Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Tyrone Brown THE LAW CLERKS OF CHIEF JUSTICE EARL WARREN: TYRONE BROWN Interviews conducted by Laura McCreery in 2005 Copyright © 2014 by The Regents of the University of California Since 1954 the Regional Oral History Office has been interviewing leading participants in or well-placed witnesses to major events in the development of Northern California, the West, and the nation. Oral History is a method of collecting historical information through tape-recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. The tape recording is transcribed, lightly edited for continuity and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewee. The corrected manuscript is bound with photographs and illustrative materials and placed in The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and in other research collections for scholarly use. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account, offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is reflective, partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ********************************* All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between The Regents of the University of California and Tyrone Brown dated August 2, 2005. The manuscript is thereby made available for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to The Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley. Excerpts up to 1000 words from this interview may be quoted for publication without seeking permission as long as the use is non-commercial and properly cited. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to The Bancroft Library, Head of Public Services, Mail Code 6000, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-6000, and should follow instructions available online at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/collections/cite.html It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Tyrone Brown “The Law Clerks of Chief Justice Earl Warren: Tyrone Brown” conducted by Laura McCreery in 2005, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 2014. iii Tyrone Brown iv Table of Contents—Tyrone Brown Interview 1: August 2, 2005 Audio File 1 1 Family Background — Early schooling in New Jersey — Choosing a career — Undergraduate at Hamilton College — Well-rounded high school student — Deciding on a career in law — Representing black people in college — Attending Cornell University — Dean and faculty at Cornell — Civil rights cases — Cornell Law School unaware of the happenings in undergraduate campuses during mind- 60s — The Vietnam War — Appointment as clerk on the Supreme Court — Settling in Washington — The Southwest case — Poor, but rich — Starting the clerkship — Handling the in forma pauperis docket — Responsibilities divided among the clerks — Relationship with other clerks — Changing homes during childhood — Thurgood Marshall swearing him in as commissioner at the FCC— Clerking for Earl Warren — Saturdays at the University Club with Warren — The year of 1967 — Richard Nixon’s election — Relationship between Warren and President Johnson — Mrs. McHugh overseeing the clerks — Annual dinner — Johnson’s appearance at the annual dinner — Personal relationship with Chief Justice Earl Warren — Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and Warren Audio File 2 19 Raiford State prison case — Warren’s political skills — The language of the decisions — Working with Warren on a written opinion — United States v. O’Brien — Clerks helping Warren develop his thoughts on a case — Stare decisis — Lunch with the judges and justices — “The Constitution: That Delicate Balance,” a television series— Fred Friendly — Episode concerning affirmative action — Larry [Laurence] Tribe — Lunch with Judge Bazelon and Judge Leventhal — Relationship with Justice Marshall — Attending oral arguments — Warren assigning opinions — Court personalities in the conferences — Warren and Brown’s mother — Warren as an ordinary person — Robert Kennedy’s assassination — Aftermath from Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder — Warren’s stubbornness — Barenblatt v. Sweezy — Warren as his mother’s hero — “Impeach Earl Warren” sign — Lessons learned from Warren — Warren’s moral convictions — Warren starting to waver — Defining Warren’s jurisprudence — Announcing his retirement to the clerks before announced publicly Audio File 3 38 Warren’s views about the Constitution — Working for Edward Muskie and Jimmy Carter — Warren’s influence on narrator’s career decisions and outlook — Going into public service — Start-up communications projects — Working at the v Washington Post — Admiration for Warren passed down by his mother — Reflection on clerkship [End of Interview] 1 Interview #1 August 2, 2005 [Begin Audio File 1] 01-00:00:00 McCreery: This is tape number one on August 2, 2005. This is Laura McCreery speaking and on this tape I’m interviewing Tyrone Brown at his law office at Wiley Rein & Fielding in Washington, DC and we’re talking today in connection with the oral history project Law Clerks of Chief Justice Earl Warren. Let’s start with a little of your own background, beginning with your date of birth and a few words about where you were born. 01-00:01:01 Brown: Okay. Well, I was born in Norfolk, Virginia, on November 5, 1942. To place a time, it was during the month that the United States invaded North Africa during the Second World War. My parents had grown up in country areas outside of Norfolk, Virginia, both of them, and my dad had a heart murmur and was ineligible to go into the Army during the War and so he worked at the Navy base in Portsmouth and that’s how I came to be born in Norfolk. My family left the Tidewater area of Virginia probably in 1946, something like that, and I grew up in New Jersey. 01-00:01:53 McCreery: Tell me a little bit about your early schooling in New Jersey, if you would. 01-00:01:59 Brown: We were poor. Not as poor as I sometimes think we were. Because my parents actually were able to have us grow up as though we were middle class children, although my dad, who was a “hod” carrier, a ditch digger, a union ditch digger, if he’d ever missed a week of work we probably wouldn’t have eaten that week. He just never did. And I and my five brothers and one sister went to public schools in Newark, New Jersey. It was then called the Roseville section of Newark, New Jersey. Very mixed community. I remember the elementary school that we went to that looked like an apartment building. Had been built in the 1880s. Had really no playground but it had a group of very strict, mostly German, teachers. And we were taught well there. We learned. 01-00:03:03 McCreery: How did you like school as a youngster? 01-00:03:05 Brown: Oh, I loved it. It was an outlet for me. It came easy for me. I sometimes like to say I never met a standardized exam I didn’t like. It seems to be genetic somehow. My kids are that way, too. But I really liked school. I looked forward to it and I did well all the way through elementary school, really through college and law school. 01-00:03:29 McCreery: And where were you in the order of your siblings? 2 01-00:03:31 Brown: I was third. 01-00:03:32 McCreery: Third. 01-00:03:32 Brown: I have two brothers older. One of my brothers died when he was nineteen but I was third. And then the sister is in the middle and then three more boys. 01-00:03:42 McCreery: Okay. Now, when you were going up through school and through high school, what were you thinking about for yourself in terms of what to do next? Do you remember? 01-00:03:55 Brown: Well, I remember my mother, like all black mothers back then if their kids were doing well in school, thought I was going to grow up to be a doctor. But I never really had that kind of drive. For a while I wanted to be a minister, actually, and it wasn’t until college that I decided to go to law school. Certainly I had two heroes during my years in high school and they were Thurgood Marshall and Earl Warren, largely because of the way they had come together in that very important decision in Brown v. Board of Education. But they were kind of legendary for me, and so you can imagine how it felt to actually work in the same building as the two of them. 01-00:04:51 McCreery: Okay. And was that also part of your family life? Learning about them and— 01-00:04:56 Brown: Well, it was. My parents, neither one of them graduated from high school but they were both bound and determined that their children would get solid educations. And I’m proud of the fact that with my dad working as a laborer, my mom as a nurse’s aide part time, that one, two, three, four of their seven children attended and three graduated from college. So they’re my heroes. In college my interests were really in literature more so than anything else. It was really toward the middle of my junior year that I decided that law school was the right place for me. 01-00:05:40 McCreery: Okay. Now, you went to Hamilton College, I noticed— 01-00:05:42 Brown: That’s correct. 01-00:05:43 McCreery: —as an undergraduate.