A John F. Kennedy documentary that aired recently referenced efforts to free the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. from a brutal Geogia prison back in 1960, but didn’t mention the man escorting King out of the facility, Lawyer Don Hollowell.
Coretta Scott King had requested help from the Kennedy’s to free her husband from a four-month, hard-labor sentence in Reidsville State Prison. King’s crime? Participating in a sit-in.
There was a lot of handwringing and talk about political courage in the Kennedy’s camp. They needed the Black vote to ascend to the presidency but at the same time, the candidate feared alienating white voters. We need Hollowell’s no nonsense courage today.
Hollowell, originally from Wichita, had been defending King against sit-in charges filed when King protested at an Atlanta department store. Prosecutors dropped those charges, but they subsequently charged King with violating probation and sent him to Reidsville in 1960.
King often found himself the target of prosecutorial power and the many creative ways prosecutors filed charges not necessarily because King had broken the law, but because King challenged racial norms. Prosecutors, then and now, wield enormous power.
Hollowell represented many civil rights icons including Julian Bond and John Lewis. Hollowell brought the case that got Journalist Charlayne Hunter Gault and classmate Hamilton Holmes who’d go on to become a doctor, admitted to the University of Georgia.
Hollowell regularly faced racist judges and juries in the darkest most dangerous reaches of rural Dixie and to the astonishment of many, managed to win more than his share of such cases. People used to prop ladders on the windows of old court houses to watch him work.
By 1964, with Hollowell seeking a judge seat in Fulton County Superior Court, it was King who gifted him some SCLC staffers to help his campaign, which was unsuccessful.
But under President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, Hollowell became the first Black man to lead the southeastern regional office for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which he directed from 1966 to 1976. Hollowell served as president of the Voter Education Project from 1971 to 1986 and was the recipient of countless awards, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Lawyer of the Year (1965), and the Civil Liberties Award from the American Civil Liberties Union (1967). In 2002, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Georgia, the same university he had helped to desegregate 40 years earlier.
Hollowell died in 2004 but not before integrating Atlanta schools, colleges, and public transit.
At some point, we’ll need to stop living on his courage, and find our own. And real courage, not the political kind.
Date
Thursday, February 1, 2024 - 12:00pm
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This editorial was originally published by the Wichita Eagle on December 23, 2023.
In 2017, Ricky Wirths walked into the offices leased by the Kansas Department of Revenue at a local strip mall, asked for the tax agent who’d recently seized his property, and open fired on the entire office, shooting the tax agent five times.
He then told an acquaintance that he’d “just killed a guy,” although he would prove to be incorrect — the victim miraculously survived.
Once apprehended, Wirths faced a $250,000 bail bond, which was later increased to $500,000.
This meant that after attempting to kill a state official, on state property, Wirths could post bail, go home, hire a lawyer, and begin building a defense for the attempted murder charges he was facing.
But recently, Sedgwick County prosecutors charged 16-year-old Makyh Townes with second-degree murder in what a friend termed an accidental shooting.
The 16-year-old had his bond set at $2 million and he’s sitting in an adult jail.
Wirths is white. Townes is Black.
The challenge here hinges not on the crimes (in this case, both are violent crimes), but on the capriciousness of the bond system as a whole.
The ACLU of Kansas believes the state could address these socially destabilizing and anti-democratic disparities by eliminating cash bail for non-violent offenses. Pretrial incarceration caused by unaffordable bail remains one of the greatest drivers of convictions and it exacerbates already ballooning jail and prison populations. In 2020, roughly 630,000 people were locked up in local jails. Most of them had not been convicted of a crime.
After an arrest — wrongful or not — a person’s ability to leave jail and return home to fight the charges typically depends on their access to money. On any given day, 5,000 people sit in Kansas jails not because they are guilty, but only because they can’t afford bail.
That’s because, in virtually all jurisdictions, courts require people pay cash bail to secure their freedom. Originally, bail was designed to compel people to return to court to face charges, but now we know that simple solutions like court reminders can achieve that purpose.
Townes’ mother said in a Wichita Beacon article that she worries about her 16-year-old son. He’s sitting in an adult jail, missing lots of school, and mourning his friend’s death. Even if acquitted, he’ll deal with this trauma perhaps for the rest of his life.
All because they didn’t have money for bail.
Poorer Americans and people of color often can’t afford to come up with money for bail, leaving them sitting in jail awaiting trial, sometimes for months or even years.
For those that do try to pay, bail amounts can be a significant hardship. They won’t ever get the money back regardless of the outcome of the case — even if the arrest was a case of mistaken identity and no charges were ever filed.
Across the country, bail reform has taken root and even gained support from within law enforcement and among judges and prosecutors. Judicial decision-makers who influence bond amounts have the ability and the power to correct our two-tier system of justice.
And according to survey research this year, 69% of Kansas voters support reforming cash bail to create a path for most people to go home the same day they’re arrested if they don’t pose a flight risk or a threat to others.
Kansans clearly believe release decision should be based on individual circumstances — not how much money someone has.
Date
Tuesday, January 23, 2024 - 5:30pm
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This editorial was originally published by the Kansas Reflector on January 3, 2024.
Earlier this past summer, in the ACLU of Kansas’ report about the historical and social significance of the Quindaro settlement, we talked about the aspirational Kansas we fear too many residents here have forgotten.
Kansas formed partly as a haven for people seeking freedom, as well as for those wanting to protect the very notion of freedom from the horrors of slavery. As enslaved people fled Missouri to Kansas, they helped form a multicultural democracy at Quindaro, with Wyandot Indians and white Massachusetts abolitionists.
But Bleeding Kansas’s history is a tale of opposing forces. And it’s difficult not to see last year’s work at the ACLU of Kansas with our partners and community as pivotal in that story: the end of unconstitutional highway patrol practices, the defense against veiled and not-so-veiled attacks on trans kids, and the numerous local efforts to protect democracy and ensure voters across the state can make their voices heard.
In our win challenging the Kansas Highway Patrol tactics that, as a federal judge said in her order, had troopers “waging war on motorists,” we secured an important victory for fundamental Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures for every driver that might travel the highways in our state. We don’t know exactly how many drivers were affected by the Highway Patrol’s practice of detaining out-of-state drivers based on their travel plans to and from Colorado or who were subjected to the infamous tactic known as the “Kansas two-step” — but we do know the effects on our individual clients from their experiences were lasting and traumatizing.
Outside of the courts, we’ve marched forward for a better Kansas in the Legislature as well, playing defense against an onslaught of odious and discriminatory bills aimed at trans children, trans Kansans, and the people who love them, and uplifting the voices of those most impacted.
We strongly opposed Senate Bill 180, a bill suspiciously framed as “a women’s rights bill” that attempted to codify outdated, inaccurate, and underinclusive definitions of sex and families while also trying to absolve the state of its responsibility to not discriminate against transgender people. SB 180 embodied the ongoing effort by extremists to remove any trace of trans people from public life, including from athletics, restrooms, locker rooms, domestic violence shelters and other necessary and safety net places and spaces, and did so in a vague, overbroad way without defining any specific enforcement or mechanism.
The law, which ultimately passed, illustrates how extremists have used a deeply ingrained and misogynistic paternalism to weaponize women’s rights against trans people in Kansas and across the country. And when a law is vague and overbroad, extremists will furnish it accordingly.
But there is so much room for hope. We also saw growing interest across the state and partnered with more Kansans working toward the meaningfully inclusive democracy in their communities: those in Wyandotte County seeking language access in election materials, residents of Hays and Ellis County pushing for a more accessible polling location on the Fort Hays State University campus, Johnson Countians who support implementing a vote-from-jail program and expanded language access, and voters of Sedgwick County who rely on mail ballots.
As we say here at the ACLU, “Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty.” This is a price we gladly pay.
Throughout our 100-plus-year existence, we have joined arms with everyday Americans to pursue the enduring promise of what we might someday become: the multi-racial democracy we are still striving to build and perfect.
Dr. Micah W. Kubic has served as the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas since January 2022. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Date
Wednesday, January 3, 2024 - 5:30pm
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