The iconic civil rights lawyer Julius Chambers is well known in North Carolina, especially in Charlotte. Chambers’ legal win before the U.S. Supreme Court in Swann v. the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education opened the door for students to be bussed to desegregate public schools.
But he’s not well known around the country, even though Chambers filed numerous discrimination lawsuits, clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and led the national NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. He was the subject of a documentary that aired on Bounce TV on Monday.
Julius Chambers (recording): Minorities were just disadvantaged and didn't have a means for challenging those disadvantages.
WBTV reporter Steve Crump produced the film "Julius Chambers: A Life of Service, Courage and Conviction." It delves into his civil rights work, court successes and also Chambers' early years growing up in the mid-1930s in a rural area of North Carolina.
Steve Crump: Mount Gilead is in Montgomery County, which is about an hour and 15 minutes, hour and 20 minutes from Charlotte. And like so many other communities here in North Carolina, it was part of the textile mill, and Julius Chambers — not only did he grow up in the Great Depression but also came along at a time when the wrath of Jim Crow was the rule of law.
Gwendolyn Glenn: Tell me about his parents. His mother was the valedictorian of her class. His father only had a seventh-grade education.
Crump: His father owned an auto repair business. So when you look at that, factor that in with his mother's education, they were on a very different track in a lot of ways as far as demonstrating the possible. And as a result of that, he got some lessons not only on the business side of things but in terms of life lessons that carried him through high school and college and even to law school.
Glenn: His father's business — Blacks and whites came to him because he was such a great mechanic, and there was this white customer who racked up about $2,000 in repairs.
Crump: That was a turning point in his life, where there was a white customer who skipped out after owing, as you mentioned, $2,000 in repairs and at a very young age, Julius Chambers decided that was going to be the catalyst in terms of, I guess, having an epiphany from the standpoint of where "I've got to do something about this. I've got to change the social conditions," and that's what propelled him to pursue a career in law — more or less to change the social narrative based on fighting for what is right. It affected him in such a way that it was one of those things where it kind of led his own personal crusade for discovering righteousness.
Glenn: But that path was not easy because when you look at a man like him and all that he accomplished, he started out in these schools. I don't know if they were Rosenwald, but they were schools that maybe only had four to six classrooms, very few supplies.
Crump: What is interesting: he finished his high school in '54 — the same year as Brown vs. Board being decided by the Supreme Court. What led up to the Brown decision were schools that were inadequate. They didn't necessarily have the same resources as many of the white schools. So when you look at that in terms of the playing field not necessarily being level, here's a person who achieved in spite of.
(NOTE: You can watch the premiere of "Julius Chambers: A Life of Service, Courage and Conviction" above, courtesy of the Harvey B. Gantt Center. The introduction of the film starts at 13:07, so you'll want to start there.)
Glenn: Yes. And tell us about his college life.
Crump: His college life takes off like a rocket, and at North Carolina Central, he's the student body president, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, he becomes involved in the yearbook staff, a number of student support organizations. And because of the way that he excelled as an undergraduate student, that pretty much sets the table for him, not only in law school at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), but also when you look at his academic credentials. He also does some work at Columbia in New York.
Glenn: And he was No. 1 In his law class, right?
Crump: Yeah, he was No. 1 in his class, but he had a pretty good supporting cast. And when I say that, you know, enrolled in law school with him was the great Henry Frye, who was the first African American to be elected to the North Carolina legislature in the 20th century and ends up as the chief justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court. So he was in very, very good company. In 1962, he becomes the editor-in-chief of the very prestigious law review at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).
Glenn: And you mentioned Frye, who talks about him in your documentary.
Henry Frye (recording): Julius Chambers was probably the smartest person I've ever known. The guy could remember. You could tell him something today and tomorrow, next year — I mean, he would remember it. He could cite history and cite cases. I mean, he was just a smart fellow. So, I tried to learn from him. Now, he claims he tried to learn from me. That was his humility.
Crump: They ended up coming together in 1967, where they were the first two men of color — first two African Americans — to integrate the North Carolina Bar Association. The interesting thing about Julius Chambers, you know, from the standpoint of his work in the U.S. Supreme Court, he's eight-for-eight. He never lost a case in the Supreme Court.
Glenn: Yes. And of course, one of those eight cases that you said he won before the U.S. Supreme Court was the Swann case, in terms of desegregating Charlotte schools
Crump: More than 50 years ago, in 1971. It was the Swann decision. I'm sure that many parents within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district will ask, "Well, wait a minute, why do our children have to ride busses to school?" Or, "What's the whole thing, you know, in terms of the interaction of racial equity imbalance?" Well, it was the Swann case and the work of Julius Chambers that put so much into motion as it relates to school integration that we see here in Charlotte-Mecklenburg.
Glenn: And he paid for that with his life being threatened with all the work he was doing. His office was bombed, his home was bombed. Correct?
Crump: You go back to 1965 on a Sunday night in November. His home, along with three other homes of civil rights activists in this community, ended up receiving dynamite. No one was ever arrested. The case is still an open case by the FBI. That same year, he's delivering a speech to the NAACP in New Bern, North Carolina. His car was blown up. Three Klansmen were convicted in that case. And fast-forward, a few years later, he opens up the very first integrated law firm here in the Charlotte area, which involved Adam Stein, the father of (North Carolina's) attorney general, Josh Stein. And the office is torched.
Julius Chambers (recording): Federal and state officials who supported what the perpetrators were doing, and they would not seriously investigate and try to identify who did it.
Crump: That case is still an open case. Much to his credit, though you never heard any bitterness. He took it in stride, and perhaps those kinds of moments added not only to his character but also enhanced the credibility of his work.
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