CE Week #9: “A hero who has no Nobel”
Susan Estrich
Creators Syndicate
October 25, 2007
The kids in one of my son’s ninth-grade classes were asked to write essays on their heroes. With two exceptions, they all picked Al Gore. That’s easy: He was in the news that week. Only a kid with my son’s backbone would debate whether all of the science in Al Gore’s presentation was correct, whether he really would be a stronger candidate than Hillary, or whether his loss in 2000 wasn’t at least in part his own fault.
But the question of picking a hero remained. So he asked me who mine was.
That’s probably why I found myself dreaming of Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture Store. Most people dream of romance and adventure. On occasion, I do, too. But when I go to bed thinking of heroes, I’m more likely to dream of an obscure furniture store in Washington, D.C., that used to take advantage of poor people who had nowhere else to go to buy tables and chairs, or refrigerators and stoves. So they went to Walker-Thomas Furniture, which promised credit for everyone, with a catch. The catch was that the interest rates were higher than anyone would pay in any other part of town, and repossession came faster than it ever would from Hecht’s or Woodward and Lothrop if they missed even a single payment. Did I mention that all the customers were black?
That’s the way it was until a man named J. Skelly Wright wrote a decision I read about in my first year of law school. I’d never heard of Wright, and when I started reading, it was just one more case to be briefed by morning. But this one was different. The Uniform Commercial Code, one of the most boring documents I encountered in law school, prohibited unconscionable commercial transactions. No one had ever thought that meant charging poor people usurious interest rates for goods they desperately needed and then repossessing them for even a single nonpayment, as explained in very small writing.
Wright thought that was exactly what it prohibited, and he wrote a decision that outraged many in the business community for its audacity in seeking to regulate arms-length commercial transactions between willing sellers and desperate buyers.
“What do you think of that?” my then-professor asked the class. I thought I might have found my hero.
Long before he protected poor people from being treated like dirt in furniture stores, Wright, a self-described “good Catholic boy” from New Orleans, a night-law-school graduate, a working-class kid who took seriously what he learned in school and in church, had been appointed to the federal district court by Harry Truman while still in his 30s because he was the only guy around who thought every ballot was supposed to be counted, once. But no one expected this good ol’ boy to decide that if separate but equal was inherently unequal, it was his job as a federal judge to order the first blacks to attend LSU Law School, to integrate the New Orleans school systems.
The Klan burned crosses on his lawn so often his son once told me that when his parents went out, his dad told him to just ignore them unless they got too close to the house, in which case he should call the fire department.
He didn’t set out to be a hero. He just believed it was his job to do what was right, to enforce the law. By the early ’60s, Richard Russell, then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had told the president’s men that Skelly Wright would never be confirmed for the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which covered the South, or for the Supreme Court. But if the new president wanted to get him out of Louisiana and put him on the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C., he’d skip the hearing that day. That is what President Kennedy did.
I was Wright’s second woman clerk. He had to tell me that his good friend William Brennan, then the most liberal justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, a job my judge would have loved and could never have, wouldn’t be hiring me because I was a woman. He sat with me as I tried not to cry.
A few months later we were assigned an important rape case. The fancy law firm representing the defendant was trying to uphold the corroboration requirement that Wright’s closest friend on the court had championed. I came close to tears again. I explained how I’d been raped and there had been no corroboration, and the rule that would have kept this case from the jury would have kept mine away as well. This one’s for you, he told me. It was the day I came to understand that lemons could be made into lemonade.
He never got rich. I used to joke years later that he was the only person I knew who drove a car worse than mine: I drove a Maverick, and he drove a Pinto. As the Supreme Court changed, he got reversed more and more often. But he never stopped fighting.
The year I worked for him was the year my world fell apart: I lost my father, my family was in shambles, I didn’t have a dime to call my own, and I could barely remember why I had become a lawyer. It was also the year my world came back together, under the kind and gentle tutelage of a man who never wore his courage on his sleeve, never expected, or received, much acclaim, but taught me what it was to believe in something enough to put your life and your heart on the line for it every day.
I spent Christmas that year with the Wrights. It was the finest Christmas of my life. For it was his soul that made J. Skelly Wright a hero. He never got a Nobel Prize, but truth be told, he didn’t need one.
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At first I was kind of confused at first where the article was going; overall I think it was a good article. It is so rare to find someone like this that is so deeply involved in the government. I admire people like J. Shelley Wright who are willing to stick up for the minorities, or the people that have no voice. I thought it was funny how it didn’t even faze him that the KKK was setting his front lawn on fire. I thought the best part of the article was the part where Wright stuck up for the rape victim when no one else would. We need more people in our government that are like that. We need people that aren’t worried about furthering their career, but people who are really there for the good of the United States people. Wright never made millions, or went all that far, but he was genuine which is a very hard thing to find in politics today. What I was still confused. Why the author was talking about the furniture company at the beginning? If someone could explain that to me, that would be great.
Alyssa,
The author uses the furniture store story as an introduction into Wright’s political career. The furniture store was taking advantage of poor black customers, subjecting them to unfare interest rates and reposession. Wright didn’t think it was fair to take advantage of the poor so he helped pass a bill making it illegal. Wright was the circuit judge during the Williams v. Walker-Thomas Furniture Store legal case. You can read more about it here http://www.scu.edu/law/FacWebPage/Neustadter/contractsebook/main/cases/Williams.html
I liked this article a lot, the overall message of it all is down right flawless. Basically it says that just because someone is in the media spot light all the time and has won tons of awards it doesn’t necessarily make them a hero. This isn’t to say that Al Gore isn’t doing some good, its just saying that there are some individuals out there who have made a fairly large impact somewhere and ask for nothing In return. Kind of like the articles main topic, J. Skelly Wright. As the author explained this man fought against oppression against the black community, racially integrated schools, and help fight for women’s rights. He didn’t become rich in his endeavors and is not well known (did you know who he was before the article?) and he never received any rewards nor considered himself a hero, he just considered it to be his job nothing more. I think there are honestly a lot of people like this in our world, not a rarity as our author makes them out to be. The reason we don’t see them is that like Wright they don’t ask for anything in return, it sort of makes you wonder how credible some of the “heroes” we see on television really are.
Honestly I was surprised to read that so many people chose Al Gore as their “hero.” Yes, he has been on the television a great deal of late, but mostly on the news and our young people (this is a generalization) aren’t that avid in keeping up with the news. Most the people I know for one don’t see Al Gore more than an environmentalist. Apart from that, I found this article very interesting to read. J. Skelly Wright a person whom I have never heard of affected Susan Estrich so much she put him as her hero. I do agree that this man was a great person who did even greater things. He helped fight against racial inequality and he helped fight for women’s rights, two things people look up to. Estrich repeatedly states that Wright did not receive a Nobel Prize, and brings up that Gore did. Is she trying to say that Gore didn’t deserve it or that what Gore did doesn’t amount to Wrights actions? Estrich writes like she is somewhat angry that Gore received the Nobel Prize instead of Wright and that Gore is not as good of a person as Wright. “For it was his soul that made J. Skelly Wright a hero. He never got a Nobel Prize, but truth be told, he didn’t need one.” I can’t help but to read that quote as being bitter that Wright didn’t get a Nobel Prize. Maybe it was just how I read it.
-Caitlin Barschig
Wahoo! This article was really touching. I loved it. J. Skelly Wright is an amazing man. He was so selfless and courageous. The fact that he wasn’t intimidated let alone concerned about his lawn being burnt by the KKK shows his incredible strength. He used that strength to fight for his beliefs. Also, his beliefs were not only unique and individual to him, but he also acted upon them. Wright really impacted many lives. He helped the poor, minorities, and women. My favorite description of him has to be this: “He didn’t set out to be a hero. He just believed it was his job to do what was right, to enforce the law.” He is a good human being. He is a hero. I truly enjoyed the fact that Susan Estrich chose a real person that affected her life dramatically in a positive way as her hero. Her choice of hero was a good one, too. It was enticing and original. Usually you hear famous people as heroes, or family members as heroes. Susan chose not only a non-family member, but also a not-so-famous person who affected her life positively and supported her through times of need. He used empathy to make the world and the people in it better. What a guy!
SSEMB