You've got to be taught...

One of my best friends and I saw the national touring company of "South Pacific" today. I learned all the music and lyrics in second grade, when my Christmas present was a record player and albums of musicals. Even now, some fifty years later, I still know every note and every word. I know that Oscar Hammerstein had to fight to keep the song about prejudice in the show. "You've got to be taught, to hate all the people your relatives hate..." The actor who played Lt. Joe Cable today sang this song beautifully. (Well, he did everything beautifully....)

In 1962, when I was ten, my family drove to Florida. That journey taught me more than a hundred social studies classes could have. I sat in the back of our Palomino Beige Pontiac station wagon and gazed silently at a world I hadn't known existed: the south. I saw "Colored Motels". At first, I thought they were a brand, like "Howard Johnson's". But I soon realized what those signs meant. I saw African Americans riding home from their jobs in the cotton fields in yellow buses. I saw their houses, always on the outskirts of town. I absorbed it all and never forgot the details. My curiosity was satisfied that year by the best teacher I ever had, Barbara Fiscus. She taught us Woody Guthrie songs while she played the guitar. She warmly welcomed the first African American student into our elementary classroom that year, teaching our class how to consider the person, not his or her race.

In 1960, "To Kill A Mockingbird" by Alabama-born Harper Lee, was published. I remember the first time I read it, and the ache that filled my heart as the story unfolded. In 1962, the superb movie version brought Lee's characters to life in a different way. I am realizing, perhaps for the first time, how this book and movie were among the early influences that led me to become a criminal defense attorney in the Bronx.

In all the New York City boroughs, people are arrested almost non-stop. Prosecutors, defense attorneys, and a lone judge have to work until those charged have been arraigned. The arraignment courtroom, when I worked in the Bronx, was in use almost 24 hours a day. I remember casually crushing a huge cockroach with my high heel on the front of the judge's bench as I was arguing for my client's release. My clients were the lost, the downtrodden, the poor, the addicted, the mentally ill...and almost all were minorities. One man used to regularly sleep in cars in the winter, so he was always charged with car theft. When he would come out of the cell to meet me, roaches would be crawling out of his clothing and hair. The holding cells next o the courtroom were worse than filthy. There were no windows, no fresh air, and certainly very little hope.

As we worked into the early morning hours, something almost like a dance took place between the corrections officers, the prisoners, and we defense attorneys. We had to get our clients arraigned as quickly as possible, or "move the bodies", as the officers put it. Yet, we wanted to treat these people with the respect they deserved as we worked. You went in, and the door locked behind you. You called out a name and your client was brought to you. You sat across a small, rickety table...from someone charged with something as menial as stealing a cab ride to something as serious as raping a child. And you listened. My best law school professor, Frank Anderson, repeatedly told us, "You may be the only friend your client has. Listening may be all you are able to do."

"You've got to be carefully taught", the great Oscar Hammerstein tells us in his brilliant lyrics to "South Pacific". I am thankful for the books, movies, teachers, trips, and professors who did just that. I am also amazed that yet another generation is hearing the lessons that "South Pacific" teaches so well.