Transcripts For CSPAN3 Legacies Of Supreme Court Landmark Ca

Special event. A Panel Discussion on some of the Supreme Courts most significant landmark cases. When the stories of we the people become cases before the United States Supreme Court and when these cases result in the opinions of the court, history turns. The ways in which we think about and live under the constitution are reflected in the courts interpretations in both their Historical Context and their legacies. Some cases and the courts opinions in them so profoundly alter our constitutional understandings that they can only be rightly called landmark cases, markers of where we have traveled as a nation. As a part of an initiative begun in 2015, the National Constitution center partnered with cspan to create a 12part series illustrating the history, issues and people involved in monumental landmark cases. Through the resulting online videos and other classroom Resources Available at landmarkcases. Cspan. Org, students and educators can analyze some famous and infamous cases. Last year we continued this initiative through a series of town hall discussions. In depth articles on our constitution daily blog and the publication of our 2017 popular civic calendar which featured 12 beautifully designed mini posters highlighting 15 landmark cases. Todays event is the culmination of this initiative and we are thrilled that our three panelists have joined us to celebrate Constitution Day and to talk to you more about these historic cases. Without further adieu, please join me in welcoming todays panel. Karen koramatsu is the director of the institution of her father. Oliver brown was the lead petitioner in the case brown v board of education of topeka. John tinker along with his sister mary beth was a copetitioner of tinker v Des Moines Independent Community School District. In recent years john and mary beth have traveled the country on the tinker tour bus telling students their story. Joining our panelist is the director of education, mike adams, who will moderate todays discussion. Lets give our panelists and moderator a warm round of applause. [ applause ] good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the National Constitution center on Constitution Day, the best day of the year to be here. Joining me on stage as vince stengel are people closely related to three landmark Supreme Court cases that all took place in the 20th century, so not that long ago. In todays program what well do is ill introduce each of our panelists. Theyll tell you a little bit of the background of the Supreme Court case in which their father or in johns case themselves were involved in the case. Theyll talk about what the court ruled, how it impacted our lives and why those cases are still relevant today. Our first speaker to my left is karen koramatsu. Shes the founder and director of the fred t. Koramatsu institute. Shes the daughter in the case of koramatsuv United States. Shes a public speaker and public educator. She carries on at teacher conferences and organizations across the country. One of her most significant accomplishments was working to successfully establish in 2011 a perpetual Fred Koramatsu Civil Liberties day on january 30th. Fred is the first asianamerican in u. S. History to have been honored with a statewide day. Please welcome karen koramatsu. [ applause ] so if you would like to begin by kind of giving us some of the background of the case or tell us a little bit the most important things you think our audience should know about the case koramatsu v United States. Thank you. Its a pleasure to be with you all today on Constitution Day. Its very exciting to talk to the next generation about the importance of our constitution. My father, as was said, had the landmark Supreme Court case of koramatsu v United States. As a result of the world war ii japaneseamerican incarceration. So after the bombing of pearl harbor on december 7th, 1941, president roosevelt issued executive order 9066 on february 19th, 1942, that gave the authority to the military to forcibly remove anyone of japanese ancestry from the west coast and send them to american concentration camps across this country. 120,000 people were incarcerated. 2 3 were american citizens. 1 3 were under the age of 18 and could be students like you. My father thought this was was wrong because all due process of law was denied. No one had been charged with a crime. No one had access to an attorney. No one had their day in court, and so my father thought why should he have to go to a prison camp when he had done nothing wrong. So he avoided the military orders, you know, just decided that it was wrong and eventually a month later after everyone had been sent off to the detention Assembly Centers along the west coast, he was arrested. And the director at that time of the Northern California affiliate of the american sifl lCivil Liberties union visited my father in jail and said, you know, would he be my father be willing to take his case if need be all the way to the Supreme Court and my father said yes because he believed in this country and he believed in the constitution. And so it took a couple of years through appeals. If you know about the judicial system, you know you have to you have to kind of lose at one level in order to go up. So eventually, you know, through the system he ended his case ended up in the Supreme Court. It took almost two years so on december 18th, 1944, the Supreme Court decision was issued but it was not unanimous. It was a 63 decision. So there were, you know, six justices that agreed that the military orders were constitutional and three did not and the three dissenting opinions are the most recognized in the city today. And really the most relevant. So Justice Jackson referred to my fathers Supreme Court case as this lies around like a loaded weapon ready for anyone to pick up and use with a probable cause. And actually after 9 11 in 2001 my fathers case was cited as a possible reason to round up arab and Muslim Americans and put them in american concentration camps. Justice murphy called it the ugly abyss of racism. Justice owen roberts said, this is unconstitutional. So clearly the court was not, you know, completely in agreement. And but my my father, even though he was totally disappointed, never gave up hope that some day his case could be reopened. It took almost four years for that to happen, and after the freedom of information act you could go to archives in washington, d. C. , and do the research in the files of the government and they found what was called the smoking gun, meaning they found the document that proved there was no military necessity at the time of my fathers arrest and when the japaneseamericans were incarcerated. There was never any evidence of any spying or espionage from the japaneseamericans. And actually at the time of my fathers Supreme Court hearing in 1944 the department of justice had withheld evidence, had destroyed evidence and had altered evidence. So on that basis theres a little unknown judicial or law term called corum novis. That means an error has been made before us. An error has been made before the court. And so on that basis they were able to reopen my fathers Supreme Court case, and it was proven that there was government misconduct at the time. And his his civil conviction was overruled or vacated. And that means he no longer had a federal prison record, but his case is still on the Supreme Court record. When you win at a federal court level, there was no basis to go up. You couldnt go up to the to, lets say, a court of appeals or back up to the Supreme Court. So it would take another precedent in order for it to be cited, but its been discredited but it still has been referred to, even to this day. So when the immigration was banned, my fathers case has been noted in reference to creating this possible Muslim Registry that we have heard about. So my father never gave up hope that some day he could reopen up his Supreme Court case. 40 years is a long time to never give up hope. But i didnt even find out about my fathers Supreme Court case until i was in high school. So i was 16 years old. No one had talked about my fathers case, and my friend was giving a book report about the japaneseamerican incarceration and my fathers case and she cited koramats uverses the United States. I kind of flinched and thought, oh, thats my name. And i had 35 pairs of eyes turning around looking at me. Im shrugging my shoulders because she didnt say Fred Koramatsu. She only said koramats uverses the United States. Then i found out that was indeed my father. He was waiting until i got older to understand what happened at that time. Also the whole japaneseamerican Community Never spoke about it because they had been arrested. It took my fathers case to be reopened to lift that shame and to regain their dignity. [ applause ] we do have time for one or two questions . We have a question down here in the fourth row. Stand up. Stand up. There you go. When you found out about your fathers daze case, did you cry or did you feel emotional about it . Thats a very good question. I didnt cry. I didnt really know or understand what it meant to have a federal prison record. I never you know, its not like today you see all these shows on television about, you know, people getting arrested and crimes and all of that. It was a long time ago. And but i didnt i just didnt know how to really digest the information. And so i just kept it to myself. My friends, my classmates the next day asked me was that about my father . I just said, yes. I just kind of shrugged it off. And so i really didnt start understanding about the impact of my fathers case until he until the case was reopened in 1983 and at that time i was 33 years old so it because i had a lot of i had a lot of prejudice and racism that was against me growing up so when i was in Elementary School and the teacher was talking about the bombing of pearl harbor and they would show the bombing of pearl harbor how many people have seen the bombing of pearl harbor picture . So the teacher would throw that up on the board but she wouldnt say how you treat people that have been really targeted that live in this country . How would you feel . There was never that kind of discussion. So the kids said it was my fault. They would call me racist names. It got to the point where i couldnt even ride the school bus. So i felt a bit, you know, kind of ashamed. My brother who was four years younger had the same kind of experience. We didnt even talk about it with each other until after we had graduated high school. One more question in the middle here. Did your father feel happy when he got out of prison . Well, yes. I mean, he well, i would say what happened was he was arrested and he had a bail hearing in San Francisco and even though he received bail, so, in other words, somebody paid the money so that he could be, you know, kind of free until his case was heard before the court again, the military police were standing outside the courtroom and because the executive orders and the Exclusion Orders had been issued where no one on the west coast of japanese ancestry could stay, he was taken over to the detention Assembly Center which was like a prison. It was basically just horse stalls. So they just whitewashed the horse stalls and put people in there and they were treated worse than, you know they were treated inhumane and worse than animals. And then he was sent over to one of the ten concentration camps in topaz, utah. It wasnt until after the end of the war that he was able to be free. Thank you. Karen koramatsu, everyone. [ applause ] the next case that well be looking at is a case you might be a little more familiar with, brown v board of education. Our next panelist is Cheryl Brown Henderson. Cheryl is one of three daughters of the late reverend oliver l. Brown who filed suit on behalf of their children against the local board of education. The case joined with cases from delaware, south carolina, washington and d. C. On appeal to the u. S. Supreme court and on may 17, 1954, became known as the landmark decision of brown v. Board of topeka, kansas. Brown died before knowing the impact of his case. Cheryl is the founding president of the Brown Foundation and owner of brown and Associates Educational Consulting firm. She has extensive education in education and business. She has two decades of experience in political advocacy, public policy, and federal legislative development. In 1990 under her leadership the foundation successfully worked with the United States congress to design the brown v Education National park. Please welcome Cheryl Brown Henderson [ applause ] thank you. First of all, i want to thank the Constitution Center and thank all of you for your interest in being here and our fellow panelists, mr. Tinker. Basically Supreme Court decisions are very important. I cant overstate the importance because they affect your lives everyday. Brown versus the board of education in particular. How many of you are familiar with the 14th amendment of the constitution . Some of you are familiar. I would suggest you become familiar because what Supreme Court cases do is they interpret for us the meaning of certain part of the constitution, for example. Before brown versus department of education we were living under a system of states rights. I dont know if you know what that means. It means the Supreme Court has not definitively interpreted for the country the 14th amendment to the constitution. States were deciding here and there what you could and couldnt do. Everybody with blue shirts couldnt ride the bus to school, they had to walk. Everybody with brown hair had to go to a school with kids only with brown hair. Just all over the place. And especially for africanamerican people, a lot of you watch the news today and you see the protests against how africanamerican males in particular are treated. Well, brown versus the board of education and a lot of the early activities, activism, was all about similar issues. See, it took over 100 years, a century, for brown versus board of education to take place. First time parents, people like your parents took to court the issue of why couldnt my kids go to any school . Im paying taxes on every school but youre assigning my child a school based solely on the color of their skin. 1849 in boston, massachusetts, the first documented case. So 105 years later, 1954, brown versus the board of education we experienced a legal victory. Not a social victory but a legal victory. Ill explain what i mean by that in just a minute. Now kansas is my home state, and i imagine many of you have never been to kansas. Anybody ever been to kansas . Oh. Did you stop . Because we realize its not a place people go on vacation, but kansas has been a very important state to the civil rights history of this country. Even before brown v board of education in 1954, in my state of kansas there were 11 School Desegregation cases like no other state in the nation. Africanamerican American Parents were suing for the right for their children to attend any school. Not waiting to be assigned to a school based solely on the color of their skin. Now what i mean by a legal victory, first of all, brown was a collective action. It wasnt a single individual. A lot of the textbooks, a lot of the websites are absolutely wrong in how they talk about brown v board. Now my father didnt wake up one day and decide i had had enough. You know, im going to sue the school board. It didnt happen that way. Brown v. Board was a collective action. They led by the naacp, the National Association for the advancement of colored people, and their Legal Defense fund. They recruited people to be plaintiffs in these cases. As you heard in the intro, the locations in brown from delaware, kansas, virginia, south carolina, and washington, d. C. One of the cases was organized by teenagers led by 16yearold girl on her own who called for a strike at her segregated school for the right to have better facilities. The rest were parent driven cases. So my father got involved because one day just this simply history knocked on our door in the form of a childhood friend who was now an attorney. They went to grade school together. They went to junior high together. They went be to high school together. Charles went off to world war ii and came back and became an attorney. One