Washington Post Op-Ed, Asking 'What Would Dr. King Think?,' Includes Reminiscences of Vernon Jordan '57

January 16, 2006

January 16, 2006, Greencastle, Ind. - "In his book Vernon Can Read!, high-powered Washington lawyer Vernon Jordan tells the story of his first real case after graduation from Howard University law school in 1960," writes Colbert I. King in a Washington Post op-ed headlined, "What Would Dr. King Think?". Vernon Jordan -- senior managing director of Lazard LLC, former president of the National Urban League and an adviser to Presidents Clinton and Carter -- is a 1957 graduate of DePauw University.

"Jordan and his boss, Atlanta lawyer Donald Hollowell, were trying to get a stay of execution for Nathaniel Johnson, a young black man sentenced to death for raping a white woman," the columnist writes. "The case had been badly handled by a white attorney, and the version of the rape story received by Jordan and Hollowell convinced them that Johnson, who had been arrested in the middle of the night without a warrant and who had no real chance of getting a fair trial, was being railroaded to the death chamber. Working frantically to get a stay, the two lawyers ended up in the chambers of W.H. Duckworth, chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, to make their case. 'In the middle of this literally deadly serious matter,' Jordan wrote, 'Duckworth asked me, 'Son, where do you play basketball?' ' 'I shook my head and said, 'I don't play basketball anywhere.' We left the chambers empty-handed.'"

King notes, "While Jordan and Hollowell had been running from office to office trying to save Johnson's life, he was executed. Walking home that morning during a hot Georgia summer, Jordan wrote that he was 'thinking of how our client had been killed by a poisonous combination of incompetence, hatred and indifference -- and then the tears began to flow. The more I cried, the weaker I got, and before I knew it I looked down and realized that I had totally lost control. I had urinated on myself.'"

The essay concludes, "Over dinner a few weeks ago, Jordan spoke to some of us about a recent trip to Atlanta, where he had the chance to meet the current chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. Her name is Leah Ward Sears, the first woman to serve on that high court and, since last year, its first female chief justice and the first African-American woman to lead a state's highest appeals court anywhere in America. Dr. King, I think, would call that progress."

Read the complete column at the Post's Web site.

Vernon Jordan will deliver Fisk University's Martin Luther King convocation this Thursday, January 19. Read more in this previous story.

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