Its filled with her costumes. Unauthentic Southern Experience waiting for you right off of i40. We cant wait to see you soon. Tonight to introduce you to math event beater. Matthew is the author of this incredible book, deep delta justice. Its going talk about that with you. In a moment and give a great presentation we will have a conversation after words. Briefly we went to introduce matthew. He has worked for some of the most prestigious publications in the country. Including the atlantic, new republic, as well as the owl. He is a graduate of college in columbia at university when the best Journalism Schools out there. He also reports on criminal justice, teaches at the college for creative studies, and works as the assistant director for shakespeare in prison. Weve got a lot to talk about tonight. Including the foundations of this book which i think really is an untold story of the Civil Rights Era. A lot of people should know about. So math the ongoing handed over to you. And thank you for being a part of this tonight. Thanks so much jeremy. Quickly i went to the school of the arts at columbia, no less prestigious, little less journalistic. Little less journalistic. [inaudible] switch it anyway thank you so much for the introduction. That is really my pleasure. So, tonight, i want to situate us in a place. I want to introduce you to some people. And i want to talk about why that place and those people are relevant today. And i kind of want to turn your understanding of the Civil Rights Movement upside down a little bit. Kind of shake it and see whats in its pockets. Because that is what history is about to me. And i promise it will be interesting. I promise it will only take 20 minutes. What shall very happily turn control over the conversation to jeremy who i assume is his best Investigative Journalism zingers to turn me into a puddle on the floor. It should be a quite the day. But first i promised you a place. I think we bring up the map. Awesome, if you will allow me, i think the best way to put you there is to read a couple of paragraphs. Just from the first chapter of the book. The parish is the end of the road. At the extreme end of the Mississippi River southeast of new orleans. Almost entirely surrounded by the gulf of mexico. The river belted, and the river defined it. Every granule of earth has been carried by water from the great plains of the appellations to the rockies eventually building a delta in the shape of a birds foot. From the source and minnesota to the of boots fill the Mississippi River called the 2300mile pass to the United States having a third most populous river basin in the world. The mouth of the mississippi is the anchor of a vast expanse of marshland that expanse of the everglades to mexico. The martian always drawn people. Only 5 of the land in the parish lay between the levy and could be built on. The rest was wetlands, surrounded by brides and great fields that overflowed with life. Their settlement out their tiny clutches of wooden shacks built on stilts accessible only by vote or people subsisted on what they could shoot, or trap, or cash in a net. But for most of the parishes 24000 residents life exists on the narrow ribbon of land between the levy. Everything was either up the road or down the road. You know, for me the first time i went there, that is where it was strangest to me. You literally cant get lost out there. There arent any wrong turns to make. There is just one road. Despite being 15 or 20 mitts from downtown new orleans, as was the most isolated places the United States, at least by land. In 1960s with the story takes place there was just one road connecting it to the rest of civilization. One hundred years ago there was no road. But for a long time it had been poor. Ships pass by on the way to new orleans but they did not have a port so to speak up. That plenty of wildlife, oysters, shrimp and all sorts of birds. One kind of the largest producers of furs in america. But hunting, fishing, trapping or not where the real money is. The real money is in oil. In early 20th century oil was discovered in a martial left a boom that went on for decades. Im sure everybody talked about deepwater horizons than in all the other offshore oil rigs outside the coast of louisiana or base there. After that the money started coming in. There money started coming in. So was an isolated backwater. Was also a natural bottleneck with one road. It sudden, and probably discovered that it held one of the greatest concentrations of petroleum in the world. That sounds like a pretty perfect location for a dictatorship, right . Which leads us to leander purvi purvis. She came to power 1919. Did not relinquish control over the parish until his death in 1969. Those 50 years he controlled life to the degree that made him the envy of much more and for a long time use the power to crush his adversary which is including an encourager to look it up, and arm stand up for the National Guard during world war ii though it down in louisiana political history as the little war. Because i guess world war ii is the big one. In the 1954 rolled around. And the Supreme Court unanimously decided brown versus board of education. Im perez had been a racist before but had not specifically targeted the black people that live there announced days later he is dedicating his life to preserving segregation of the races. That is when he changed from oddball louisiana political figure to them on the most famous segregationist in the time. Nationally he was known especially for being willing to say overtly racist things long after other segregationists had wised up and learn to be more careful with their language. In fact, he delighted in saying the unsalable. And it should be said a lot of northerners too. So he had declare war on the black people of his community. And that brings us to our second person, gary duncan. Garrick grew up in booth phil which is the second to last town acceptable by road on the Mississippi River. Its just above the mouth. He grew up in a big, boisterous family with fiercely independent men and women. Their father was a first black man to run crew but for the segregated oil industry produces sleep on his vote to keep his white competitors from setting the vote on fire. The whole family was deeply involved in the church. So in october covid 1966 gary duncan adjuster 19. He was newly married, first child had been born just days before. Whos driving down the road, one road driving down it. He saw two of his relatives, kids, middle schoolers talking to for white kids so on the stretch of the highwood by the school. No big deal. Except for two things. Gary knew that the schools had just been desegregated by federal courts, so tensions were high especially in school. He did not like that. He knew that perez had fought hard against the desegregation of the schools. He did not like that either. But the thing he did not like the most is the fact there was a bunch of white men, adults standing on the other side of the road watching. So he got out of the car, broke up this fight that was about to happen and when he was about to turn to go he put his hand on the arm of one of the white boys and he said best run along home. Now befall the news recently can probably guess what happened next. One of the white men who is watching all this called the cops and gary got arrested in that charged with battery. The gary and his family must be said or blessed and cursed with an overdeveloped sense of justice. So instead of lying down and taking it, gary lawyer to up. And that brings me to the third person, that is richard sobel. Richard was 29 and 1966. Bright, ambitious, intense. Totally out of place in new orleans. He was jewish of new york city. Third is class at Columbia Law School part had ever really spent time in the souths early nothing deep south. In 1965 eval tear his Vacation Days to take civil rights cases when he was at a law firm in washington d. C. When he was down there he caught the bug. In 1966 he quit his fancy job still wanted the nations most prestigious law firms and take civil rights cases in louisiana. He was part of a small army of lawyers who came down to enforce the hardwon for the Civil Rights Movements worth pausing for a moment to think about what that means. And how many of you i assume had not ever thought about that before, i know i had. Starwood talbot Civil Rights Movement usually begins with brown versus board of education i have a dream some alabama all that stuff and 64 and 65 respectively hope that sounds familiar. Maybe we mumble something about sanitation workers or black power or other things that make us uncomfortable. We fast for to doctor kings assassination and his modernism gave us a tidy conclusion to the story gives us something accomplished was over. Something concrete was accomplished. Im not going to badmouth those victories. They were huge. The truth of it is that story about the Civil Rights Movement is only the beginning. Take brown versus board of education for example. Did anybody elses High School History class not exactly dwell on the fact that the Supreme Court outlawed School Segregation in 1954 . But the first big city to desegregate was new orleans, six years later. When memphis still had not desegregated 18 years later. And im not just talking about de facto segregation like we have now per this is old cool, straight up bylaw segregation. With very, very few exceptions. Nashville was actually one of them by the way part School District in the south simply ignored brown versus board of education. And they ignored the civil and Voting Rights act. How could they do that . Because theres no Supreme Court police. The justices just say stuff and the rest of us need to figure out how to make it happen. There is no Congressional Police force. Lawmakers make laws and thats nice for them. But somebody has to enforce them. Enforcement means a lawsuit. In this case hundreds of lawsuits. Thousands of lawsuits. Lawsuits against every School District, local government, municipality, unions, organizations that refuse to comply with federal law. Lawsuits mean lawyers. Like a lot of lawyers. Im a toy most southern white lawyers were not jumping at the chance to litigate these cases in their community. There were just not enough southern black lawyers to do all of the worker to special because they were rarely paid anything at all. So lawyers came from the north and the west. But especially from new york city. Especially from the children and grandchildren Eastern European jews who had survived the ghettos and the holocaust. Which is takes us back to richard. He was part of this massive wave of lawyers, very much like him who came down to make good on the promises made by the Supreme Court and congress. He worked for years with three young radical black attorneys and a host of brave clients to bring racial integration to the south. But even among that army of lawyers, richard stood out for it he was among the smartest most dedicated and the most creative of them. He was one of the most influential lawyers in the early days, thats employment discrimination. From a civil rights act. In the mind boggling successful litigator with everything from School Segregation to injunctions intended to curb police brutality. Hundreds of cases in very short period of time. So i took garys case in 1966, insignificant misdemeanor case. One that on the surface had nothing to do with race at all, battery case, batteries illegal in every state still. But of course it had everything to do with race. And against them stood Leander Perez. One of the most powerful segregation list in louisiana. One of the most powerful in the country, dictator blackmans parish. Amanda bennett parish judge and prosecutor in for 20 years have been referred to quite seriously as the third house of the louisiana legislature. In the District Attorney who is in charge of garys prosecution, his name was Leander Perez junior. The sun. And that is more or less where the book begins. So obviously only to read to see what happens through all of these characters but also promised i would tell you about why this story, which started almost 55 years ago is relevant today. So today, i dont think i have to tell you were living in a time of really terrible regional racial and political division. I think we are facing a gathering storm of resistance to the rule of law. The hardwon civil rights victories of the past. We just look at Voting Rights which i didnt mention earlier but feature prominently in the book or look at our police department, we have ever more segregated schools, neighborhoods. Tell me its not coming to a head. And when things come to a head in america the usually had to court. So these three people richard, geary, perez, each teaches us a lesson about how to win battles to come. Perez teaches us about the nature of the enemy. That racism, segregation, bigotry and the law are never actually about being oldfashioned or static. Those people are every bit as innovative as any lawyer in silicon valley. Perez was one of the architects of the system we now call jim crow. But architect is not even the right word. Because jim crow is not a building that was built. It was something always on the move, it was fluid, always shifting, changing, staying one step ahead of immigration. Perez died more than 50 years ago. That was a movement and as innovative as it ever was. Richard teaches us the importance of out innovating people like perez. And the importance finding that work. Richard could never taken that job in new orleans had he not been supported by a nonprofit organization. I think richard also teaches us the importance of humility as aye person in a struggle for racial justice. What today we call ally ship. One of the reasons his clients trusted him so much it was never about him. He never told his clients what to do. There were some self as a leader of the movement. He said is one of his colleagues went set a technician, like a plumber. He had a job to do is exceptionally good at it. He worked for the optimist and citizens who needed his help, not the other way around. And gary was one of those clients. He teaches us the importance of being truly unreasonable in the pursuit of justice. He has taught me a lot about that. There is a reason no one fights down misdemeanor cases like his. Special in the jim crow south especially under perez. Even today, it is not worth it. Gary suffered more as a result of fighting his case then he would have if he just pled guilty, taken his punishment and moved on, it is almost 98 of criminal defendants do in america today. But gary refused. Because refusing was the right thing to do. Now thank god for that. I actually want to let gary close out this introduction. So i wanted to bring him to the festival back were all supposed to go to nashville before covid and social distancing and whatever else weve all gotten good at her tried to get good a at. So in july i filmed a conversation with him. And as usual he puts it best. Were going to do something for the poor and the black people. And you are dedicated to that. You were in there for no kind of glory or money or nothing like that. You were in there to make sure, you are dedicated to me and everybody were affiliate with. This man was threaten cummings put in jail come as life was threatened and everything. And he never stopped. He never stopped. He kept going, he kept going. Fifty years or so we never did lose touch with all that. There was something about him i got kind of attached to him and he got attached to me. I respected a man because every time i had problems he was always about me produce always about me. It was about the defendant. He gave his all to it, his heart. He put everything into it. Thats the kind of person he wa was. Thats the kind of person he wa was. And i think that i was somebody special in his life. But i thought i was somebody special for what reason i will tell you i dont know. Obviously i miss him, it was a great loss to me. He was not only a fierce advocate in court, but he was someone who saw his clients as human beings. And treated them as such. And that meant a lot. To gary personally and richard and gary stayed friends until richards death earlier this yea year. Actually spent some time with the two of them in january upward richard lived in Northern California which is really beautiful. And that is the kind of person we knew on the front lines. We need them these days per 20 people at gary who adjusts completely unreasonable in their devotion to pursuing what is right. Select theres so many questions ive got for you matthew. I want to start the very first. But can you summarize force what gary had to say . Soon i guess sure. He said some of what i said before. And gary knew it was always about him and his relationship with richard was never about richard. And it was about work, but is also about forging a relationship of trust. Terry and richard not only remain friends got their lives, but gary talks in the clip i tried to show about how they were someone special to each other. And just how important that was for gary, especially that time in his life when he was young. He was also vulnerable to feel not just accepted, but by this person came from a world that gary knew nothing of it . Richard knew nothing of garys world. But they were able to come together as equals and Work Together. And it really was in a way that happens so infrequently and those sorts of relationships between lawyers and clients. It was really a partnership that they Work Together to do what needed to be done. One of the persons i wanted to ask you, you would know this because of how well you got to know gary. He was such a young man when this happened. New father, really just working to survive, write to provide for his family. Did he know what he was risking by going as far as he did in the court system to basically fight this minuscule charge. Did he know what he was risking . Im did he have an inkling of how big this will become . I dont think he knew how big it would become. Probably certainly, by the at the spoiler alert, at the Supreme Court building, he was clear on that. And what that meant. It was kind of a hail mary pass. It was very clear in what he was risking though. And his family was clear on that. Some ways more clear than gary. I dont think its giving anything away to say that one of the things it sticks out most in garys mind and it shows up in the book is when he got the initial guilty verdict at trial. Which nobody takes these cases to trial, witnesses and that stuff just doesnt happen that often with misdemeanors. But he did. There is a whole trial. And he thought he was going to win. He thought richard had made a really good case for him. He thought his side had been credible the other side hadnt. In reading the transcript which i did a few years ago, is more objectively true as anything can be in a court of law. And so for him it was hearing that guilty verdict. I talked about that story over and over again. The thing he kept saying is i felt myself fall to the floor. It was this moment where more than anything, it took me a long time because i have the limitations of my own personal experience and identity to realize what he was really saying. That is the moment he saw the way things were. His family was the youngest of nine, his family had sheltered him. They were certainly aware pretty turned around looked at his mother in the back row, she was crying. And he realized that she got it. And then he got it. This whole thing was rigged from the beginning. That he didnt really have a chance. And he felt this is one of those things were talking more than 50 years later it is still traumatic to him. Even that the guy does not have a criminal conviction, he won his case, eventually at the Supreme Court. But that feeling of helplessness sticks with him. Its a trauma. When you go through that much and you know essentially you are innocent the entire time. You have all of these people who are basically lying. From the very beginning. When you read about the boys that were there, they were lying and they lie to their parents who then told this fictional story to police. I think that is the outreach we talk about that Investigative Journalism is the journalism of outrage. That is basically what your story is about. I think why it is so important for people to read this, to understand what has happened and then it is a happening still today. And so ive got to ask you that first. Ive been to ask you how to do even find that . You are a grad student. How did you find this story . And how did you know i need to commit so many years of my life . Guest i have been reporting on criminal justice for a little while at that point. It was sort of what i went to grad school to do. It was to give myself time and space, columbia was generous enough with me i was able to swing it for a couple of years. Because i was interviewing all of these lawyers, i spent time enter via while interviewing in family court and i had a profile of robert steinberg, innovative public defender in the bronx. And you know i was interviewing all of these lawyers and realized i wanted to be able to interview a lawyer without sounding like an idiot. Because i was settled up at columbia. I enrolled in a law school clas class. Im sure there are other Art School Students and up and loss will classes one way or another. Not many of us. the first thing i did was lifted up and wanted to buy that book. I think i walked out of class that evening and new what i needed to do was drop everything and write the book. Host how receptive were the people involved in this book from gary to his family to an outsider they have never met come to them and say hey, i would kind of like to write a book about your case. Were they receptive are hesitant to speak with you . Guest different people differently. Eventually i ended up spending time there and with garys family and at his church in the community, but gary was initially skeptical of me. I think i would have been skeptical of me and took me about a year to get to the point where i could have an interview on the record with him. I contacted richard right away. I had a way to get to him through Columbia Law School because he was a mom. He gave some really rich wonderful interviews early in the process that i went back to again and again and again. Richard for any number of reasons some of which i now and some i probably dont sort of walk that back about a year later right as i was getting in with gary and with gary was two things. Like persisting was part of this and part of it also was. Gary is a businessman and is pretty savvy and he was raised financially independent so like whatever 30year old kid from the north coming down to me like i went to tell your story, a you a dime. Like that and i get that and told him that from the beginning. Ethics are still what they are, but that took a wild to overcome and wound up what we came to and i initially i think did it out of a sense of you know obligation to the book or desperation or something, but is frankly one of the highlights is that i donate a portion of the proceeds of the book to Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church which is garys church and also one of the hubs of underground resistance to the regime and particularly when it came to voter registration. There was a time when Something Like 20 of the black people registered to vote were named duncan and this was before the Voting Rights act when you still had to get past like the constitutional interpretation test with perez wrote and rigged and thats in the book and all these other measures. The registrar would close when they saw black people coming down the street or whatever and they organized late at night in that church in order to win the right that had been guaranteed for about a hundred years at that point and said that ended up for me it was this important thing where was and just a gesture to gary but also a gesture that church because its been so vital to the life of the black community for decades. Host when we talk about how the story is still so i dont know if effective is the right word but still impacts people today and you read it and you are like this feels uncomfortable like the world we live in today. I told you before that you could not have created a better villain with the perez family senior and junior. I wanted to see if you could talk about to those people who have not read the book to understand the language that the judge as hes known in the book uses is so similar to the language that we are hearing nightly on the lose news said by certain politicians and pundits. Were you struck by how he talked in the way he ran his political life and how it is still used today . Yeah, i mean, although it was interesting i stumbled on the story in march, 2015, when donald trump was not taken seriously in politics. That was president s for me that came about you know particularly like a year later and when i was looking for a publisher it was something i had to talk about a bunch, i mean, there are so many points of contact between this book in the world we live in and i often joke sort of morbidly that writing a book about segregation and jim crow is enough days deja vu is the biggest occupational hazard and i think in terms of presses rhetoric and i think even early in his career he said things he shouldnt have said and that was part of his allure, part of his wife was able to break up this old guard you know by professional politicians suburban new orleans, louisiana class of democrats and sort of get in a sort of stick of dynamite style reform candidate. In some ways i was struck more by the differences between perez and lets say donald trump or the brand out populous thats taking the world by storm right now in part because perez worked his butt off, i mean, he was a brilliant lawyer and had an attention to detail that most political leaders dont have in the same way he did, i mean, he was both this brash demagogue by day and by night he was staying up writing the laws of hundreds of them that we now know as a jim crow, so the actual words of them specifically laying down tax to the progress of racial integration and ultimately and like the dozens of a by people i interviewed had been telling me this from the beginning and night think had it listened to them for a while. Million Plaquemines Parish publicly anyway says that they support perez. At best they will say he did some good things and he probably did come about white people in Plaquemines Parish today tended to remember the rhetoric. They tended to focus on the things perez said that make us cringe now and rightly so black people never mentioned that. Actually, not once was that like the thing they lead within the interview. Most interviews i did with black people didnt mention it at all and not that he was like starting all sorts of hateful rhetoric except for people in garys community, that was so not the point and the point was that regardless of what he said they focused on the fact that he was staying up all night pending a lot of that was denying them their constitutional right. Thats whetstone. Host i imagine to some degree they knew changing his rhetoric was not about all they could win , but they might be able to win in court. Guest and were finally able to. It went from like underground resistance to finally after his death and duncan versus louisiana was symbolic, not literally an attack on the regime but certainly symbolically. Menu the Supreme Court was a big deal and symbolically for that community at the same time some of the other victories were happening there is a scene in the book after the first big election after the Voting Rights act where all of these black black men residence are registered to vote and theres nothing perez can do finally after all these years and that was what people in the black community talked about exclusively to me and so like i ended up coming sort of full circle to wear what was interesting to me about perez was not so much the words he used because he used all sorts of hateful words, but what was really pernicious about him was the work he did and how long it took to undo that. Host in the fact that before any of this happened he had basically remade this area because of the does this asian of the hurricanes which brings me too my next question. Its interesting with the first chapter called dirty storm and you talk about hurricane betsy. Im interested to find out why you chose to start with that instead of jumping you could have started this book right with gary doing this but you start with this hurricane and im wondering why you decided to do that. I know why i think you did but i wonder why. Guest the short answer is i have a very indulgent editor and i also started by the way in outer space which you kindly declined to mention with the gemini are program. Host it just seems like really begins guest i wrote that and i was like there is no way, there is no way my editor will let me keep this. This was a selfindulgent, but i typed it up anyway and she let me keep it. Yesterday hurricane betsy. I close with hurricane camille. Part of that is like the story is banded really nicely. Another one of these things like you cant make up a bit and willing as good as perez and you cant make up a historical story in such a nicely banded timeframe like 66 to 68 and then hurricane betsy was the most destructive hurricane in us history until Hurricane Katrina and hurricane camille was the most intense hurricane to make landfall still in the United States in 1969 totally devastated it in different ways so for me it was like some of it was a literary thing you know want it there was something about Creative Destruction and between storm and dirty storm and like book ending you will see the final senses like the first one, but you know in a lesser highfalutin way performing what was in court and as a storyteller about both hurricanes but especially the first one is it lets you take the measure of that place, a place thats incredibly vulnerable to the elements and also isolated and also shows perezs power. For me it was this really efficient way to give you a sense of the place. It was also how i started my interviews with every Single Person in black mens parish because it would get them it wasnt racially charged and everyone remembers where they were during betsy because it destroyed everything you requested i took from this is that it was devastated and perez and a lot of places was the hero so as this all happens they arty feel like this guy kind of took care of us and he must be right so i thought that was a really great way to set up the story but i dont want perez to have the last word. I want kerry to have the last word in my question is why dont we know the story. How has this been such a small part of our history . When we know this . Guest thats a good question. I thought about that pretty often. I think some is because the stories a little slippery. You commend for the Supreme Court case and i got into this not because im interested in the history of desegregation or the jim crow south although im not uninterested. On the criminal justice reporter and im interested in criminal justice and i got in this for the jury trial but in the end, i mean, thats the issue that went to the Supreme Court and thats nothing. The story is so much bigger than that invited bigger, i mean, the Supreme Court is as high as you can go in the legal system and this was a landmark case duncan versus louisiana very important, but it had its tentacles out in all these different parts of American History and southern history and louisiana history that most of which i didnt know about. I didnt know about this army of lawyers coming to the south. How did i not know about that . Forget about duncan versus louisiana, although its important interesting like why did knight know what it actually took to enforce civil rights laws . Ive taken American History. You know richards work with around employment discrimination, i mean, all of these groups armed nonviolent groups of activists all over the south were much more part of the daily lives of civil rights activists than Martin Luther king and the sort of Nonviolent Movement as important as that was. It just didnt get covered. For me it was about unearthing all of this and i asked myself constantly why its not a bigger part of my understanding of history as a reasonably welleducated person and the answer is because its messy and uncomfortable and so much of it so much in the context of the story is about what is messy and uncomfortable in real. Host and you can very much look at this thing and say wow, you again and i dont want to oversimplify but we have a great villain, a great hero, the heroes that helped him along, but you are right in the sense that its not a singular narrative that carries. It has all these different parts, but i think its important people know and i wonder finally, does gary feel like that he has a major role in the Civil Rights Era . This he himself feel that . Guest gary is a very modest person and hes a good friend. Garys really humble about his role and doesnt want to oversell it. However, he knows his name shows up all over my School Textbooks and litters of the footnotes of criminal procedures and criminal law opinions and has for more than 50 years. He understands that, and i think also for him like having that recognized as a been important in a lot of ways. Is the first time and a lot of his extended family members found out about the story because mostly after the thrill of the big win you know hes a working man and went back to being a captain of tugboat and trippy and he still is a captain. He also he knew, he knew that the case he thought over this stupid misdemeanor ended up securing a really important right for millions of american citizens who get accused of crimes and he doesnt forget that, so i think hes mostly just kind of tickled everyone suddenly wants to pay attention. Host as a reminder for anyone that watches the book is trying to. Its a great read. I know everyone says it should be made into a movie, but this would be great because of the people involved and gary really does have a great story and i commend you for the work you did to bring it to all of our attention so matthew vanmeter, thank you for being part of the southern festival of the books. Thank you, jeremy. Host thank you for tuning in europe we have continued great books we want you to hear about and great authors and interviews so please stay with us. Its a bit different world than we are used to, but the conversation can still be