged in racist rhetoric
"and innuendo aimed at our president,
"advocated a ban on all Muslims
"from entering the United States,
"called for violent treatment
of anti-racism protestors
"at one of his public rallies,
"engaged in an ugly
mocking and belittling rant
"against a disabled reporter
who disagreed with him,
"on and on."
I go on to talk about the press,
his relationship with the press,
and I ended up saying,
"As bad as it is, it is one thing
"for a narcissistic,
egomaniacal public personality
"to engage in this manner
as a private citizen.
"It's another when that
individual is seeking
"to wield the power of the presidency
"of the United States of America.
"And it's yet another
"when that individual
is the leading candidate
"of one of our country's
two major parties.
"For some time now, I have believed
"that our nation is in real danger.
"I hope that I am suffering from paranoia.
"I hope that I am proven wrong.
"The threat we face does
not have to be the same
"as that faced by
Germany in the first half
"of the 20th century, but
as I watch events unfold,
"I am unsure about where we are going,
"and I keep thinking
this is how it happens."
That was on January 31 of 2016.
How much more is there to add since then?
And so I know I went on at some length.
I can tell you, though,
that we are very much under assault daily.
Every day, there is something new.
There is a new Twitter bomb.
There's new assaults on individuals,
and in fact, we live in a country now
where Nazis aren't only the
stuff of a television network
that looks back at World War II,
but they're marching in our streets.
And Klansmen.
Do you recognize America, the
country that we live in now?
I think that we can't be so sanguine
about the fact that our
country is being changed
in many ways, largely because of the fear
about what happened with
the Obama presidency.
For decades, those of us
who do civil rights work...
I should have acknowledged Elaine Jones,
because she has taught me
more than I could ever learn,
and of course, now, Sherrilyn Ifill.
But those of us who do this work,
many others in this room,
those of us who are conscious
of the continuation of racism
in this country have been
told that we are paranoid,
that we're stuck in the past.
We've even been called,
at times, race pimps,
that is to say, that we are
making a living off of race,
because presumably we
couldn't do anything else.
And we've said for so
long that we're not done
with the work of civil rights.
Derrick knew that.
When I met Derrick Bell,
and in some ways, you know, Derrick went
to the Justice Department
early in his career.
And Derrick left the Justice Department,
(audience laughing)
because he was a member of the NAACP
and they wouldn't let him do that.
They didn't like that, so he left.
I went to the Justice Department
under the Carter administration
and left under the Reagan administration,
because it was not a tenable
place for me any longer.
I did school desegregation
cases, as Derrick did,
and when I read Derrick's
writings early on,
some of them were hard for
me to accept and process.
I was committed to doing
school desegregation work.
I believed that it was righteous work,
and that Brown meant something
significant to all Americans,
that, as I've often said,
it was a dividing line
between a BC and an AD.
Before Brown in this country,
black folks, African
Americans, were subordinated
by race for hundreds of years.
After Brown, at least under law,
racial subordination was no longer legal,
and so Brown meant a great deal.
It inspired new generations
of civil rights lawyers.
So when I heard Derrick saying
that school desegregation,
in his article "Serving Two Masters,"
has not worked out that well.
And he challenged some of the assumptions
that were sacred in the
very places where I worked
and he used to work.
And so that was difficult.
Now I wrote something recently
in which I acknowledged the fact,
and many of you know this
better than I know it,
that the accomplishments
of the civil rights movement sometimes,
maybe even more often than
not, were won in spite of,
not because of, the relationships of those
who worked for civil rights.
There were some folks
who were oil and water,
and when you talk about
serving two masters,
Janet, there were times when I felt,
in a way different than what
Derrick was writing about
when he wrote about school desegregation,
that I knew different masters.
I chose not to make those my
fights, more often than not.
But I thought Derrick
was cynical, too cynical.
I was much more optimistic about that.
As it turns out, when Derrick talked about
how race and racism is a
continuing fact of American life,
that it had not been eliminated,
we didn't know the half of it.
And in fact, I'm not even
sure maybe Derrick did know
how bad it was, but maybe he didn't.
I don't know, but I think
that it's very clear now
that those who've been saying we've been
in post-racial America, I don't know
how they can continue to make
those arguments right now,
because there's nothing subtle about it.
It's not dog whistle.
You know, it is those
sirens that you, you know.
You know the ones I'm talking about.
There's nothing subtle about it.
And so I think about Derrick a lot.
I go back, and I reread what he wrote.
I think about what's
happening in the country.
I think about the fact that we do have
in the White House someone
who is harboring white supremacists
and who, at the very least,
appears to be if he's not,
and frankly I'm not inclined
to give him the benefit
of the doubt,
(audience chuckling)
is a white supremacist.
- [Audience Member] Oh, yeah.
- So these are tough times.
These are difficult times.
This is not democracy as we saw it,
and the idea that history
is a march toward progress
that goes in one direction,
is one that, I think, may
not be completely accurate.
So I moved, as many of
you know, from New York.
I left Kendall and others,
Trevor at the time, I think.
No, Trevor, you had just left, I think.
At Colombia Law School a few years ago
and went to North Carolina.
Julius Chambers had been
trying to get me to come
to North Carolina along
with another LDF lawyer
who was dean of the law
school by then, Jack Boger,
and to accept a chair in Julius's name
and to run a center for civil rights.
Julius is one of the great Americans.
If you don't know his life story,
there's a new biography out about him
that I encourage you to
read, published by UNC Press.
He's one of the great Americans
and North Carolinians.
So long story short,
although we lost Julius
around that time, I went,
because North Carolina's important.
And because Chapel Hill
isn't a bad place to live.
(audience laughing)
I have to tell you that I've
seen things and learned things
since I've been in North Carolina
that have been eye opening.
I've learned more about human beings,
about how people can be
unabashedly, unapologetically,
not only openly racist,
but just flat out evil
in what they do.
I don't want to sound naive,
but when you have folks like people
on the Board of Governors who have voted
to strip the Center for Civil Rights
of its power and authority
to do civil rights cases,
to represent poor black and brown people
who are struggling with
the legacy of racism.
And they do it for reasons
that are patently dishonest.
You know, when you see people do that,
and they say they're
doing it for one reason,
but you then make clear
that that's not the reason.
You know, for those of us
who are civil rights lawyers,
I'm thinking about you, Judge Clement,
who sat on the bench
and heard these cases.
What happens when you
disprove a proffered reason
for taking an action
in the context of race?
At least it's open to the inference
that race was the reason why you did it.
That's what's been
happening in North Carolina,
but the North Carolina legislature
and the Board of Governors
has acted in a range of ways
that works against the
interests of African Americans.
The monster voter suppression bill,
as it's been called,
to strip voting rights
from citizens in every
way that they could.
Fourth Circuit finds that they attacked
and targeted black voters
with surgical precision.
Surgical precision, that's the
words of the Fourth Circuit.
When you see laws being
passed that now put a lock
on partisan gerrymandering,
which effectively means
that the ability to choose
your representatives is denied.
Now this has been done on grounds of race,
and we now have in the
Supreme Court a case
under consideration with respect
to partisan gerrymandering.
Let me be clear.
Some of us in this room,
Sherrilyn, who I guess
I knew she had to leave,
but Sherrilyn, Elaine, others
who did voting rights cases,
we worked for majority black
congressional districts
and county representation
and municipal representation
across the South,
because it was the only way
in the face of racial
divisiveness at the polls,
it was the only way that we were able
to get representation
of African Americans.
I think we were right
to do that at the time.
That's how we desegregated
Congress, for the most part,
and state legislatures, et cetera.
That's the only reason
we were able to do it.
Some people told us that
we were wrong to do it,
that it would hurt Democrats,
and I used to say, "Well,
why should black people have
"to be the basis for making
sure that Democrats are elected?
"This is really about how
white people are voting.
"That's what we should be talking about."
Having said all that,
although I think we were right
in doing it when we did it,
I've been saying this to Sherrilyn.
She agrees; others are thinking about it.
In places like North Carolina
and states across the country,
we now have to unpack these districts,
because they've been
packed with representation
of African Americans
beyond what's necessary
to give the opportunity to
elect representatives of choice.
And the result has been the
gerrymandering that we've seen
that in North Carolina has
elected not only a lock
on Republican representation,
but extremist representation.
That's a real challenge.
I can't tell you what it's like
in the little bit of time I have
to be in North Carolina now,
to have the Center stripped
of the ability to bring representation
in civil rights cases, or provide it.
But not only that, can't
even give legal counsel
to poor black and brown people.
Not only that, you can't even refer cases
to other lawyers without
violating this BOG rule.
I think that's a violation
of the First Amendment,
by the way, and what lawyers do generally.
But basically, to close down that center
with respect to representation.
We could still do research,
and I intend to do that,
and to write papers,
and certainly to speak
against racial injustice.
But we can't do what
lawyers do any longer.
Not only that, and I share this
with a little bit of hesitation,
because it's not quite out
there public yet, publicly,
but it will be there
within the next day or two.
So I probably ought not say this,
but there was an anonymous complaint filed
against the Center.
This is after the BOG did what it,
the Board of Governors
did what it did already,
but they're not done with the Center yet.
An anonymous complaint saying
that the Center is engaging
in the unauthorized practice of law.
(audience murmuring)
I'm not gonna get into all the details
of why that's a problematic assertion,
especially given the
fact that the state bar
that processes these
complaints certifies students
to work under their rules and
to be able to go to court,
and certifies them and
the places that they work.
So in doing that, and we have the letters
in which they certified it,
does this mean that the state
bar is certifying people
to work at an office that engages
in the unauthorized practice of law?
It doesn't make sense,
but you would be mistaken
if you think that the state
bar is beyond the reach
of the mean-spirited politics
of North Carolina right now.
I see these people, and
I see how they operate.
And I ask, what kind of people are these?
What kind of people are these?
This is a different kind of person.
And they're not ashamed of it.
They revel in it,
so in North Carolina, some
people say, "Why are you there?
"Come on back to New York, or
at least get out of there."
And my answer is this.
Sometimes you run from fires.
Sometimes you run to them.
And North Carolina, in many
respects, is ground zero,
but it's also reflective
of what's happening around the country.
It's not like we can escape
racism in North Carolina
and go to an America that is racism free.
We are in a country right now in which,
as I've indicated, race is
out here right up front.
Racism right up front.
A president of the United
States, a Chief of Staff,
they're still fighting a civil war.
Years ago, I gave a ride
to a young man from Wells
to Ann Arbor from the airport in Detroit,
and I was asking him
what was his experience
while he was a graduate
student in the United States.
What did he think about our country?
I didn't know what I was gonna hear.
I wasn't fishing.
He might say, "I love it.
"It's a great place,
greatest place on Earth."
And he said that what he was
struck by is how in America,
it seems that race is still
the most important thing.
He said it's like a civil war
that you hold under your breath.
And I thought about that over the years.
That's exactly what it is,
except now it isn't even
under our breath anymore.
It's open.
I'm one, and I'll wrap this up.
I am one, Janet, who when
we're driving down the roads
of North Carolina and
Virginia and elsewhere,
I read these road markers, these signs,
historical markers.
Drive my wife crazy.
I have her stop.
Well, she figured out a way
that we didn't have to stop,
because actually there's
an app for these signs,
(audience laughing)
and you can read them without stopping.
(audience laughing)
But I also am one who goes
to see a lot of the places
that were significant in American history.
I've been to Harpers Ferry.
I've seen where John
Brown led his rebellion.
John Brown was treated as if he was insane
for rebelling against slavery.
I've been to Gettysburg.
I understand the loss
of life at Gettysburg,
how painful an episode
Gettysburg in the Civil War was
and how Americans on both
sides of it lost lives.
I understand that.
For me, just because you
go and visit these places,
doesn't make you a racist.
I've been to Fort Sumter to see
where the first shots were
fired, because I like history.
I'm a student of history.
And there's some places I
think we all have to see,
if we really want to
understand American history,
in many ways, but that doesn't mean
that I in any way venerate
the statue of Silent Sam
who stands on the campus,
in the middle of the campus at UNC,
erected by the Daughters of
the Confederacy and alumni,
honoring Confederate soldiers
who fought in the Civil War,
not the soldiers or the students from UNC
who fought in the Union army.
And there were many of them, too.
And when it was dedicated, Julian Carr,
Carrboro, North Carolina,
next door to Chapel Hill,
named after him now,
Julian Carr talked about
how when he came back from Appomattox,
he, just days after that,
horse whipped a quote
black wench end quote
who had fled to the campus for shelter
after she had insulted a white woman
in the quiet village of Chapel Hill.
That statue stands on the campus
in a central place,
venerated and protected
by recently enacted North Carolina law.
Think about what that means.
That statue is nothing
if it is not a monument
to those who fought to preserve
slavery and white supremacy,
so we're still fighting the Civil War.
We were fighting it in
Charlottesville recently,
and we're fighting it around the country,
and in the White House,
and in other places
with this presidency.
I don't know where we're
going as a country.
I know that Derrick was
a man of great principle.
And I think sometimes, and I wonder
whether I ought to do what Derrick did
and resign from UNC.
I'm not Derrick.
I don't claim to have what Derrick had.
I know that I am fighting these folks
and will fight them with
everything that I can.
Derrick was in many ways
conscious of these dilemmas.
He wrote about it, right?
"Ethical Ambition," if
you haven't read it,
it's really profound.
You ought to read it.
I recommend it to you.
I planned to read from it,
but I've been going on too long anyways.
So I need to stop.
But the point is this,
that each one of us has to,
inside of us, find out what
this means to us as individuals
and to us collectively at this time
to be an American, to be in
America, to see the madness
that is occupying the
White House right now
and our government and
that is denied every day
by people in media, by
people in political parties,
by people who frankly don't care
about the issues that
many of us care about.
What would Derrick do?
I don't know what Derrick would do,
but I know that he would tell us,
because he's told us this already,
to find out what's in each one of us.
That little voice that
tells you to stand up
and speak against the
day, as the saying goes.
That's what we're called
upon right now to do,
to speak against the day,
because this is not normal.
It's not a good day.
It's not the America that
we committed ourselves to,
and so I know Derrick
would, one way or another,
be engaged in struggle every day,
every day and every way that he could
against what's going on.
And I urge all of us to do that.
It's not just North Carolina.
It's the entire country that's
infected by a madness now.
We can wait for the special
prosecutor and hope,
but I think that we have
to raise our voices.
We have to vote.
We have to organize.
We have to speak against this day
and bend the course of
history back to a path
where it's something
that we can be proud of
when we leave what's left of this world
and its country to our children.
So that's what's been on
my mind and in my heart.
I have a whole lot more
that I was prepared to say,
but I've gone on long enough.
And there's a portrait
that needs to be unveiled,
and I wanna see it.
(audience laughing)
And so thank you for letting
me share some thoughts
with you.
(audience applauding)
Thank you.
- Can I have your attention please?
(audience murmuring)
In the 20 plus years I've
been on this faculty,
this is one of my most cherished moments.
The images that we put on our walls
in an institution reflect our values,
and Derrick Bell's image
should be on our walls.
(audience applauding and cheering)
Derrick has launched the careers
of many civil rights lawyers
and many legal academics.
Many of us are in this
profession because of Derrick.
I spent a lot of time mad at Derrick.
My first year in law school,
Derrick and I became friends,
and then he up and left.
(audience laughing)
He left because he had a principle
that there should be women
of color on the tenure track,
and he stood on that principle.
And people said to Derrick,
"You can't leave Harvard.
"This is the pinnacle of your career."
And Derrick said, "I have principle,
"and I stand on principle."
We've learned a great deal from Derrick.
Those of you who don't know,
he has mentored and supported those of us
who have been litigators,
those of us who have been academics,
and some, like my wife and
myself, who have been both,
but he has been quite
supportive of us over the years.
And when Derrick left Harvard,
one of the things that made me so proud
of this institution is
that he was to come here
and to spend his career
continuing to mentor students
and to do his work.
I was never so proud of an institution
as I was of the New York
University School of Law.
(audience applauding)
Derrick Bell represents
the best of what we do,
and it's because of Derrick
that many of us do it.
But before we unveil this portrait,
which I am so anxious to do,
I want to give Janet the
chance to give some words
on behalf of the Bell family.
(audience applauding)
- I just want to say that I
had nothing to do with this.
(audience laughing)
And the reason I say that is
that this is out of the vision
and the kindness and the
hope of Tony Thompson,
Anthony Tony Thompson, for
what should represent Derrick
at this law school.
So Tony Thompson, thank you.
(audience applauding and cheering)
So it is my pleasure, on
behalf of the Bell family,
you've seen us earlier, talked
to us during the reception.
We are so pleased that you are here.
I'd like to thank NYU, New
York University School of Law,
for this great honor,
and thank the visionary,
the wonderful Tony Thompson
for making this happen.
Thank you.
(audience applauding)
- So where is Ted Wells?
Where is Ted?
Ted, in the back of the room.
So Ted, I want you to
know that this was one
of a two-pronged thing I want
to do before I leave here.
The second is I wanna
create a Derrick Bell chair
at this institution.
(audience applauding and cheering)
So I'm gonna be coming to
you for advice on that!
So I just wanna let you know.
But with no further ado, shall we?
Oh, I'm sorry!
(audience laughing)
Daniel Mark Duffy, who
is a fabulous artist,
was the person who created this.
Would you put your hand up?
Where are you, Daniel?
(audience applauding and cheering)
Thank you.
- [Audience] Aah!
(audience applauding and cheering)
(audience murmuring)
- Come, come, come on.
This is the artist.
(audience applauding)
- Thank you so much.
- Thank you (speaks faintly).
- It's an honor, great honor.
