The American Bar Association reports that only 5% of lawyers in America are African-American, while African-Americans represent about 13.2% of the total population.

I can imagine that being a black lawyer in the South comes with its own set of challenges because of the long, dark history of racism and the vestiges of the Confederacy that still exist today.

Joining me on the show today is Edward Brown, Esq.

He's an attorney who has practiced law for 42 years in Charleston, South Carolina.

His areas of focus include constitutional law, employment discrimination, civil rights law, criminal law and other areas.

He's also the author of the book Memoirs of a Southern Black Lawyer, Volume 1.

Don't go anywhere.

We'll be right back with Attorney Brown.

Well, Attorney Brown, welcome to the show.

Welcome to Courageous Conversations.

We are so glad that you're taking time out to be with us today to talk about your journey and also to talk about your book.

Thank you and welcome.

- Thank you for having me, Pastor.

- Well, it's an honor, and you have practiced law in South Carolina for 42 years, according to the information that I have.

And you're also the author of the book Memoirs of a Southern Black Lawyer.

Can you tell me what inspired you to become an attorney?

- I remember as a little boy going to a place with my father in the South, a little town called Walterboro, South Carolina, and my father was a very robust man, very proud man, and he was my hero.

And he had to negotiate with this Caucasian individual.

And in order to do so, he had to humble himself.

I found that to be very, very troubling.

He called him mister while the Caucasian man was calling my father Frank.

It was a total disrespect for my father, to the extent that it made me feel as though there was something that needed to be done for these two men to be put on an equal plane.

And I thought the laws of this state of the United States were such that black men, black people in general, had to be subservient, had to be submissive to Caucasians, and there was something inherently wrong about that.

So consequently, I decided that I have to engage in every effort that I can, and I was about eight years old then.

I decided that I would engage in every effort that I could to change that paradigm, to change that dynamics, and the way that I thought I could best do that, be most transformative in doing that, was to become a lawyer.

- You know, I imagine that your journey to becoming a lawyer was not an easy one, especially being in South Carolina with its long history of racism.

And you were a part of actually integrating a school.

So, I mean, at eight years old, you make a decision that you've got to do something that's going to be transformative, and then you start off on your high school, junior high and high school years.

And then I read that in your book that literally there was a... You know, the law came down that schools were to be integrated and you chose to go to this school.

And what were some of the impacts that you had to deal with being one of the African-Americans that was integrating a school?

- Some 11 years after Brown versus the Board of Education, South Carolina, along with other Southern states, finally came up with a mechanism that they thought would satisfy the mandates of Brown, notwithstanding the language in Brown says that schools should be integrated with all deliberate speed.

So they came up with this freedom of choice, and I must admit that I was not as conscious as I should have been about the exacting nature of racism as it relates to education and educational institution, and especially high schools.

So I just asked my father.

My mother had passed by that time.

I asked my father if I could go to the all white high school, and he said yes.

And I went.

And while I went, and endured a hellacious environment for two years...

..I regretted it then, but now I don't.

And let me explain to you how that was.

There was 35 kids, African-American children, that started that journey on that fateful day in August of the school year to St John's High School.

And from day one, it was a... ..horrible place to be.

Teachers were racially motivated to inspire students to call you the N-word.

Students would come into class, point at you and say, What is the monkey doing in class?

And after about two weeks... ..only about 10 to 15 of us were left... ..stayed, because the rest of the children could not take it.

Now, fortunately, I was made from a fire that allowed me never to give up.

I was born and raised on a farm, and it was a lot of hard work in doing that, so there was no giving up.

And to be quite frank, I wanted to give up, because I asked my father if I could go back to the all-black high school, and he was very exacting and he said, Oh, you can't.

You started this and you will complete it.

Every day, every day that I had to go to the school, beginning at the bus stop in the morning, I had to summons up the courage.

- You had to deal with the trauma of that as a teen and carry that trauma.

And I think what we forget is that you are one person, but that happened all across the South in many times in different areas.

And so let me ask you, were there crowds at the front door screaming at you?

We don't want you here!

You know, we see these pictures and these videos, and parents who were absolutely against it.

Was that the experience?

And did you see the community come out to fight against that integration?

- We didn't have that experience where the crowd was at the front door, but the experience we did have is that the South Carolina Highway Patrol had... Any bus that had a black child on it was escorted back and forth for almost the entire first year by a trooper from the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

But when you got to the school, the atmosphere was...

It was...

The N-word was every other word that they use to address you, not only the students, but the entire administrative staff, except for one or two persons.

- That's horrible.

That's horrible.

And you know... And still, you were able to make it through your high school years, go off, do your undergrad and ultimately become an attorney.

I do want to get to some of the areas of your book that I thought were just so really, really relevant, because you paint a picture or give a perspective of a Southern black lawyer, right?

So you're in South Carolina, where racism is very strong and you begin to talk about some things in the book that I think are really important.

There's a phrase in one of the chapters of the book called Assembly Line Justice.

What exactly is Assembly Line Justice and why did you feel it was important to write about that?

- I felt it was important to write about that because it illustrates in no uncertain terms how the judicial system treat black defendants, Black people who've been arrested and become a part of the judicial system.

Assembly Line Justice is a multi component... ..factor.

It has multi components.

One of the components is the police officer.

They arrest the person, they arrest black defendants.

We only make up in this area probably about 30% of the population.

Yet you go down to the courthouse on any given day and the defendants down there constitute in excess...

The defendants down there that are black are in excess of 75%.

Overpolicing.

So once you get into the system, then what they do is the prosecutor...

The constitution... (SOUND BREAKS UP) ..these people, because initially and in the beginning, the constitution of these United States was not made for us, as was said by Jefferson Davis.

- That's right.

- We'll talk more about that later.

But as you got into the system, got into the courthouse, then what they do, because most of the defendants, the African-American defendants, could not afford quality legal representation, so the United States court, in a case called Wainwright, mandated that any person who is faced with criminal charges must be provided a lawyer.

Then they develop...

Most states developed what is called a public defender system.

The public defender system is minimal at best.

It is underfunded, it is undermanned, and it is designed simply for the state to meet the criterion set out in Wainwright, which was very, very minimal.

And that you have a lawyer to represent you in the criminal proceeding.

If a defendant is lucky, and I do mean lucky, and they are with the public defender system, you will see your lawyer hopefully one or two times before the lawyer approaches you and says, Look, I got this deal, this plea deal, This is the best deal.

I'm going to get.

You need to take it.

And if you don't take it and you go to trial, you'll get a longer sentence.

Well, if you've been in jail unable to meet the bond for maybe 18 months, two years, you're happy to take that.

- You're going to take it.

- And what they do is... - Not to mention the bail system, which is set up against poor people.

It's not to protect the community.

I mean, you think about this Kyle Rittenhouse, and I want to get to everything in your book or as much as we can.

So, excuse me if I interject, but you think about the whole Kyle Rittenhouse thing, you know, he was just exonerated, found not guilty.

Imagine if that was a 17-year-old African-American male walking down the street with an AR-15 and, you know, shoots two people and kills two people and then and then shoots the arm off of a third individual.

I would say that he probably wouldn't even have made it down the street in the first place.

And then, secondary, he would have been stopped by police in the process.

But then to just see the almost egregious way that the judge was interacting with the prosecutors, it was an embarrassment, I think.

But it also highlights the issues that are happening to your point within our judicial system.

Your thoughts?

- Yes.

Thoughts.

If Kyle Rittenhouse, or if that defendant was black, there would not be a trial.

But there would have been a funeral right after, because the law enforcement individuals or the law enforcement authorities at the scene would have engaged in an assassination of that black person.

But with Rittenhouse, if you notice, they embraced him... - Yes, they did.

- ..as came down the street with the AR-15.

And you're correct that the judge decided early on that he was going to everything that he could legally to make sure that Rittenhouse walked out of the courtroom.

And if I may say this for just one brief moment... - Please, -As those charges were given to the jury, or verdict form was given to the jury, it was stacked such that it would be all or nothing.

I am prepared to say unequivocally, based on my experience, that the jury never considered the lesser offense when it came to Rittenhouse.

- Wow, wow.

But that only highlights the duality within the justice system.

She's supposed to be blind, but she sees color, because of the numbers...

The statistics nationally, you know, show out that, you know, we are overpoliced and then we are overprosecuted and we end up doing more time.

And if you check any prison across the United States, we are more represented within those prisons than others.

Now, you also mentioned the school to prison pipeline in your book.

Can you talk a little bit about that and how that is impacting the African-American and minority community?

That has destroyed one generation of black children and it's on the way to destroying another black generation, another generation of black children.

In 1974...

I'm sorry, 1994, Congress passed what is called a Gun... School Gun Free Act, something similar to that.

I'm not sure.

The very exact name of it momentarily escapes me.

And the initial intent of the legislation was good.

You don't want guns on campus, you don't want drugs on campus.

However, then the administrators, who are normally Caucasians, begin to apply this zero tolerance concept to even the most minor of offenses, like talking back to the teacher, like coming to school with prescribed medication without a excuse from the doctor, like being out of uniform.

The child is then targeted.

- Mm-hmm.

- When that child is targeted, then the child... You're talking about a teenager or a child in elementary school.

That child is targeted.

Then the child becomes the object of scorn for a number of the administrators.

- They get in more trouble.

- Right.

- White students who engage in the same kind of conduct... - So true.

..has nothing that happens to them.

And what is happening with the zero tolerance is that the discretion, the discretion to do damage to these children are left solely in the hands of the administrators.

And that is where it starts.

Most schools now have school resources... - Right.

Security.

- And those officers are... ..primarily white.

They come to the school.

Black children are arrested for things that white children do and nothing happens.

Maybe the parents are called.

And then once these children are arrested, they send them to these alternative schools.

- Right.

- And the alternative school is an off site facility.

The child is to get there as best they can.

That means the parent has to get the child there.

They are given a computer.

And more times there is no instruction or instructor there.

So these children are supposed to keep up with what's going on in the main classroom, on the main campus by way of a computer.

What 16, 15 or 10-year-old has that kind of discipline?

- Yeah.

You know, I had the opportunity to engage in an alternative school as a mentor, and when the superintendent was telling us about what they call the success academy, I said, This is just going to be a place that you house, you know, black and brown kids and white kids that are, you know, uncontrollable.

And this is not going to be a place of excellence.

It's not going to be a place of success.

And literally one year that I was there, more than 50% of the African-American students that were there ended up in the juvenile justice system.

And you are right.

Overpolicing.

They see African-American and minority children as dangerous, more dangerous, and they are punished at a heavier rate than white children.

And it's just unfair.

It's just, you know... Our children are suffering.

And once they get in that juvenile justice system, it's very difficult to get out.

In Eastern, literally the juvenile justice system sits... A housing space sits right in front of the big prison.

And so our thought was, Hey, listen, this is just going to be you move from one prison to the next.

And we can see that happening.

Now, you, in your book kind of show a bit of a disdain for the judicial system and how it functions as it relates to the minority community.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because you've been inside of it and you've seen how the judicial system treats African-Americans and minority individuals.

- Oh, yes, there is a complete dichotomy in terms of the treatment.

What... And it starts with the law enforcement authority, because the ability, the power to arrest, the power to intercede initially is with the law enforcement authority.

The law enforcement authority is predominantly Caucasian.

They... For instance, let me give you an example.

In South Carolina there was a series of articles done by one of the local newspapers called The Tarnished Badge and they interviewed the director of the Criminal Justice Academy, where they train the police officers for the state of South Carolina.

And that director said that they... ..35% of the people that they brought up there were functionally illiterate.

You give someone a gun who probably can't read the constitution or the statue, as opposed to having the authority to understand what it says, and you give them that kind of power, and all of their instincts come out, and they do... And then once they are arrested, they go to the prosecutorial office.

I have seen situations where prosecutors have tried to prosecute cases when you know that the arrest is constitutionally infirm.

I had one officer who stated on the witness stand in a motion hearing that I filed that we were having before the court.

The reason he arrested my client was because he was driving a brand-new 735 BMW.

- Wow.

- I say to you, and unequivocally, that is not probable cause.

- And that happens all across the country.

I mean, here in New Jersey, literally, you know, they used to call that the corridor where blacks shouldn't drive on because it was federally proven that blacks were being identified and racially profiled.

And so to your point, I understand from you being internal and having an opportunity to ask those questions and challenge those systems of oppression, it had to be difficult.

So, can you talk briefly about your statement around Thomas Jefferson?

So, like I said, I want to hit maybe some highlights in the book.

And you actually quoted him verbatim in the book.

And why was that relevant?

Why was that necessary?

And what point were you trying to make with quoting Thomas Jefferson?

- Thomas Jefferson was or has been referred to by some historians, and I don't know that I agree with this, as the most transformative political figure in this country, in the development of this country, in the history of this country.

I quoted it exactly what Thomas Jefferson said about African-Americans or about Africans, because he was the most dominant person in terms of the intelligentsia during that time.

Now, to be fair, all individuals who were colonials did not think like Jefferson.

But Jefferson's philosophy and thoughts, especially as relates to African-Americans, to slaves, dominated the day.

And I thought it was very, very important for people to understand where we are and how we got there and the impetus for getting there - the platform that was used to get us there in terms of slavery, in terms of the racial... ..systemic racism in this country.

If you would permit me very briefly, but it goes beyond Thomas Jefferson.

What the American judicial system is, there's a direct link between the American judicial system and the overpolicing of black people and the oppression of black people to the Barbados slave code.

Now, the British did not invent slavery, but certainly they certainly perfected it.

Barbados is a small island in the Caribbean, and when sugar was king, you needed... ..they needed free labor to, in fact make it, to make it the best cash crop that England had.

And so they brought in African-Americans and what they did, they created a... ..set of statues, a set of laws to govern, and I quote, these barbarous, animalistic heathens that we need for the purpose of working these sugar cane fields.

They are beasts of burden.

Fast forward to the American colonies, and this Barbados code...

Anyone who wants to look it up, just type in, go to Google and type in Barbados code.

..was almost identical, identical, when it was employed by the 13 original colonies, especially the Southern colonies.

So every aspect of the black, of the enslaved African life was governed by these codes, by the slave codes, by these Jim Crow laws, and that is the history of the American judicial system as it relates to African-American.

It's derived from what the British did in the Barbados slave code.

- Well, that is education for me and I've read about the savagery, and there's no other way to explain the savagery that was exacted upon Africans in Barbados and in other nations and then what happened here in America.

And I often wonder, Attorney Brown, you being a Southern black lawyer, what happened to the children that were at the lynchings and, you know, were there when black folks were hung and burned?

And you see the pictures with the children standing around and history records that they had picnics and that people would take body parts home for souvenirs.

What happened to those children?

I would assume that many of them are judges, lawyers, DAs, police chiefs, and that passing down of racial impetus or racism from generation to generation still exists.

And I know you being a Southern lawyer have had to experience that first-hand.

I'm grateful to you for coming on.

In closing, what would you like to say?

We've got about 30 seconds.

What would you like to say to our viewing audience?

- That was a way of life.

When there was a lynching, when there was a hanging, it was a family affair.

- My Lord.

- If you were white, that is.

- Right.

- It was a family affair.

They brought the picnic baskets, they brought the children, and they...

It was like almost like a party.

And you have a human being about to be executed by the mob, not because they have done anything wrong, but solely because of the color of their skin.

And I agree with you, it became, I think you can call them... We call them here blue bloods, meaning that those concepts, those feelings, those thought patterns were passed down generation to generation to generation.

And that is one of the reasons why we are where we are now in this country in terms of systemic... ..systemic institutionalized racism.

- Well, thank you so much, Attorney Brown.

We could go on all day.

Your book was phenomenal and it was definitely an opportunity for me to grow.

I hope everyone goes out and gets a copy.

I'd like to thank you for taking the time to be on the show.

And to our viewing audience, on behalf of everyone here at PBS39, God bless you and keep being courageous.

We'll see you next week.