Citizen Lane

Defending our Rights in the Courts, the Capitol, and the Streets

By Mark Lane

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

Copyright © 2012 Mark Lane
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61374-001-9

Contents

Foreword Martin Sheen,
Introduction My Life,
Prologue Our Time,
1 Brooklyn Days,
2 Working with the National Lawyers Guild,
3 Storefront Lawyer,
4 Wassaic,
5 Mid-Harlem Community Parish,
6 East Harlem Politics,
7 The Campaign in East Harlem,
8 The Assembly Line,
9 Freedom Ride,
10 Rush to Judgment: The Journey Begins,
11 Chicago, August 1968,
12 James Joseph Richardson,
13 The Winter Soldier Investigation,
14 Mountain Home,
15 Wounded Knee,
16 O Canada,
17 Memphis, America,
18 Jonestown,
19 My Day with Bill Buckley: The Trial of National Review and Buckley v. Carto,
20 A Supreme Case and Others in the District,
21 Radio Days,
Epilogue My Life Goes On,
Acknowledgments,
Notes,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Brooklyn Days

I was born in the Bronx and grew up in Brooklyn. My father, Harry A. Lane of Buffalo, New York, studied to be a chemist, but the ingestion of some fumes in a laboratory damaged his lungs. Instead he became a certified public accountant. My mother, Elizabeth Lane, one of nine sisters raised in Rochester, New York, had been an administrative assistant to Gus Edwards, a vaudeville impresario. We — that is, my brother, Lawrence, known in the early years to all as Lory, and my sister, Ann Judith, called Sissy — suffered no shortage of uncles, aunts, and cousins. The appellation Sissy has not survived, although Ann has, to become a historian, an author, and a professor at the University of Virginia. The name Lory has almost disappeared; all of his friends and even his wife addressed him as Larry, yet the name lives on when Ann and I speak of him.

Lory had a long career as a New York City high school teacher and a leader of the teacher's union, and, in his retirement, he continued to both teach and travel, as did his wife, Patricia. Lory died just a few days before I wrote these words. During the early years I probably knew him better than did anyone else. Certainly I spent more time with him. We shared a twin-bedded room, and in almost every picture taken at the time, there he is, with his arm around my shoulder. He was my protector and buddy as we grew up. Later in life he became my role model. I never knew him to make an unkind remark about anyone. While he opposed the policies of the second Bush administration, he would make no personal statement against their author.

When the principal of the school where he taught began to circulate Polish jokes, one of the horrors of the 1950s, Lory, unable to dissuade him through logic, initiated and circulated at school a number of principal jokes. How many high school principals does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Lory possessed a well-developed sense of humor and, being a mathematician, a most precise approach to specifics. I last saw him in a hospital bed too weak to speak. I held his hand, and he whispered, "I love you," as he did a moment later to Ann. Pat, his wife, patted his sweating forehead and said, "You look better, Larry." He tried several times to say something, but he lacked the energy. Finally, he looked at all of us and then smiled and turned to Pat and said, "Better than whom?" Those were his last words.

He was truly a teacher and a wise, kind, and generous man. I might have followed the path he took, but I became a trial lawyer.

Dad was known as "the honest accountant." Many years later my father told me that when the US government sought to convict Al Capone, it had secretly flown two accountants to Chicago to review his books. The agents said they required the services of certified public accountants who were without reproach or blemish. Apparently two came to mind. My father was one of them. Capone was convicted of income tax evasion.

My siblings and I walked to school, first Public School 193 and later James Madison High School, from our modest home, all located in the Flatbush neighborhood of the borough of Brooklyn. Our lives seemed unremarkable. We were active in various sports, almost all played in the street where there was little traffic, including hockey on roller skates, touch football, and stickball, a baseball game played with a rubber ball and a broomstick. I joined with Lory and his friends in most sports encounters; they were a couple of years older and more skilled. I tried to make up for that gap with perseverance.

The declaration of war in 1941, when we were still quite young — my sister was nine, I was fourteen, and my brother sixteen — brought an end to the innocence of our childhood. Until then there was schoolwork, sports, and, above all, the Brooklyn Dodgers. My parents were not political activists; they supported President Roosevelt — Eleanor Roosevelt was my mother's only candidate for first lady of the world — they spoke at home of their sympathy for the Loyalists in faraway Spain and their opposition to the fascist Franco regime, and they treated the very few Negroes — that was then the proper word — with whom we came into contact fairly. The subject of race relations did not come up often. However, I remember my mother telling my dad how disappointed she was in one of her friends who had just hired a black maid for some part-time work. The neighbor had not set the hourly rate in advance, later saying to my mother that she had done that on purpose. I was just a child, but an inquisitive one. What was wrong with that? I asked. My mother explained that the maid, a woman without power, I think my mother said "influence," would be forced to accept whatever she was offered once the job was done.

The episodes of daily life then had little resemblance to the world of today. We were not attached to the ubiquitous television sets, smart phones, and tablets of the present. We did sit around the kitchen table Sunday evenings to listen to the radio: Jack Benny and Fred Allen. Fibber McGee and Molly never quite made it in our house. Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons, and the drama set in Grand Central Station, "the crossroads of the world," and the Shadow were also favorites.

Mother — later in life we called her Betty — played the baby grand piano in our parlor and led us in singing songs of the not-so-recent past. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was her favorite. She was also partial to "School Days." She told us that had been a favorite song when she worked for Gus Edwards, and he had been associated with the song.

We never considered the lack of crime or visible criminals to be a blessing. We accepted that as part of the normal environment just as we expected good drinking water to come from the faucet. I cannot recall ever hearing of a criminal act in our neighborhood; of course, no one bought bottled water. Our trusty 1936 Plymouth, purchased when the government paid a bonus to veterans of World War I, was parked, unlocked, windows open unless rain was expected, in the driveway alongside our semidetached rented home. We did not lock our doors at night. During the summer the windows, including those on the ground floor, were open with just removable screens in place so that nature might provide in the summer months the only air-conditioning then available.

The Elm Theater was air cooled, as the icicle-shaped banners flowing from the marquee proclaimed. We spent...