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• Professor Ogletree's official site
• All Deliberate Speed official site
• Article on Professor Ogletree
• Longer bio on Mr. Ogletree

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Tavis: Charles Ogletree is a distinguished professor of law at Harvard, whose book 'All Deliberate Speed,' about the fiftieth anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education is now out in paperback. He's also co-editor of a new book about race and the death penalty in the U.S. The book is called 'From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State, Race and the Death Penalty in America.' Tree, nice to have you on the program.

Charles Ogletree: Good being with you again, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you. So much to talk to you about, so little time. Let me move through at least three or four subject matter that you're directly connected to. Let me start, though, with your last visit here. When you were here last some months ago, you were talking about a historic case that you and other Black lawyers were involved in relative to the race riots in Tulsa, Oklahoma, back in 1921. What's the status of that case?

Ogletree: Good question, Tavis.

Tavis: Why don't you start by explaining, for those who don't know, what happened in 1921.

Ogletree: Absolutely. In 1921, Tulsa, a community called Greenwood was known as the Black Wall Street. Those of us who know the Gap Band, we think it's income gap or (word?) gap. The gap stands for Greenwood, Archer, and Pine, the 36-block area where Blacks excelled. And in 1921, on May thirty-first, a White mob went in there and destroyed that whole community, because of a false claim of a racial assault.

They burned the Stratford Hotel, the Dreamland Theater, churches, newspapers, destroyed millions of dollars worth of property. The Blacks there never got any justice. And Johnnie Cochran was the first lawyer called in 2003. He joined the team. Michele Roberts, a great lawyer out of Washington, D.C. Dennis Sweet, Adjoa Aiyetoro, all volunteered. And we filed a lawsuit in 2003 on those Tulsa survivors.

The federal courts denied our cases in 2004, 2005. Just last month, for the first time, I just got a letter from the Organization of American States' international court, and they said for the first time ever, they are asking that the United States government, not the city of Tulsa, not the city of Oklahoma, respond to our lawsuit. So we are alive again, and these victims who are 90 years old to 102 are thrilled that finally, this case will be back in the international court.

Tavis: What's the rationale for not hearing a case like that? These are people who, it's one thing for, for you and me to be asking for a reparations check, and that debate will go on forever and ever about whether or not we deserve something, given that the folk who are around running government today, the folk who make up this place called America, didn't do anything to us.

So why should they, in a contemporary sense, give us a check. You know how that argument works. But these are persons who were directly impacted by what happened in 1921. They gotta be what, 90, 100 years old?

Ogletree: Ninety years old. The oldest is 103, Otis Clark, and he's still alive. And when we filed this lawsuit in 2003, Tavis, we had 150 survivors. In the three years since then, about 40 people have died. They're dying every day. And that's what makes it sad. The reason that Tulsa's been resistant, they don't deny what happened. They don't deny the White mobs destroying the Black business, the Black homes, or Black lives.

They say the lawsuit should have been filed earlier. The courts also said something very helpful to us, that Blacks couldn't go to the courts in the 1920s, or the 1930s or the forties or fifties or sixties. But they said, sometime after the sixties, someone should have filed a lawsuit. And that's crazy.

Tavis: Well, this is sometime after the sixties. (Laughs)

Ogletree: Exactly, right, right. And now we found the evidence. The evidence wasn't discovered until the Tulsa Race Riot Commission discovered it. Things that had never been known until the year 2001. And we filed our lawsuit within two years, which means we meet the statute of limitations.

Tavis: You're the law professor, not me, and you may have just answered the question. Is there a Constitutional statute of limitations on, how might I put this, race animus cases?

Ogletree: Well, there's no statute of limitations on murder.

Tavis: Right.

Ogletree: Right? That lasts forever. And the second point is that what the court says is that African Americans couldn't go to the court because of racism in the 1930s and forties and fifties, but they should have gone at some other point. The fact of the matter now that we're in international court, the statute of limitations is not a barrier. Neither is sovereign immunity.

So for the first time, I'm announcing today that we finally have a forum where this case can be heard, and it's an international forum that will help these victims. A lot of it's on the website, Alldeliberatespeed.com. There's a Tulsa Race Riots link there to give the listeners more information.

Tavis: Right. That's the Tulsa Race Riots. Again, so much stuff to talk to you about. Let me move now to 'All Deliberate Speed,' a national bestselling book now out in paperback that you authored. Big story here in L.A. the other day that connects to this notion of education in America, certainly post-secondary education. I think most of us in this city are taken aback, were taken aback the other day when we found out, learned from the 'L.A. Times' that of the almost 5,000 freshman entering UCLA this coming fall, only 96 of them are African American. It's the school where Jackie Roosevelt Robinson went.

Ogletree: Absolutely.

Tavis: Tom Bradley, the mayor of this city, went to UCLA. And Ralph Bunch, and others. How do you have 96 African Americans out of a class of almost 5,000? A school like UCLA? What's happening on the education front?

Ogletree: Well, it's bad news and worse news. The bad news is that Proposition 209, from a decade ago, has literally closed many of California's schools to African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans. The numbers are just dwindling, and they're getting worse. Not only are there fewer people coming, there are fewer people who want to come, because they see that we're closed sign out there, but it's getting worse.

On Monday, June fifth, the Supreme Court just granted cert, which means they're gonna hear two cases on affirmative action. One from the state of Washington; one from the state of Kentucky. These two cases are where schools voluntarily had an integration program to diversify their education opportunity. Three years ago, we won the Michigan case. Five to four, Justice O'Connor? She's gone. Chief Justice Roberts is there now.

Justice Alito is there now. It's a different Supreme Court. And we may be, Tavis, and by next year, back to a pre-1950s Brown Vs. Board Of Education when it comes to issues of race and racial opportunity. This is the worst it's ever been. That's why the 2006 elections are important, 2008 elections are important, why the local elections are important.

Because we're losing that battle, and that's one of the things I'm very involved in at Harvard with the (unintelligible). We're looking at the problem of achievement of African Americans. Because we're getting worse, rather than better.

Tavis: Let me ask you, I don't ask this question out of naiveté. I ask it to give you a chance to explain to those who might not understand how this works. When you say the 2006 elections are important, the 2008 elections are important, help the audience understand how you juxtapose that argument of the importance of these elections with the fact that we all know that Supreme Court justices serve for a lifetime, and to your point about O'Connor being gone now, and it being a new court.

Does it really matter what happens in these election cycles if the folk on the court have a conservative bent, and one, looking at their voting record, historically, could believe that they are gonna turn the clock back on Brown Vs. Board, given their conservative views, why, then, do elections matter?

Ogletree: Well, one thing you asked me, just before the 2004 election, why was it important? And I told you that the next President elected in 2004 will probably appoint two, three, or four Supreme Court justices that can change the whole way the legal system works. And that has happened President Bush was elected in 2004, he's already filled two positions.

I suspect, since he doesn't leave office until January 2009, and we're in 2006, he might have two more appointments before the end of 2009. That's why the elections matter. Who's in the White House will determine who's on the Supreme Court, number one. And secondly, when you talk about legislation, whether it's the Voting Rights Act that's coming up for reauthorization in 2007, issues of affirmative action, all those things are impacted by federal legislation.

And Congress can have a big impact on that. President Johnson, we forget it was 1965 when he said, you can't expect the Negro to have the same opportunities as Whites when they are carrying chains when they're running that hundred-yard dash. I urge your listeners to go back and read President Johnson's speech from 1965 about the disparities between Blacks and Whites, how bad they were then, and look at where we are 41 years later.

It is shocking what he said at Howard in 1965, Howard University, and what we find in 2006. That's why elections are important, political officials are important. And the only way we're gonna have diversity I places like California and other places is for people to see that in order for us to move forward, we each have to have equal opportunity.

Tavis: You mentioned Lyndon Johnson. Any good student of history knows that Lyndon Johnson himself even talked about the fact that he knew that by his aggressive push on Civil Rights back in the sixties, he was basically writing off the south for the Democratic party for generations to come. And indeed, that in fact is what's happened, pretty much, with regard to the south and how it votes in national elections.

That said, since you mentioned the Voting Rights Act, key provisions set to expire next year. Let's talk about the Voting Rights Act, how important it is, and what ought to be done, what can be done at this point, with regard to it being reauthorized?

Ogletree: Well, the good news is this. President Bush has said that he supports reauthorization. Members of Congress have said they support it. But what they support in principle and what they support in practice is to be seen. And so, I'm very happy to have been on the national commission with Barbara with the Arnwine of the Lawyer's Committee, and we've done a several hundred page report on the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with recommendation and an analysis.

It still is a very serious issue, because we still find, with rare exception, African Americans can't get elected unless they're elected by African Americans. That is, Black candidates running nationally or locally for Congress or other positions have a very difficult time in either party, Republican or Democratic party, because race still matters. So this Voting Rights Act is very important to make sure that places that discriminate are held accountable.

The second problem is that the problem of voting is not a southern problem, Tavis. There are problems in Massachusetts, in Philadelphia, in New York. And that's what we forget. The problems of transparency. That is that whether or not the system is fair is a national problem, and that's why we're pushing on this Voting Rights Act. I'm confident, if the momentum that we have now continues through 2007, it will be reauthorized and very powerfully.

Tavis: Just a couple minutes here left. I want to get to the book about lynch mobs and the death penalty. Before I do that, though, I know one of our viewers is going to write me a note and say, you have asked Professor Ogletree how, then, he explains one of his former law students, Barack Obama, being elected in Illinois. He didn't just get elected by Black people.

Ogletree: Oh, that's exactly right. And I also think that Harold Ford may get elected in Tennessee. But they are rare exceptions; that's the problem.

Tavis: Exceptions, yeah.

Ogletree: We've had three African Americans in modern history. Ed Brook, Massachusetts Republican, Carol Moseley Braun, Democrat in Illinois, and then Barack Obama. He got elected because he started early and worked hard. But anyone, whether it's Pennsylvania or California, people should be able to get elected. And Massachusetts' delegation? All White; all male.

It tells me that there's a lot of work that we need to do, and Barack is the example. But we can't look at Barack and be satisfied when we're 13% of the population and one percent of the United States Senate. That's not right. And we're far from being completely diverse in what we need to do.

Tavis: The death penalty. The new book, 'From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State, Race and the Death Penalty in America.' We making progress on this?

Ogletree: We are, but slow. This Supreme Court has done three things in the last five years. First, they decided that juveniles will not be executed. That was a big decision in 2003. Second, they decided that the mentally retarded would not be executed. That was a very big decision. And third, they decided just this last year in a case called Miller L., and that's his picture on the cover, that prosecutors were so racist in their striking Blacks from serving on the jury that Miller L. was denied a fair trial.

So this book is about two forms of the death penalty. What Whites practice in church every Sunday in the 18 and 1900s, when they went to church in the morning, prayed to God, came home, and lynched Black men all over the south. And we document that history, and now the death penalty now, that race still matters. That an overwhelming percentage of African Americans earn death penalty.

Blacks unable to serve on juries. Blacks are struck by prosecutors when they do try to serve on juries. And so, the system is flawed. And I'm part of a movement that we're trying to look at it and re-examine it, here in the state of California, and in the other states, to make sure that we go into the twenty-first century like the rest of the world. The rest of the world does not have a death penalty, and certainly the United States should move away from capital punishment, given the fact that it's unfair and applied unequally.

Tavis: I told you, so many issues; so little time. And I think, after all this, he has time to teach, in fact, at the Harvard Law School. 'All Deliberate Speed,' the national bestseller by Charles Ogletree, now out in paperback. And of course, the new book from Charles Ogletree Jr., 'From Lynch Mobs to the Killing State, Race and the Death Penalty in America.' Always an insightful conversation, Professor Ogletree. Nice to have you here.

Ogletree: Pleasure, Tavis.

Tavis: Good to see you again. Up next, a unique look at New Orleans' legendary Preservation Hall jazz band. Tom Sancton joins us in a moment. Stay with us.