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NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE Civil Rights History Project Smithsonian Institute's National Museum of African American History & Culture and the Library of Congress, 2011 Robert L. Carter oral...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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child of the Great Migration, tell us about where and when you born and how you came to come North. JUDGE CARTER: I was born in 00:02:20 Caryville, Florida. And when I...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:06:41 of poverty. She insisted that he remained—that all the family lived together and so she lived with him. And the family all together enabled us to get better housing and every...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:13:22 real hard disciplined reading I would do. But for the most part it was not the kind of hardnosed reading that forms a brilliant mind. But anyway any kind of reading...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:16:51 friends. And at one point the black girl and the white girl had an argument and the white girl went to her teacher and complained. And the teacher had no sympathy...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:21:48 opened to all people. And armed with that knowledge I decided I was going to use the pool. I don't know how I learned it, I must have read it in...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: Well I skipped a lot of classes, I was considered very bright. And I was a very good test taker. So I would finish by testing before anybody else and...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: When we were—Lincoln was an all male school and its professors were former professors retired from Princeton. And the head of the - - or whatever he is, of Lincoln...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:35:52 had to do was know all the facts, be convincing with all the facts so that I could answer all the questions. And that I didn't have to decline. That helped...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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INTERVIEWER: But let's go back to Howard just for a little bit because that's down the road a bit. 00:40:33 JUDGE CARTER: Back where? INTERVIEWER: Back to Howard when you were a...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:44:16 those arguments were made to Howard Law School the day before they were argued by the Supreme Court. And that became a tradition for a long time. And that was—we got...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: Impression of who? INTERVIEWER: Of Charles Houston. JUDGE CARTER: He was an informable guy. I didn't know him very well. I only heard him argue a few cases because, or...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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INTERVIEWER: Could you describe a little bit more being in that crowd? What was so moving about being at the 00:53:10 Lincoln Memorial? What did it look like? JUDGE CARTER: Well we...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:56:19 JUDGE CARTER: Yeah. I was on a scholarship working on first amendment issues and I had my thesis that I was working on was the extent to which the right to—first...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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INTERVIEWER: And I think the point to emphasis is the part you didn't resist the draft you went in at—describe how you entered the Army/Air Force and your involvement on World War...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:06:09 education but I hadn't passed the bar, that didn't mean anything. The staff sergeant who was now in charge of these black recruits in Augusta and so forth was an ignorant...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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INTERVIEWER: [interposing] You said it was the Army experience that made a militant of me. JUDGE CARTER: I was in the Army and what bothered me about the time about 01:10:46 the...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:16:44 something like that. And I said, "You may be my senior officer by many grades but what you have to do is learn some manners and when you learn some manners...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:21:37 cash, there were chips that I had to have and he couldn't accept the cash. One of the other white officers standing by told him to put it on his bill....
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:28:10 Thurgood, I hadn't heard of Hastie, I was from East Orange and the NAACP and Roy Wilkins and those people, I never heard—I had never heard of them. When I came...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: We don't need to go over this again. And when I settled my problems with the Army I followed Hastie's advice and sought—even though I was now free, I had...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: Well my first—I remember the first with Thurgood— 01:38:52 INTERVIEWER: 1944. JUDGE CARTER: My first contact with Thurgood was I was on his staff and I was sort of given...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:44:51 with these people under cross-examination, put them on the hot seat and everything like that. And they would reenact all this stuff in the barbershops and stuff with us. Constance Motley...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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INTERVIEWER: You heard word that the people in the community would 01:49:06 reenact. JUDGE CARTER: Yeah, they would reenact this stuff in their barbershops and beauty parlors and all over town. That...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:53:54 We argued that he was denied equal educational opportunities because he was segregated, he was not permitted to have intellectual intercourse with his fellow students. We really had a 01:54:27 problem...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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01:59:09 INTERVIEWER: For challenging segregation in the schools. How were you going to make the case that separate could not be equal. JUDGE CARTER: Well I was—the first step was Charles Houston's...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:02:13 attack segregation in Claredon County, South Carolina schools and I went to Klineberg and told him what we were doing and said that his study was exactly the thing we needed....
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:11:01 couldn't support. And when the academics learned that we began to—they began to relax and so like in the classroom they realized that they only had to testify about what they...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: Kenneth? INTERVIEWER: No, it was the key. It was the key to Brown, social science. JUDGE CARTER: Yeah. It was the key in the Brown case. But it was the...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:22:08 not school, did not want—they didn't want to argue the case, they wanted to get out of it, they were ready to concede. And the Supreme Court—I wanted the Supreme Court...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:27:57 we still have segregation it is segregation that people are accepting but that it is not enforced by law. And I think that at some point is the time is going...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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INTERVIEWER: And you won? JUDGE CARTER: Yeah, we won that case. INTERVIEWER: And that was important for all civil rights organizations. JUDGE CARTER: - -. 00:34:25 INTERVIEWER: That was important for the...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:39:38 Court of Appeals, he thought that as counsel of Thurgood's successor that he could have Roy bar me from bringing any of these segregation cases and they all were supposed to...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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00:48:07 back down because of the politics of the issue. And I always say that I was responsible for Thurgood getting his Court of Appeals appointment because all the hell-a-boohoo that was...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: Well there's been several things that have happened with Obama that were unexpected. And the passage of one of the bills for equal education, one of the bills that Obama...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.
Date:2010
Film, Video
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JUDGE CARTER: —applied. INTERVIEWER: Start again, start from the beginning. George— JUDGE CARTER: George McLaurin applied to the University of Oklahoma Graduate School and was given many of our—the public felt was...
Contributor:
Sullivan, Patricia - Civil Rights History Project (U.S.) - Carter, Robert L.