Interview with Aaron Buchsbaum December 29, 2001 Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library

Georgia Government Documentation Project

Series Q: Georgia Legal Services

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CITATION:

Buchsbaum, Aaron, Interviewed by Clifford Kuhn, 29 December 2001, P2002-02, Series Q. Georgia Legal Services, Georgia Government Documentation Project, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

GEORGIA GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTATION PROJECT

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

SERIES Q: GEORGIA LEGAL SERVICES

NARRATOR: AARON BUCHSBAUM

INTERVIEWED BY: CLIFFORD M. KUHN

LOCATION: TYBEE ISLAND, GEORGIA

DATE: DECEMBER 29, 2001

[TAPE 1, SIDE 1]

[The volume is quite low.]

KUHN: --Aaron Buchsbaum at his home in Tybee Island, Georgia, on

December 29th, 2001, as part of the Georgia Legal Services Oral History Project.

Aaron, I think I'd like to start by just talking about growing up in Savannah

and how your growing up here helped form your outlook on the world and so forth.

BUCHSBAUM: Well, I am a native of Savannah. I've really lived here all of my

working life except for being away at school and in the military and worked in New

York for a while. I guess I'm a product of my environment, and that environment of

course encompasses a very large, loving, caring, nurturing family. My parents were

both born in Savannah, and I had lots of aunts and uncles, and my grandmother lived Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library in the same home that we did my entire life until she died, when I was about a junior

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

in college or senior in college. My family always had feelings for the people, and I

think whatever I am, I'm a product of that family and of that community.

I grew up in the Jim Crow South, and it wasn't anything that I particularly

liked. I can't say that when I was a young person I did too much about it. It bothered

me intellectually, conceptually, but I was not terribly active in the street sense of the

word, but I was outspoken, I think, in a number of instances, and I think that's largely

as a result of my family background.

KUHN: What about your family background?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, just that my family strongly believed in justice and justice for

everybody. I think as I mentioned, I never had to worry about where my next meal

was coming from or whether there was going to be a roof over my head, and we

always had a car in the family that was available to drive. We were not wealthy, but I

consider that we were very privileged because we really didn't have any serious want,

and I saw people who did. It very much upset me. It bothered me.

KUHN: You said [...].

BUCHSBAUM: Well, I mean, just generally speaking, I had my social and political

views, and I didn't keep them to myself.

KUHN: This is, like, in high school or whatever.

BUCHSBAUM: In high school, in college and beyond that. I remember an

accounting professor I had in my freshman year at college in Tulane. I remember his Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library name, too: J. C. Van Kirk. He gave a white supremacist lecture in an accounting

class, and that was the first time that I really got my dander up. I really was upset

about that and spoke to somebody in the dean's office. Nothing ever came of it, of

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

course. He was probably a tenured professor at the time. Maybe that's why I never

became an accountant. I don't know.

KUHN: It's kind of implausible to give a--

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. You know, there was a great deal of publicity and concern

when I resigned from the Savannah Bar Association, which was many, many years

ago, because they would hold social functions at clubs that had discriminatory

policies. The particular one that resulted in my resignation happened to be at the

Savannah Golf Club, which had Jewish members (I'm Jewish), but did not permit

black members.

I thought that was an abomination and the Savannah Bar Association, stating

that it represented the legal community, should not have used those facilities and

should not have gone into a place where the sign says, "welcome almost everybody."

I tried to get the Bar Association to change it. They didn't change it. And I

tried to get them to adopt a policy similar to one that the American Bar [Association]

had adopted after a controversy over a facility in Miami, when the American Bar

Association was meeting in Miami.

And incidentally, Lewis Powell, who was the president of the American Bar

Association at that time, later became justice of the United States Supreme Court, and

he took immediate and direct action. He pulled the meeting away from this facility

and stated that the policy of the American Bar Association is not to countenance that Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library type of discrimination.

The Savannah Bar Association did no such thing, so I wrote a letter to each

member of the Savannah bar, and the newspaper got hold of it, and it became a cause

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

celebre. The Bar Association, I think, has changed since that time, but they never

would adopt a policy stating that they would not use such facilities, and therefore,

even though I've been asked by a number of incoming presidents, I never rejoined the

Savannah Bar Association and haven't missed it.

KUHN: So it became a real cause celebre when that happened?

BUCHSBAUM: It got a lot of publicity in the newspaper, and I got letters from a

number of lawyers, members of the association, mostly the black lawyers, who

applauded my stand, and from some others from surprising sources, who said they

agreed with me. Of course, there were some who didn't agree with me, and I will not

name one in particular, but I'll tell you about it after we're off camera.

KUHN: So in college you were beginning to formulate your views on the

world and be outspoken about these kinds of--

BUCHSBAUM: Yes.

KUHN: You'd speak out for what you thought was right and against what

you thought--

BUCHSBAUM: Yes.

KUHN: You come back here in 1958, and I guess you joined the office of

Brannen and Clark, right?

BUCHSBAUM: Brannen and Clark and Hester.

KUHN: Brannen, Clark and Hester. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library BUCHSBAUM: Right. I was an associate under the old Savannah system, which was

you don't get a salary; we let you work here, and you learn, and I did learn. I learned a

great deal from [H.] Sol Clark about how to conduct myself. Sol was a very fine

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

lawyer. Perry Brannen was an outstanding trial lawyer. His son is now superior court

judge, Perry [Brannen] Jr., and Ed Hester was another lawyer in the firm. There were

a couple of other associates there from time to time. That's how I got my feet wet in

the practice of law. Basically you walk on the edge of a dock and you jump into the

water and you start to swim.

KUHN: Now, Sol had of course been involved with Legal Aid in Savannah

for over a decade and had been involved nationally as early as the fifties.

BUCHSBAUM: Well, he's Mr. Legal Aid in the state of Georgia. As you know,

today is his ninety-fifth birthday. Happy birthday, Sol.

KUHN: Did he get you involved in that kind of activities?

BUCHSBAUM: I'm sure that he did. Obviously, I was interested in it, and I'm sure

that Sol had a great deal to do with my specific involvement in the organization, yes.

KUHN: What kind of pro bono work were you doing?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, we divided into civil and criminal cases. The courts

appointed us to represent defendants in criminal cases, but in civil matters, whether

they were cases in court or just office matters, we handled it through the local Legal

Aid Society, which was strictly a voluntary organization. This was before we really

had a formal corporation or staff attorneys and things like that.

KUHN: Back in Savannah, shortly before the student sit-ins, the downtown

department store sit-ins, and the stuff at Tybee Beach and so forth--maybe you could Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library describe Savannah in the early 1960s.

BUCHSBAUM: How about two words? Jim Crow. I mean, Savannah was a

segregated Southern city. I think we moved from that to a much more integrated

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

society, to the extent that we are integrated, in a lot calmer manner than a lot of other

communities. We did not really go through all of the problems that others did. We

had some really wonderful, progressive leadership in Savannah, both white and black,

and we made pretty good progress, I think. We still have a long way to go, but we

made very good progress.

KUHN: Talk about some of that leadership. Who are you referring to?

BUCHSBAUM: When things were getting active in the sixties, obviously the most

prominent leader that comes to mind is W. W. Law, Westley [Wallace] Law.

Everybody calls him Mr. Law. I've been a friend of his for thirty or forty years, and I

still refer to him as Mr. Law. He usually calls me Buchsbaum.

And then there was a priest at St. James Parish in the south side, Monsignor

Toomey [pronounced TWO-me], who later was transferred to Augusta and has since

died. It was called the Toomey Committee. He organized it and had members of

both races and met together and accomplished a great deal. I mean, they quietly

integrated the theaters and other things. Of course, there had been sit-ins at the lunch

counters, the department stores, the five-and-dimes, and things like that; but by and

large it was done pretty peacefully.

Until when the voter registration drive became very active here, and SNCC,

the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, was participating. Some people

didn't like these outside northern agitators coming in and stirring things up, so things Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library got very active.

Hosea Williams was involved with the NAACP at first and then split and

joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Night marches had occurred.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

Williams was put in jail, unjustly, in my opinion. A lot of this was orchestrated by

Victor Mulling, who was the municipal court judge at the time--incidentally, was

blind--but not colorblind.

He had devised some really extra-legal or illegal scheme to put demonstrators

in jail, mostly peaceful demonstrators, to put them in jail under peace warrants, peace

bonds, and had some method to keep them in for weeks and weeks and months,

without any possibility of getting out. It was very technical.

So those were things that went on in the early sixties.

KUHN: You mentioned to me before the case of this man named Rick

Tuttle?

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. Well, Rick was a graduate of a school in the Northeast, a

liberal arts college, had been accepted to graduate school at UCLA, and was working

in voter registration on West Broad Street, which is now Martin Luther King, Jr.

Boulevard, and was arrested on a John Doe warrant, with the description, "get the

white boy."

[Taping staff discusses technical matters.]

KUHN: Back to Rick Tuttle.

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. Well anyway, Rick was working in the voter registration

office when he was arrested on a John Doe "get-that-white-boy" warrant. Rick had

graduated from a liberal arts college. His father was the educational director of the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA] in Washington, and he was

put in the Chatham County jail by Judge Mulling and Sheriff Griffin and so forth.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

Interesting background on Rick. His father had lived in upstate New York and

knew someone from the Anti-Defamation League in that small community, and when

Rick was arrested in Savannah, he called his friend, who said, "Well, I know

somebody in Savannah, and I'll call him."

The person he called was Bill Wexler. Bill at one point was international

president of B'nai B'rith. He was also married to my mother's sister, Dorothy, so he

was my uncle. Bill put up his house as bond for Rick. Never met him before. And

he called me.

Meanwhile, Rick had gone to school with somebody who was clerking in a

law office in Cincinnati, and that was the law firm that represented Proctor and

Gamble. So his friend heard about it. He spoke to the lawyers in there, and they

called a very prominent lawyer in Savannah, who was with one of the largest firms in

Savannah. His name was Alex Lawrence.

Alex said, "Well, this is not my type of case. I know someone who might be

interested." And he called me. So I got a call from Uncle Bill, telling me about this

man; I got a call from Alex Lawrence, who, as you know, later became a federal

judge, an outstanding one; and that's how I got to meet Rick Tuttle and represented

him.

He was a guest of Chatham County for two-thirds of the summer. When we

took his case, we took it on the basis that the type of bond required by Judge Mulling Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library was illegal. My uncle had been on the city council at one time, and Victor Mulling

had been appointed municipal court judge by the city when my uncle was on the city

council, so he knew him.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

I went up with him to Judge Mulling's chambers to tell him that we thought it

was wrong and he should let him out, and things that my uncle said to Judge Mulling

would have put me in jail because he told him at the end of the conversation that he

was narrow-minded and bigoted. Anyway, we left chambers with nothing gained.

Coincidentally, as I mentioned, Judge Mulling was blind, though not

colorblind. In his senior year in college, Rick had read to a blind classmate. I made

that point to Judge Mulling. It didn't make any difference.

So we decided to use the habeas corpus approach. He was not in jail charged

with any crime; he was in jail because people who lived near the jail were recruited,

and they got six people who lived there who said that the demonstrations in front of

the jail threatened them and was disturbing them, and they wanted peace bonds taken

out by these people.

Judge Mulling set a requirement that was impossible to meet, and that is that

even though it was only like a $2,500 peace bond for each of six, he ruled that you

had to have six different pieces of property totally unencumbered, which meant that if

you had a million-dollar hotel with a thousand-dollar balance on the mortgage, that

would not suffice to dissolve the bond.

So anyway, that's getting into a lot of technical stuff. But anyway, we had a

couple of superior court judges that I spoke to. I wanted to explore the possibility of

filing a habeas corpus. Neither one really, I could tell, wanted to touch this case or Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library any of the cases, because the demonstrations were still going on a bit.

So we had a probate judge--it was called a court of ordinary at the time--and

we had a man whose father was a very staunch white supremacist segregationist,

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

Shelby Myrick, but Shelby Jr. was the judge, and we thought that he had courage and

integrity.

At that time, that court had concurrent jurisdiction with superior court on

habeas corpus. I don't think it does anymore. So I went to file it in the court of

ordinary, file a habeas corpus proceeding in the court of ordinary, which we did.

When I went to file it, the long-time clerk there, Miss Madeleine McAuliffe said, "Mr.

Buchsbaum, you don't file this here. You file this in superior court." I said, "Thank

you very much, Miss Madeleine, but would you just do me a favor and mark it

"stamped filed," and then you can give it to Judge Myrick.

So eventually we had a hearing, and we cross-examined Judge Mulling, and

my uncle testified that he had been willing to put up the bond to dissolve this peace

bond so that Rick could get out of jail, and Judge Myrick ruled in our favor.

Then the next step, we went to the chief deputy sheriff, and we said, "Mr.

Sheriff, here's Judge Myrick's order. Release him," because technically in a habeas

corpus it was Tuttle against the sheriff, not against Judge Mulling because the sheriff

runs the jail and holds the prisoner.

So he said, "Well," he said, "on our records, Judge Mulling's the one who put

him in, so Judge Mulling's the one who's going to have to release him." So we said

fine. So he went up to Judge Mulling's chambers, and of course Judge Mulling

refused to sign a release order, and he reported that back to us, and I said, "Bernie"-- Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Bernie Harper was his name--I said, "You and the sheriff have bonds, and unless you

want to get sued on your bond, you better obey this order and let him out."

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

So he let him out. Meanwhile, there were rumors that the district attorney

might be looking to trump up some charges against him, so one of my law partners

put him in his car and drove him across the river to South Carolina, where he caught a

train to go back home and got to Los Angeles on time to go to graduate school.

It turns out that Rick made quite a name for himself later in Los Angeles. He

was the comptroller, which is a high elected office of the City of Los Angeles. He

became active in politics there, Democratic Party politics, was an elector for Robert

Kennedy and was at the Ambassador Hotel when Kennedy was assassinated, and then

went on to the convention in Chicago, but without his candidate.

KUHN: What other kind of first-hand experiences or observations did you

have of the sit-in days, the early civil rights days, those rather tumultuous days in

Savannah in the early 1960s?

BUCHSBAUM: The lunch counter sit-ins, the boycotts of Broughton Street, which

then was the main shopping street and seems to be coming back in that vein. It was

still very peaceful, relatively speaking. I mean, as you know, the sit-ins began in

Greensboro, North Carolina, but they spread rather quickly. It was run by the

NAACP Youth Council. I'm sure that Mr. Law had a great deal to do with that at that

time.

KUHN: What was your feelings or observations of Mr. Law during this

period of time? Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library BUCHSBAUM: He was a very determined person, determined to bring about racial

justice and economic justice, but to do it in as peaceful a way as he possibly could.

He, in his position of president of the local and state NAACP, started meeting with

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

other leaders in the community. I mentioned Monsignor Toomey. We were very

fortunate to have had Malcolm Maclean as our mayor at that time. Malcolm wanted a

progressive city, and he wanted a peaceful city, and I think he saw that this is what

needed to be done.

So the community organized, and Mr. Law was very much in the center of all

that organization. Malcolm Maclean was in the center of it; Monsignor Toomey was

in the middle of it; my friend Pratt Adams, who was another very prominent lawyer,

as was Malcolm, was in the middle of it. And the community worked hard, and I

think we did a pretty good job.

KUHN: What other attributes did Mr. Law bring to the situation? You said

a peaceful way, but what attributes did he bring to the situation?

BUCHSBAUM: Well he is such a deep intellectual. I mean, it's amazing the breadth

and depth of that man's knowledge about so many things. He would come into a

meeting, and you would wonder whether he was paying attention. He'd sit off to the

side, and he might be reading The New York Times or something while the meeting

was going on, but wouldn't miss a beat in the meeting.

He knew and knows everybody in the community. As you know, he was a

letter carrier, worked for the post office. I don't know what his route was. He was

never my postman. But it's just amazing, even today, you try to walk down the street

with him, and one block will take you thirty minutes because he stops to talk to Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library everybody, white, black--it doesn't make any difference. He knows them all.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

And, of course, by reputation now, everybody knows him. His reputation was

not always as welcomed in the white community as it is now. He was excoriated by

many for his civil rights activities, but he seemed to be unflappable.

KUHN: So you would hear people talk about Law.

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Even then, and now, yes. Some with admiration

and some quite the opposite.

KUHN: What meeting are you talking about where he was [...]?

BUCHSBAUM: We had a biracial committee. It was very informal. I think it was

called the Toomey Committee because Monsignor Toomey chaired it. We had

frequent meetings.

KUHN: You were a member of it.

BUCHSBAUM: I participated in it, yes. I was not in the upper echelons of

leadership in the community; I was a young lawyer who was interested in it and

participated, yes.

KUHN: One thing that strikes me is that this movement here involved a

wide range of the community, that it included [...] a handful of people [...].

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. I mean, they talked to the movie theater operators, for

example, and urged them peacefully to integrate. I mean, it's amazing. Here were are

in 2001 and talking about this thing that seems like such ancient history, but up-and-

coming generations can't imagine--you know, even when I think about it Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library intellectually, I can't imagine not allowing people to go to the beach or to drink from a

water fountain or to use a bathroom or to eat at a lunch counter or a restaurant because

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

of their race. I mean, I lived through it, but it's still hard to imagine that that situation

ever existed.

KUHN: Do you recall the sentiment that you felt as a young lawyer from

Savannah with your sensibilities at that time?

[tape interruption] [Resumes with slightly higher volume.]

BUCHSBAUM: Yes, my mother was concerned that my civil rights activities might

subject me to personal danger or that I might not be able to build a law practice

because of my involvement in civil rights, but she didn't try to talk me out of it

because she knew she couldn't.

KUHN: Did you ever experience any threats?

BUCHSBAUM: No, not that I can recall, no. I mean, I'm sure I lost clients because

of it or potential clients because of it, but I made a living.

KUHN: Outside of defending Rick Tuttle, what were your civil rights

activities?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, interestingly, one of Mr. Law's closest confidantes, I think,

was Gene Gadsden. Gene was a lawyer in Savannah, very prominent lawyer from a

prominent family, whose father, Robert Gadsden, and wife, Ida Gadsden, was an

educator. A school was named for his father. Gene was a friend of mine. The Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Savannah Bar Association was segregated. I mentioned his name of Pratt Adams,

John Simpson, Malcolm Maclean, a few others with me. We decided that the time

had long since passed for the Savannah Bar Association to exclude black members.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

KUHN: To include.

BUCHSBAUM: Well, it passed for them to exclude them right. So we did a little

politicking. What we did is we stacked a meeting, and we let people know that we

were going to introduce Gene Gadsden's name as a member, and the only people we

let know were people we knew how they were going to vote. We didn't let any others

know. So we stacked a meeting. I remember two--this is an embarrassment to

somebody, I guess, but one of Sol Clark's partners, Ed Hester, was--I forget whether

he was the president or past president; another one, Julian Sipple was a president or

past president. They were opposed to it. But we had enough votes there.

We had the meeting at the old Manger Hotel, and Gene Gadsden was voted in

as the first black member of the Savannah Bar Association. After that, others joined.

Of course, now it's virtually open to all the lawyers in Savannah who want to join. I

just do not happen to be one of them at the moment, that's all.

So that was something that we were able to accomplish.

KUHN: What other of your own personal activities?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, I mean, basically just in my own life and my own practice,

Mr. Law frequently would refer people to me for various things, whether if it was a

discrimination matter or just a simple landlord-tenant problem or something like that.

People went to him with whatever their problems were, and frequently, if it was a

legal problem, I would get a call. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: You were saying earlier that he continues to do that to this day.

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. It's been quite a few months since I've had a referral from him,

but yes, that still goes on.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

KUHN: But he's still active in that kind of role?

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, he is the father figure to Savannah. He really is. It's amazing,

the transformation from the days when the establishment in this community wanted to

get rid of him. Can you imagine the furor over a letter carrier because of his civil

rights activities to the point now that he is venerated by everybody, including the

newspaper, which was so anti-Law.

KUHN: It's funny and more than a little ironic.

BUCHSBAUM: There's a great deal of irony, yes.

KUHN: All right, let's shift gears out of Savannah and more into the arena of

Georgia Legal Services, how Georgia Indigent Legal Services and Georgia Legal

Services came about in the late sixties and into the early seventies.

BUCHSBAUM: It started from a largely small volunteer organization, lawyers doing

what lawyers should do, and that is giving back to the community and trying to assure

equal justice for all. But it reached the point that we formed a corporation and started

having staff attorneys and just expanding to try to meet the need. We still can't meet

the need, but we do our best.

KUHN: That's the short version of the story.

BUCHSBAUM: That's a very short version. That's a very short version. And, you

know, in Savannah (I can speak more specifically about Savannah than other parts of

the state), but there was hostility among some of the bar because of the perception Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library that, by giving free legal services for these people, we were depriving other lawyers of

clients. You know, it's amazing how some lawyers can squeeze fees out of people

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

who really don't have anything. And it wound up, as you know, in litigation in

Savannah.

KUHN: Just a second, before we get to that point.

BUCHSBAUM: Sure.

KUHN: It wasn't out a sense of altruism, you're saying, that "we are already

doing this on an individual basis" but rather that "we're losing clients."

BUCHSBAUM: No, no, it was the altruism which caused us to do it. There were

people who didn't think that we should take cases for free when, "Sure, these people

can pay something."

KUHN: Now, were you involved in the effort at the State Bar level, to get

the State Bar approval of any of these initiatives that led to the incorporation of

Georgia Legal Services?

BUCHSBAUM: Not initially, no. I got involved later.

KUHN: Okay. But talk about the Dixon case in Savannah. You were

involved in that from the beginning.

BUCHSBAUM: I was involved in that. It was a case in which there was a dispute in

municipal court, and an effort was made to prevent Georgia Legal Services--by then

we had an office here. Steve Gottlieb was the managing attorney here; he's now

director of Atlanta Legal Aid. Rob Remar was involved in the case. He's now in one

of my law school friend's firms, Rogers and Hardin. And an effort was made by Joe Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Bergen specifically. I don't know how much support he had from other sources.

KUHN: Who was an attorney.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

BUCHSBAUM: Who was and is an attorney here, who did not think that a

corporation should--well, the theory of his case was that a corporation shouldn't

practice law, but the fact is there was an absolute hostility toward the Georgia Legal

Services program, and he tried by that method to prevent it from functioning.

KUHN: What was the basis of his opposition?

BUCHSBAUM: I think it's what I said. Maybe he thought it was socialism. Who

knows?

KUHN: What did he do?

BUCHSBAUM: I got involved in the case, and he filed an injunction in superior

court to stop us from handling the case. He got a temporary restraining order from

Judge Harrison, although he should not have granted a restraining order without

calling me because I was a named defendant, without calling me. I was at my office.

He could have said, "Aaron, there's a request for a restraining order. Would you come

to the chambers and let's talk about it." But he didn't. He just granted it.

So anyway, we wound up in a case in superior court, which then later got

removed to federal court, and Judge Lawrence wound up dismissing the case. That's

the long and the short of it. I had two very good lawyers representing me, Sonny

Seiler, who later became president of the State Bar, and Austin Catts, an attorney who

was in Brunswick, went to Atlanta, and now is back in Brunswick. They handled the

case. Had it removed to federal court, and Judge Lawrence dismissed it, and the Fifth Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed it without any opinion.

KUHN: Let's go back to the beginning. What was the original case that

came into question?

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

BUCHSBAUM: I don't even remember the details of the case.

KUHN: Is it a mother and a daughter? Is that right?

BUCHSBAUM: That sounds--yes.

KUHN: And I have a Vera Mobley [pronouncing it MOBE-lee].

BUCHSBAUM: Vera Mobley [pronounced MOB-lee].

KUHN: Mobley.

BUCHSBAUM: Right. And Dixon I think was the other party.

KUHN: And so Bergen or whoever filed the suit said that you had--

BUCHSBAUM: We had no right to represent the other party in the suit, Mobley, as I

recall it was.

KUHN: Because?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, because she could have hired her own lawyer, I think was

what his concept was. And we had no right to do it through Georgia Legal Services.

KUHN: As a corporation.

BUCHSBAUM: Right. I mean, he was raising the issue of can a corporation practice

law, and Judge Lawrence went into the history of the Georgia Indigent Legal Services

and the Georgia Legal Services program. We had to have two different organizations

at one time because of the type of funding that we had. But his ruling essentially was

that it's not the corporation that's practicing law, it's the lawyers who work for the

corporation who are practicing law, and they're governed by the rules of the State Bar Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library of Georgia, and if he has any complaint, that's the forum he should choose.

He tried effectively to kill the program.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

KUHN: And I would assume not only with implications beyond Savannah,

perhaps even statewide.

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, it was a statewide program. It was a statewide corporation that

was running it. We just had a branch office here, as we do now.

KUHN: So he, by taking on this rather obscure case, and I believe I have this

really obscure charge of champerty.

BUCHSBAUM: Champerty and barretry and--yes.

KUHN: Which is what?

BUCHSBAUM: Encouraging litigation and seeking clients instead of having clients

seek you, and things like that. That was the gist of what he said.

KUHN: So that's what he was trying to--

BUCHSBAUM: He was trying to end Georgia Legal Services.

KUHN: And there was a distinct possibility, of course, that this case that

originated here in Savannah, you were defendants--

BUCHSBAUM: Well, I guess it could have, but it didn't.

KUHN: Who else weighed in on behalf of either party? Where was the

Savannah Bar?

BUCHSBAUM: I don't recall if the Savannah Bar Association was involved in it. It

may have been, but the State Bar of Georgia came on our side, and I think that's how

Sonny Seiler got into it and Austin Catts, through the State Bar. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: And the president of the State Bar was?

BUCHSBAUM: I forget.

KUHN: Cubbie Snow?

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

BUCHSBAUM: Cubbege?

KUHN: Yes.

BUCHSBAUM: Yes, Cubbege may have been the president at the time. But we had

great support from the leadership of the State Bar of Georgia. As a matter of fact, the

founders of Georgia Legal Services were very prominent members of the State Bar of

Georgia: Bill Ide and Phil Heiner, Jim Elliott, Charlie Lester. Really leaders in the

State Bar have been the ones who have been leaders in Georgia Legal Services. It's

been a wonderful working relationship.

KUHN: I have that the Savannah Bar president was Charles Sparkman?

BUCHSBAUM: Charlie Sparkman.

KUHN: [...]?

BUCHSBAUM: I don't remember specifically, but I do remember, now that you

mention Charlie's name, Charlie was one of the ones who wrote me a very

complimentary letter when I resigned from the Savannah Bar Association. That was a

very welcome surprise.

KUHN: This case dragged on for really--I mean, were you blindsided by it?

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, yes, I had no idea that anything like that was brewing.

KUHN: So your immediate reaction was what?

BUCHSBAUM: My immediate reaction? I can't quote my immediate reaction. That

would be censored. I think you'd bleep it out. But I had a strong immediate reaction. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Let's put it that way. And it was rather negative toward the suit.

KUHN: Do you ever see Bergen around?

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, yes, I still see him occasionally. I still have as much respect for

him as I always had.

KUHN: Okay. I mean, obviously he felt he had the wherewithal to possibly

dismantle the whole--

BUCHSBAUM: I think that's what he wanted to do. I'm sure he had some backing--I

don't mean financial necessarily, because Joe was a pretty determined guy, and when

he wants to set about doing something, he goes about doing it. My guess is that he

probably did it without any financial remuneration.

KUHN: You said before that you had known Alex Lawrence from way back.

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. I mean, I had known him from a distance. He was a corporate

lawyer, and always used to go to the Oglethorpe Club for lunch and maybe for a

martini. I'm not sure of that. At the time that he was being considered for nomination

to the federal court, I was rather appalled, frankly, because I did not think that

particularly a Democratic president should have considered him. It turns out I was

just a little bit off, just only 180 degrees wrong. He turned out to be an outstanding

judge.

KUHN: And his ruling in this case was that the State Bar Association was

properly--

BUCHSBAUM: Right, the State Bar of Georgia would be the organization to

determine whether any person or organization was engaged in the unauthorized Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library practice of law.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

Incidentally, I later had conscientious objector cases before Judge Lawrence,

and I had First Amendment cases before Judge Lawrence, and he was just an

outstanding judge.

KUHN: [...].

BUCHSBAUM: Yes.

KUHN: This obviously was a huge challenge to the whole statewide

program, not only the Savannah office.

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, sure.

KUHN: What other challenges were out there those early years, the first

decade of Georgia Legal Services that moves to the statewide apparatus?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, funding was always a problem. We had state funding, we had

local funding, we had United Way funding, but the major funding had to come from

federal sources, and we were at one time under the Office of Economic Opportunity

before Congress formed the Legal Services Corporation.

KUHN: The Legal Services Corporation, if I'm not mistaken, was formed in

1974?

BUCHSBAUM: That sounds about right. You're the historian, so you should know,

and I'm not charged with knowing dates.

KUHN: [laughs] But at any rate, it was shortly after that that you go on the

board and then become president of the Georgia Legal Services. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library BUCHSBAUM: Yes. I was probably on the board at that time. I believe I may have

been before that. I was president from '76 to '81, and that was a long tenure. We had

an outstanding executive director at that time, John Cromartie, who later fulfilled his

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

lifelong desire to become a Methodist minister. He was a lawyer from Gainesville,

and he commuted from Gainesville the whole time he was running the office out in

Atlanta, and he was a steady hand at our helm. And we needed it, because we had all

sorts of funding problems.

But during his tenure--and I just happened to be the president at the time, but

John's the one that gets the credit for it--the Georgia Legal Services program just grew

and really covered the entire state.

KUHN: In large part because of the infusion of federal dollars.

BUCHSBAUM: No question about it. We needed that. And with federal dollars

there later became some restrictions on the types of cases we could handle and not

handle, but still a problem of funding. We now have a foundation, as you're probably

aware, thanks to Judge [Marvin] Shoob, another Savannahian, who's a senior federal

judge in Atlanta.

There was some money left over from some airlines litigation. People

remember those scrip that you got from the airlines because of their anti-competitive

activities that resulted in litigation in his court, and under the cy pres [pronounced

SIGH-pray] doctrine, he allocated $1 million each to Atlanta Legal Aid and to

Georgia legal Services. Atlanta Legal Aid took the money into its own house.

Georgia Legal Services decided to form a separate foundation, and I've been on that

foundation board ever since. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: What are some of the major issues, challenges, directions while you

were either a board member or president?

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

BUCHSBAUM: I guess there were largely issues of funding and the types of cases

that we could handle. Those seemed to be the major problems.

KUHN: Federal restrictions, you say.

BUCHSBAUM: Right, right.

KUHN: And did you know--was Hillary Rodham Clinton involved with

Legal Services at that time?

BUCHSBAUM: If she was, it was not to my knowledge.

[TAPE 1, SIDE 2]

BUCHSBAUM: If she was, it was not to my knowledge. I have no idea. She was

not involved with Georgia Legal Services. I don't know. One of our former directors,

Betty Kehrer, became the director of National Legal Aid and Defender Association

[NLADA]. She occupied that post for two or three years. But no, I was not involved

with Hillary Rodham.

KUHN: Describe maybe John Cromartie's attributes and what he brought.

BUCHSBAUM: John was very calm, was very well organized, had the highest

ethical standards, was a good manager, he was a good manager, was a good executive.

I mean, he was everything we needed. We were very lucky to have had him. The

person he succeeded was a rather weak leader, and John served for about fifteen Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library years, I think.

KUHN: What was his relationship with the board, and what would be the

board's responsibilities?

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

BUCHSBAUM: The board basically oversaw what John was doing. We set policy,

but a lot of policy was based on John's recommendation to--

KUHN: Any landmark cases that you recall from that period?

BUCHSBAUM: I'm sure there are. I forgot.

KUHN: Let me just throw out some: Williams v. Butts, which was the

farmer's home foreclosure. Do you remember?

BUCHSBAUM: I don't remember it specifically, no.

KUHN: Did you serve on the board with Herman Lodge?

BUCHSBAUM: Oh, yes, yes. Herman succeeded me as president, and he was

involved in his litigation in Wayne County, which is where he was from--I mean,

Burke County, Waynesboro. Wayne County is Jesup. Burke County.

KUHN: Because that was obviously one of the signal cases for Georgia

Legal Services, a voting rights case involving Burke County.

BUCHSBAUM: Right, I remember that. Yes, Herman was the first non-lawyer who

was president in charge of legal services, and he was on the board during my

presidency.

KUHN: Do you remember anything about Scott v. Parham or Crane v.

Matthews?

BUCHSBAUM: The names of the cases are familiar, but I'm not able to recall the

details of them. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: Were you involved with any signal cases--

BUCHSBAUM: No, no, not as a litigant or as counsel.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

KUHN: What kind of contact did you have as board member or president

with the governor of Georgia? It would have been Carter and then following Carter, I

guess [George] Busbee.

BUCHSBAUM: We really did not have--we had liaison with the legislature and with

the governor's office, but I personally was not involved in those contacts. I did later

serve on a commission that Governor Carter had appointed, but that was not from

Georgia Legal Services.

KUHN: What were your main activities in terms of Georgia Legal Services.

As president, you worked with Cromartie. Any particular initiatives that you ever

took?

BUCHSBAUM: I'm really, really having a difficult time recalling some of those

things that were a quarter century ago.

KUHN: Okay. What about GLSP? He went from eight offices to twenty-

one; he went from $2 million budget to $7 [million].

BUCHSBAUM: To $7 [million], yes, yes. I mean, that was basically what

characterized the administration--if you can call it my administration. I really still

think of it as John's administration. Yes, we did expand rapidly, and we needed to. I

think again it's a testament to John's organization and administrative ability that we

were able to do so in as smooth a method as we did, because it was not easy.

KUHN: Not easy. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library BUCHSBAUM: No. I mean, we opened new offices, we had to have managing and

supervising attorneys and staffs and locations. The logistics of it goes beyond the

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

practice of law. It's running an organization. That was something that took a great

deal of administrative skill. Fortunately, John Cromartie had it.

KUHN: Could you talk a little bit about the internships that you established?

BUCHSBAUM: Oh. Well, I'm an active alumnus of Emory Law School, have been

on the Law School Council, and instead of making just contributions to the Law

School, I wanted to do something that would be of benefit to Georgia Legal Services,

so I talked with Phyllis Holman, who succeeded John Cromartie as director and has

been director for a decade, and Georgia Legal Services has summer interns, students

who come work in the offices, and I agreed to do what I could to fund an Emory law

student who wanted to work in an office of Georgia Legal Services. Phyllis tells me

that of the four that I worked on, three have stayed on and are staff attorneys with

Georgia Legal Services, and I find that very satisfying.

KUHN: You said there's still a need, that despite the great expansion in the

budget and--

BUCHSBAUM: Well, there are so many cases that we cannot handle. You know,

there are a lot of people who need legal services who are not getting them.

Unfortunately, we have to turn people away because we have limitations in the staff

and what we can do. I think we do a terrific job with what we have. I think Bill

Broker does a terrific job in the Savannah office, and Phyllis does a great job

statewide. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: We have about two and a half minutes on the tape. Let me just ask

you to maybe provide some concluding remarks, either about the changes you've seen

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

in Savannah or the changes that you've seen in the practice of poverty law or if you

want to talk about [...] law.

BUCHSBAUM: I could talk about either one for a long time, but one major change

in the operation of Georgia Legal Services is the encouragement of pro bono activities

by the private bar, and that's worked particularly well in Savannah. I think it's worked

in other areas too, but again, Bill Broker has established a relationship and I think

before that, too, Phyllis and Phil Merkel and other people who ran the Savannah

office--the relationship between the private bar in Savannah and the Georgia Legal

Services is, again, another 180-degree shift from one of antagonism to one of

tremendous cooperation and mutual respect. And that's been a big, big change for the

better.

KUHN: Are you saying originally there was antagonism?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, there was antagonism among many, obviously not from the

Sol Clarks and others who had been interested in legal services all along, or Legal Aid

as it was then called. But yes, there were quite a few. Savannah is essentially a

conservative community, and a free-enterprise type community, and the thought was,

"Let these people get their own lawyers or whatever it is." Landlords didn't like what

we did in representing tenants, and banks and finance companies and mortgagees

didn't like our trying to have people in housing, and employers weren't always happy

if we were involved representing employees. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library In my private practice, I represent more--well, I represent on both sides of

those issues. So yes, there was some built-in hostility, but I don't think that exists to

that extent anymore. Some people still resent the fact and say, Well, So-and-so really

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

doesn't have a case, but he or she knows that he's not paying for it, and so therefore

they can make my life miserable and they can make me spend all that money to evict

them or to collect on this debt or whatever it is.

I guess that's the nature of the profession. We're an adversarial profession, and

people on one side don't always like what's going on on the other side. But the point

is that people who do not have the wherewithal are entitled to justice the same way

that those of us who do think we are entitled to.

[interruption as tape is changed]

KUHN: What accounts for the 180-degree shift that you were talking about

in terms of the attitude on the part of the bar here in Savannah toward Georgia Legal

Services?

BUCHSBAUM: I think an effort was made by Georgia Legal Services to explain to

the bar what we do and why we're needed, and when I say the bar I'm talking about

just the private practice of lawyers in general, not necessarily in an organized way,

though they have reached out to the Savannah Bar Association. The State Bar of

Georgia, as I have mentioned, was always supportive of Georgia Legal Services. It

was really the instrumentality that brought it about. So the hostility was local rather

than statewide. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library KUHN: That's interesting.

BUCHSBAUM: But there are the Sol Clarks and there were the Pratt Adamses and

others in Savannah who saw the necessity for it, and the staff of Georgia Legal

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

Services, Phyllis and Bill and Phil and others, decided to patch things up and work

with the local bar and were able to do so. I guess some of the leaders of the local bar-

-they elected some who no longer showed hostility to providing legal services for

indigents.

KUHN: I saw that Phyllis was on the staff here at the time of the Dixon case.

BUCHSBAUM: Yes. Yes, Phyllis was, and Steve [Gottlieb], the two directors of the

major organizations were both in Savannah at the time.

KUHN: How much did that consume you, that case?

BUCHSBAUM: Not a tremendous amount really, because I had very good lawyers. I

had started off as a lawyer in the case with Mobley and wound up as a defendant, and

the case in which I was a defendant, my lawyers did a very good job.

KUHN: As you look back on your own career, not only Legal Services but

more generally, civil rights, civil liberties, First Amendment, whatever, what are some

of the things that you can look back at with the most pride or you see as a legacy?

BUCHSBAUM: I just basically felt that I wanted to involve myself in civil rights and

civil liberties, and I did, and I developed a reputation for that. Interestingly, in my

office I don't have my Emory Law School diploma or my Tulane undergraduate

diploma on the wall or my admission to the United States Supreme Court or any bar.

The only thing I have on the wall, I have a plaque from the NAACP for their Freedom

Award that I got one year. I have a plaque from the Younger Lawyers Section of the Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Savannah Bar Association, giving me the Robbie Robinson Award, and I have one

from the EOA, the Economic Opportunity Authority, in a similar vein. Those are the

only things I have on the wall.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

Plus the photograph--and I should have mentioned this earlier--I had an uncle,

Matthew Levy, who was a New York State Supreme Court justice. That's the

equivalent to a superior court judge in Georgia. It's a trial court. He was a member of

the Liberal Party in New York and had been very active in the American Labor Party,

and when the Communists began to take over the Labor Party, a group of them split

off and formed the Liberal Party and fought vigorously against the Communist Party.

I wouldn't say that he was necessarily an influence, but he was somewhat of a

model in the type of things I did. He was a labor lawyer, representing labor, as was

your friend, Joe Jacobs, and my friend, Harris Jacobs, in Atlanta, before he went on

the bench, appointed originally by [Fiorello] La Guardia.

So anyway, I have a photograph of Uncle Matt in his robes with an inscription

to me on it, and those are the things that I have on the wall, plus pictures of my

parents.

KUHN: That was a model, at least, for you.

BUCHSBAUM: He was to some extent a model. It was not necessarily because of

him that I went into the law practice, but when he was in Savannah High School, he

used to play hooky from school, and go down to Judge Meldrim's court. Judge

Meldrim was a superior court judge, who later became president of American Bar

Association. Uncle Matt knew he wanted to go into the law, and that's what he did.

KUHN: [airplane noise; ...] here, in Savannah. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library BUCHSBAUM: Yes, yes. He went to University of Georgia and then to Harvard

Law School and then went to New York to practice. Never really came back here

except for family visits.

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

KUHN: Now, you said before that you could spend a long time talking about

W. W. Law as well.

BUCHSBAUM: Well, I think I said he was and he is an intellectual. He knows as

much about politics and history and art and music as anybody I know. I love music.

I'll drive 150 miles to hear a good string quartet, or several hours to hear a good opera.

Mr. Law knows as much about music as most of my friends. He has a phenomenal

baritone voice, if you've ever heard him sing. He knows all of the hymns from the

churches from his background. He's an avid churchgoer. He's a very kind gentleman,

very determined, and when he sets about to do something, he does it. Hardly anything

stops him.

He was I guess the driving force in the Ralph Mark Gilbert Civil Rights

Museum being what it is and where it is. There were some others who thought it

should have been at another location, but this was his choice, and this is what

prevailed.

KUHN: Can you think of, I don't know, a kind of story about Mr. Law,

something that kind of conveys his essence?

BUCHSBAUM: Well, only that he is very much comfortable with anybody from any

station and walk of life. I mean, he greets them on a first-name, friendly basis,

whether it's the bank president or the lowest laborer or an unemployed person.

KUHN: He calls you Buchsbaum. Copyright Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library BUCHSBAUM: Well, he does sometimes, yes. Occasionally he'll call me Aaron. I

always call him Mr. Law; I never call him Westley, though we have a number of

mutual friends who refer to him as that. To me, he's a bigger-than-life figure. He's

GGDP, Aaron BuchsBaum, Date: 12/29/2001

gotten an honorary degree from Savannah State University, and I think that brings a

great deal of honor to the university because I think he's bigger than that. He's just an

outstanding person.

[discussion about noise in street]

KUHN: Thank you sir.

END OF INTERVIEW