Address at the American Bar Association Southwest Region Conference

"Take the case of a woman in a small Mississippi town. She was the head of a household, age 48. She and her 5 children had agreed to bale a crop of cotton for a local farm landlord. After picking 37 bales of cotton, he paid them only $300, when they were actually owed $2,000. She had tried to obtain a lawyer but none would take the case. When she finally arrived at the neighborhood legal services office, the Statute of Limitations had run out and there was no recourse. The woman will never get her money. Justice will never be served in that case. And why? Because no lawyer in the community would accept that woman as a client."
Oklahoma City, OK • October 21, 1966

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a group of poor people in a ghetto of a large American city. We talked about the police, crime in the streets, the law. One man said that he knew the law existed but he had never felt it. A second man said just the opposite: he had felt the law, but his experience was so bad that he knew justice didn’t exist — at least not for him. The third man was somewhere in between. He had been helped by lawyers, he had been told his rights and duties as a citizen. And he knew where to turn for the services he wanted.

“But the sad thing is,” he said, “I’m still a poor man. The law only gets me out of a jam. It doesn’t get me out of poverty.”

He must have been right — at least for himself. But in Washington, at our War against Poverty headquarters, we think he was wrong for the nation, and for the poor as a whole. We think the law can help get the poor out of poverty,

But the problem is tremendous. Most of the poor are ignorant of their legal rights and responsibilities. They fear the law. They hate the law. Why?

We have all met poor people who have been oppressed by lawyers.

We all know poor people who have been defeated by the law so often that they are now resigned to being the law’s victims instead of its victories.

We all know poor people who are confused by the law, who are insecure with the law and who are terrorized under the law,

Yet when we started the War against Poverty just two years ago, one fact stood out clear and hard, to be successful, our efforts would have to effect the basic concerns in the daily life of a poor man. And nothing is more basic to Americans than the right to justice, the right to equality before the law.

That is why the Legal Services program was organized: to guarantee those rights for all Americans — to bring the same kind and the same quality of justice to the pool which all the rest of us enjoy for ourselves.

But this is very, very difficult. It costs money, lots of money.

But it costs much more than money, too. The task of bringing justice to the poor challenges our complacency. It challenges our whole system which provides equal justice only to those who can pay for lawyers. It challenges us to look into our lives as lawyers and inquire whether we personally and in our communities are creating a just society.

Take the case of a woman in a small Mississippi town. She was the head of a household, age 48. She and her 5 children had agreed to bale a crop of cotton for a local farm landlord. After picking 37 bales of cotton, he paid them only $300, when they were actually owed $2,000. She had tried to obtain a lawyer but none would take the case. When she finally arrived at the neighborhood legal services office, the Statute of Limitations had run out and there was no recourse. The woman will never get her money. Justice will never be served in that case.

And why? Because no lawyer in the community would accept that woman as a client. The lawyers feared word would spread around town they were working for the poor people. Because of this they would suffer social ostracism and economic reprisal.

Consider another example. In Dallas, Texas, a widow, 69, has a sole income of a $68 monthly check for old age assistance. She owns a 3 bedroom house valued at about $2,500. She was persuaded to have one of the rooms sheetrocked, taped, bedded and painted. One contractor indicated that the reasonable value of this work would not exceed $200.

The actual bill eventually exceeded $1,600.

But, fortunately, this woman went to a lawyer at our Legal Services Project in time to be helped.

These are not isolated cases. The statistics show that this widow in Dallas was and is one of the very fortunate few. In Washington, D.C. last year, our OEO Legal Services program handled 8,000 cases. The projected number for this year is 12,000 cases. But, adding legal insult to social injury, at least 40,000 cases in the District of Columbia this year will not receive attention.

If all 50 major cities of this nation were funded on the same basis as Washington, D.C. it is estimated that over 1 million cases would be handled in the next year.

We believe there are hundreds of thousands of similar cases per annum. OEO is reaching only a small fraction of them.

We know these cases exist, but only recently have we become aware of why they exist.

  • Because the poor don’t know their legal rights.
  • Because local officials are too overworked, or uninterested, or uninformed.
  • Because there are no lawyers, or lawyer’s assistants, to help these destitute and neglected Americans.

But the surprising fact is that formidable opposition does exist, in some places, to these new efforts to make justice equally available to the poor as well as the rich.

I recall an instance in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A committee of the Albuquerque Bar chaired by William Kitts, adopted a plan for Albuquerque utilizing the neighborhood law office approach. This plan was accepted by the Bar and submitted by the Community Action Agency to our Austin Regional Office for funding.

We announced the grant on May 28. This action triggered strong opposition among members of the Bar who favored the English or Judicare plan. We had announced that we would fund no such program in Albuquerque and we were fully backed up by the Community Action Agency in our position. In addition, one of my assistants flew to Albuquerque on June 12 and again stated that we would stand by the plan as funded. Nevertheless, the dissidents continued their fight against the funded plan and successfully obtained a re-vote of the Albuquerque Bar Association.

In the vote completed on June 29, 66 lawyers approved the OEO plan, 33 stated that they favored the Judicare plan but would accept the OEO plan, 100 favored Judicare and opposed the OEO plan, and 2 lawyers favored no plan. This was construed as 102 to 99 against the OEO plan.

As part of their campaign, the dissident lawyers obtained the pledge of Senator Montoya and Congressman Walker that the congressional delegation would abide by this vote of the Bar. Accordingly, after the vote, we were placed under great congressional pressure to withdraw our funded grant and fund a Judicare operation. We stood firm, along with the CAA and the existing Legal Aid Agency which was the delegate agency under the OEO grant. Steps were taken to begin operation of the program without any participation by the Bar Association on the governing board.

When the Bar Association found that the program was going ahead anyway, the members, in early September, again voted on whether to participate in the OEO program by having members on the board and otherwise contributing to the success of the program. This time, the Bar voted overwhelmingly to participate in the program, thus reversing its earlier stand. The program is now in the process of selecting its staff.

I remember the opposition we received in a large Western state. The State Bar Association objected violently to a legal service program that would provide lawyers for migrant farm workers. Our chief attorney said to them, “We would be glad to stipulate that the legal service programs in your state will not provide attorneys for farm workers, if the State Bar would similarly stipulate that no law firm in the state would provide presentation for growers...”

We are receiving opposition in California, where our program announced it was planning to open an office in Modesto. This touched off a strong protest by the Stanislaus County Bar Association. After an attempt at negotiation and reconciliation failed, the Bar brought suit in the Superior Court to enjoin CRLA from opening an office. A temporary restraining order was granted. A hearing will be held soon on the issuance of a temporary injunction.

The American Bar Association, the National Legal Aid and Defender Association and also the Department of Justice are contemplating the filing of an amicus brief on behalf of CRLA.

In another state, the Bar proposed a statewide legal services program. At the same time, the CAP in an Indian Reservation proposed a program for the local Indians. Both programs were vetoed by the Governor—on the basis of a telephone poll he took among some lawyers of the state capitol—the only city having any organized opposition in the state.

And so, in this state many of the poor are not only excluded from justice but are actually blackballed from its privileges. But we have plans to remedy this situation shortly.

These are examples where we have overcome opposition. But let’s not create illusions. Trouble will be caused.

  • Slum landlords will cause trouble. In Washington, D.C. a well known slum landlord is suing the legal service agency on the grounds that they have been asking for jury trials on behalf of their clients. This is a tort action of abusive process. This same landlord also physically struck an OEO lawyer who was trying to prevent an eviction.
  • The dishonest merchant will cause trouble. As our legal services to the poor increase, his unscrupulous profits will decrease.
  • The profiteers will cause trouble. They don’t want to see justice. They know that just laws will hinder them in gaining unjust profits.
  • The welfare bureaucrat will cause trouble. Attorneys are questioning some of the standard practices by which some welfare agencies manage to stay clear of total involvement. No apple-cart is easier to upset than the ones pushed by bureaucrats.

Let’s face it. The provisions of justice will always cause trouble. There are people who will always criticize the program. But the day criticism of OEO stops, our program is dead. In a lawsuit someone must lose, and the loser will be critical. But in representing the poor, we know that the people who are now losing cases fairly were the ones who previously were winning them unfairly—the profiteers and slum landlords.

But you know it is in the highest dignity of your calling to provide forceful advocacy for those in need. And the poor are in need. Desperate need. We have seen it in other programs.

  • In our health projects: Seventy-nine percent of the young men and women entering Job Corps centers have never seen a doctor, and 85 percent have never seen a dentist.
  • In the Head Start classes for young ones.
  • In Upward Bound for high school students who must be given confidence in their ability to learn, if they are to learn confidently.
  • In our Foster Grandparents project for the elderly who may be too old to bear children but not too old to love them.

We in the legal profession must take the offensive. Our cry must be “justice now,” “health now,” “education now,” “food now,” “jobs now.” Then we can say “freedom now.”

This is not a goal we have reached, but a direction we must take. There is a temptation to underplay the importance of the War on Poverty at home against the war on aggression in Vietnam. But this is the same war: a fight against oppression that is as hard to defeat as it is difficult to ignore.

I received an unsolicited letter yesterday from Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He said this:

“Most Americans, I think, have come to recognize that nothing is more important to the success of our efforts abroad to inspire confidence in America’s purpose than what we do at home. The fulfillment of our commitments to the citizens of our country is essential to our goal of realizing the law’s full potential internationally. “As Secretary of State, as well as an American citizen, I take considerable encouragement from the work of the Office of Economic Opportunity and, in particular, of its Legal Services program.”

As the War on Poverty enters its third year, we have reasonable hopes that Americans will not only support our military war against aggression, but also our moral war against poverty.

We have hope that attorneys everywhere in this country will fight injustice everywhere in this country.

We have hopes that the poor will no longer be at the service of the law, but the law will be at the service of the poor.

Let us share these hopes together. For they are not just our best hopes, but our only hopes.

Peace requires the simple but powerful recognition that what we have in common as human beings is more important and crucial than what divides us.
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Sargent Shriver
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