Digital Legal Research Lab Roundtable
U.S. Law and Race Initiative
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08/09/2024
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Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky and Dr. William Thomas introduce the broader goals of the Digital Legal Research Lab and the U.S. Law & Race Initiative. This webinar features the outstanding student research in the 2024 Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation. Each student researched previously unpublished habeas corpus petitions and reflected on the significance of these cases. We hope you gain fresh insights from these presentations on cases of marginalized people who engaged with U.S. law.
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- [00:00:05.100]Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Digital
- [00:00:08.680]Legal Research Lab Summer Research Program webinar.
- [00:00:12.380]Thank you to everybody for coming in person. We're really excited about the
- [00:00:15.960]conversation we have today, and thanks to everyone who is joining us via Zoom.
- [00:00:21.340]My name is Katrina Jagodinsky. I'm an Associate Professor of History
- [00:00:24.820]here at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and along with
- [00:00:28.580]Dr. Will Thomas, I'm the co-founder of the
- [00:00:30.860]Digital Legal Research Lab.
- [00:00:32.340]We work with students in the lab to train them in critical legal
- [00:00:37.680]history analysis using digital tools.
- [00:00:40.720]We aim to highlight under-examined stories of marginalized people's use
- [00:00:46.380]of the law and contributions to the American legal tradition.
- [00:00:50.300]In particular, we focus on unpublished archival
- [00:00:53.880]material, and through our students' curiosity and
- [00:00:57.520]insights, are able to bring a more diverse array of participants
- [00:01:01.680]to American legal history.
- [00:01:04.640]Today's roundtable focuses on our 2024 Summer
- [00:01:08.900]Research Program cohort here next to me.
- [00:01:11.660]Their training is funded by the National Science Foundation's
- [00:01:15.940]Research Experience for Undergraduates, as well as University of
- [00:01:19.680]Nebraska-Lincoln's Undergraduate Creative and Research Experience Program.
- [00:01:25.180]These undergraduates have been structuring data from previous corpus cases
- [00:01:30.360]that contribute to the Petitioning for Freedom Project, also funded
- [00:01:34.640]by the National Science Foundation, and have been contributing to
- [00:01:38.420]the US Law and Race Initiative, funded by
- [00:01:41.160]the Mellon Foundation.
- [00:01:42.700]Each student will introduce themselves and reflect on
- [00:01:46.420]the work they've done this summer in the Digital
- [00:01:48.560]Legal Research Lab, and after their comments, my colleague
- [00:01:52.260]Dr. Thomas will moderate a question and answer session.
- [00:01:56.240]So, for those of you in the audience, we look forward to
- [00:01:58.640]hearing from you, and for those of you on
- [00:02:00.820]Zoom, we'll thank our program manager, Kaci Nash, for
- [00:02:05.180]moderating the Zoom chat there.
- [00:02:07.580]Thanks again to everybody for joining us today. I look
- [00:02:10.380]forward to the conversation. I'll pass it over to the team.
- [00:02:15.000]Thank you, Dr. Jagodinsky. Hi, everybody. My name is Andy Knopik, and
- [00:02:19.660]I am going into my senior year here at
- [00:02:21.380]the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- [00:02:23.860]My major is in psychology and women in gender studies, and
- [00:02:26.980]I am a member of UCARE, the University's
- [00:02:28.860]Undergraduate Research Program.
- [00:02:30.440]So, my work in the lab has vastly increased my knowledge of
- [00:02:34.480]legal history, as that was not my discipline previous to this lab.
- [00:02:40.040]Legal history was largely new to me, and I was approaching this
- [00:02:42.300]lab as an additional way to engage in advocacy
- [00:02:45.560]and activism, without being exactly sure how that
- [00:02:48.960]would manifest in this scenario.
- [00:02:50.160]But I quickly realized that habeas corpus is exactly that. It
- [00:02:54.760]is a form of legal advocacy and a way for marginalized
- [00:02:57.880]and underrepresented communities to fight discriminatory laws, challenge
- [00:03:03.420]the powers that be, and take hold of
- [00:03:05.700]their agency in the legal sphere.
- [00:03:09.020]People from all across the U.S. and a variety
- [00:03:11.800]of backgrounds were able to utilize habeas, and through necessities
- [00:03:17.080]spread legal knowledge to their communities who didn't typically have
- [00:03:21.160]access and were systematically barred from obtaining official legal education.
- [00:03:25.660]What I think that everybody should know about habeas is the sheer volume of habeas
- [00:03:29.460]cases that exist, and legal cases in general
- [00:03:31.920]that exist, stored in state and federal archives.
- [00:03:35.260]While doing encoding work, my colleagues and I were often the first
- [00:03:38.680]people to have read these cases since they were originally closed, which
- [00:03:42.400]I think is very significant, especially because the great courts of this
- [00:03:47.180]country making decisions and lawyers making
- [00:03:49.940]legal claims that they base on precedent
- [00:03:54.120]are actually not really doing that, because they often would use the term
- [00:04:00.740]American legal tradition as a justification for
- [00:04:02.760]their legal actions, but it's impossible for
- [00:04:05.040]anyone to truly make a decision based on the entirety of American legal
- [00:04:08.880]tradition, as most legal cases are largely hidden away in
- [00:04:12.480]archives or forgotten about.
- [00:04:15.200]And we know that many cases we do see are the ones involving
- [00:04:19.079]those with more social influence or privilege,
- [00:04:22.600]or who substantially challenge the status quo.
- [00:04:26.180]So projects like this, to me, are a very important step in
- [00:04:31.420]illuminating other important and substantial stories and lessening
- [00:04:35.740]that gap. So yeah, that's me. That's what I should come to.
- [00:04:40.380]Thank you so much, Andy. That was great.
- [00:04:43.320]Hello everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Chikamso Chijioke, and
- [00:04:47.040]I am a rising senior at Xavier University of Louisiana.
- [00:04:51.260]I studied political science with a minor in English, and I
- [00:04:55.240]have had such a wonderful experience this summer in the lab.
- [00:05:01.740]One of the major things I learned about legal research
- [00:05:06.540]and legal history is just how extensive it really is.
- [00:05:11.900]The habeas cases that we covered go over a wide range
- [00:05:16.480]of topics and case types, and it's really, really great to
- [00:05:21.620]see, like Andy mentioned, marginalized groups taking agency for their freedom
- [00:05:27.140]and to take action in their lives to really make sure
- [00:05:30.360]that they have a space in, you know, in America, in American
- [00:05:34.740]history. And that's something that was really awesome to see. And it was
- [00:05:37.700]also very interesting experience reading some of this handwriting
- [00:05:40.340]that the habeas cases had because it was just, I
- [00:05:44.140]don't know how they read it, but the world goes away.
- [00:05:49.240]But, you know, the insight that I gained from this experience
- [00:05:51.960]is really great. Really great learning experience, especially
- [00:05:54.840]somebody who wants to go into the legal field in the future.
- [00:05:58.160]It's really important for me to get that background in legal
- [00:06:00.840]history to understand, you know, how to look forward to it.
- [00:06:05.020]And one thing specifically about habeas cases that really came to my mind
- [00:06:09.080]throughout my research summer is that these
- [00:06:11.000]are cases of real people, real stories.
- [00:06:14.760]They were real experiences. They had real lives. These are cases, you know,
- [00:06:19.320]of child separation families that were affected in the case of my research.
- [00:06:24.320]There was immigration cases I focused a lot on,
- [00:06:26.980]and these were real people with their lives and livelihoods
- [00:06:31.280]at risk. And that was something that's really important to
- [00:06:33.820]highlight in the study of legal history and habeas cases.
- [00:06:36.480]That these aren't just, you know, numbers or
- [00:06:38.960]stories to put on a database or website, but
- [00:06:41.800]these are real stories to understand and the
- [00:06:43.920]implications that these habeas cases had in these cases.
- [00:06:47.660]So yeah, that's some of the things that I learned and
- [00:06:49.500]gained from this experience.
- [00:06:51.440]Hey everybody, my name is Ryan Minton. I'm a senior at Washington
- [00:06:57.060]State University, majoring in history.
- [00:07:00.460]Prior to working this lab, my knowledge of legal
- [00:07:03.020]history was very minimal. It was really just, I
- [00:07:08.100]knew of some of the majoring cases in American
- [00:07:10.440]history, but that was pretty much all it was.
- [00:07:12.500]So this whole experience has been extremely educational
- [00:07:14.520]for me. I didn't even, I had no idea, well, I had some
- [00:07:18.580]idea of what habeas corpus was, but I didn't
- [00:07:22.560]know the specifics of it.
- [00:07:25.900]Certainly I had no idea what a habeas corpus petition would
- [00:07:27.820]look like. And the same thing you said about freedom suits,
- [00:07:31.700]that was something that was really new to me. I had
- [00:07:33.300]no idea that something like that was ever happening in American history.
- [00:07:41.320]So it's all been very eye-opening, to say the least, learning all
- [00:07:44.640]these things, getting to read some of the literature in the field.
- [00:07:48.900]It's just been very eye-opening to learn about all this history that I
- [00:07:53.620]just, for the most part, wasn't unaware existed at all in the first place.
- [00:07:58.720]I think probably the most surprising thing about
- [00:08:00.540]habeas corpus history to me is just how
- [00:08:02.420]expansive the application of habeas was.
- [00:08:07.220]Applications more were constantly popping up that I just
- [00:08:09.740]had no idea of when it possibly didn't work.
- [00:08:13.420]My personal partner that I'm working on for the last couple of
- [00:08:16.820]weeks is about habeas corpus was used to challenge
- [00:08:20.340]underage military enlistment.
- [00:08:24.480]So that's just one example of just how wide habeas' applications need.
- [00:08:31.500]I think the same thing you said for a lot of my cohorts' projects as well.
- [00:08:37.440]But yeah, that's about it.
- [00:08:42.559]Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Ethan Reiter. I'm going to be a rising senior
- [00:08:46.860]at the University of Kansas, and I am dual majoring in
- [00:08:50.080]secondary education and history.
- [00:08:53.320]I think my work in the Digital Legal Research Lab has
- [00:08:55.840]broadened my view of what legal precedent really means to me.
- [00:08:59.180]I've talked about common law in the United States through Supreme Court
- [00:09:02.160]rulings, ones that, for me, were really supposed
- [00:09:05.720]to define precisely what legal actors were able or not able to.
- [00:09:10.320]Since I was not exclusively about Hallmark Supreme Court cases,
- [00:09:13.640]such as that of Dred Scott v. Samford, I thought these
- [00:09:16.320]cases set limits on marginalized legal actors in the courts, and
- [00:09:20.680]therefore limited the history of marginalized people within
- [00:09:23.400]America's legal tradition.
- [00:09:25.640]Since then, I have learned I was severely mistaken, and through
- [00:09:29.580]these 10 weeks, I've worked to shed that ignorance while exploring
- [00:09:32.140]invigorating legal challenges led by Black and female
- [00:09:34.740]petitioners challenging structural barriers within American courts that
- [00:09:38.580]cater to the white and wealthy.
- [00:09:40.460]As someone deeply interested in education, this learning experience has pre-framed my
- [00:09:44.680]approach to how I will teach American legal tradition in the future.
- [00:09:48.420]Though I am sure many textbooks will say stagnant and only
- [00:09:51.480]mentioning Supreme Court cases, I see now that American legal tradition
- [00:09:55.640]is a history from below, where challenges from all groups slowly
- [00:09:58.600]shape the response of American legal tradition throughout
- [00:10:00.980]the nation's history.
- [00:10:03.140]As for habeas corpus petitions specifically, I knew little to
- [00:10:07.780]nothing going in, so there's a lot that I had learned.
- [00:10:10.460]But one thing that stuck out to me was, as I got deeper
- [00:10:13.280]in my research, I noticed the wide variety of
- [00:10:15.220]applications for habeas corpus.
- [00:10:17.720]It was used to challenge wrong political attainment
- [00:10:19.440]in a number of spaces, and even in some instances it was
- [00:10:22.100]used to challenge someone's freedom from attainment, which
- [00:10:24.260]I found most surprising.
- [00:10:26.200]I have found a great thing through these petitions from around 1890 to 1910, as the
- [00:10:30.440]definitions of what a habeas corpus petition was,
- [00:10:33.300]was debated and became more settled over time.
- [00:10:35.780]I had not anticipated to see such a dynamic nature
- [00:10:38.480]within any area of law, and this small window of
- [00:10:41.780]habeas corpus petitions has fueled my interest in exploring other
- [00:10:44.480]legal challenges and their changing styles over time. Thank you.
- [00:10:52.340]Hello everyone, my name is Roshawnna Brinkley. I attend the
- [00:10:55.420]University of Maryland, College Park. I'm going to be a
- [00:10:57.880]writing senior this year and my major is history, physical
- [00:11:01.100]concentration and race and ethnicity, and my minor is sociology.
- [00:11:05.440]So my work in the lab has really, I feel like
- [00:11:09.460]it's really prepared me for law school, because I look at the
- [00:11:13.340]intersections of race and gender within my project.
- [00:11:18.400]And this lab has allowed me to fully investigate the intersection of a
- [00:11:21.000]Black woman in America, specifically like the
- [00:11:23.300]antebellum America, which is period of excavation.
- [00:11:25.780]It extends far beyond like contemporary studies
- [00:11:29.020]that we discussed, you know, some classes focus on like the Eurocentric view of
- [00:11:33.620]law and exclude Black women in legal spaces.
- [00:11:37.120]So I think coming here and learning about like
- [00:11:39.580]how Black women were their own litigants in early
- [00:11:42.760]antebellum America was really important and it contributed to
- [00:11:47.160]my identity as well because I am a Black woman.
- [00:11:49.240]So it was just really, really great for me to know
- [00:11:51.760]that Black women were present in a legal system prior to Dred
- [00:11:54.720]Scott, because, as you know, Dred Scott was a Black man, but
- [00:11:58.100]also knowing Black women came before him to sleep under the notion.
- [00:12:03.340]You know, Black women at this time, they weren't just suing for freedom,
- [00:12:08.560]they were suing for most of the things and they wanted to stop the
- [00:12:11.900]perpetuation of bondage with their children and
- [00:12:15.120]they wanted to stop this notion that their womb was an economic asset because
- [00:12:19.980]slavery was, enslavement was pressured that way.
- [00:12:23.840]So just seeing these women in these, seeing these women in these spaces was
- [00:12:29.020]just really remarkable and it like really fueled my desire to continue to study.
- [00:12:35.040]Some statistics from the petition for freedom website showed me
- [00:12:38.400]that 64.7% of the Black women's rights were allowed showing that
- [00:12:42.900]they did possess an extensive knowledge of the legal system and
- [00:12:46.620]this is why I chose to keep on pursuing this study.
- [00:12:52.140]So some habeas, the most thing that was surprising to me
- [00:12:55.640]about habeas corpus is that although I knew
- [00:12:59.340]what habeas corpus was because I studied, I mean I learned about
- [00:13:02.220]it in government politics in high school, I
- [00:13:05.920]did not know that it was applicable to Black enslaved people because,
- [00:13:09.560]you know, once again, like you learn it
- [00:13:11.080]from this very Eurocentric,
- [00:13:14.100]you learn it from this Eurocentric classroom and you don't learn
- [00:13:19.560]that it's very applicable to other people, like you wouldn't think
- [00:13:22.140]in your mind, oh wow, a slave can challenge their detainment,
- [00:13:26.340]I just didn't know that before coming into this internship and
- [00:13:31.700]it's just really assuring and important to unearth
- [00:13:35.700]these narratives that can become public information to
- [00:13:38.460]counter some of these narratives that Black people
- [00:13:40.480]weren't present in legal spaces and, you know,
- [00:13:43.540]they didn't just sue for wrongful enslavement, they
- [00:13:45.840]sued for a lot of things, often like winning their cases and
- [00:13:48.780]winning money for damages by their slaver, so
- [00:13:52.680]I think that's really important.
- [00:13:57.530]Hi y'all, my name is Miranda Martinez. I attend
- [00:14:00.590]Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. There I major in history and my
- [00:14:04.630]minor is pre-law. Going into the law I will be
- [00:14:07.350]a rising senior and I'm really excited about that.
- [00:14:10.150]And I'm also really excited to be here with everyone. So prior to
- [00:14:14.350]coming to this experience, I thought of the legal field as very male dominated.
- [00:14:19.770]Just through academic legal inquiry, my own experiences in
- [00:14:23.790]that realm, I predominantly thought of male actors. I knew
- [00:14:28.610]that female actors were present, but in my mind,
- [00:14:31.890]they were not as statistically there as their male counterparts.
- [00:14:36.590]However, through my time in the lab and coding data
- [00:14:40.010]points for petitioning for freedom, I kept encountering more and more
- [00:14:43.730]women and that was really insightful and it really prompted me
- [00:14:48.510]to go and focus on this for my research symposium poster.
- [00:14:52.930]And through that I found that about 20% of the female encoded petition, 20% of the
- [00:15:00.150]sex encoded petitioners were actually female. And through
- [00:15:03.250]that, it made me rethink legal history overall.
- [00:15:06.410]Like my cohort has said, we really look at SCOTUS and federal ruling
- [00:15:10.610]when we're thinking about American legal history,
- [00:15:12.990]and we don't really talk about women.
- [00:15:15.350]Databases that look at the law also use women
- [00:15:19.630]as a quote unquote special collection.
- [00:15:22.270]They're not highlighted as actors, as they should be, and set our
- [00:15:25.830]scene as a subcategory that we're lucky to have highlighted.
- [00:15:29.670]And I think that is something that really changed through
- [00:15:32.790]my time on this project. It's really interesting to see,
- [00:15:35.890]you know, people who have gone through these experiences and
- [00:15:39.430]really been successful and done what they set out to do.
- [00:15:43.490]And looking at the legal history through that lens, I'm really excited to
- [00:15:47.190]enter the legal field and continue that mark as a female as well.
- [00:15:51.270]And something that I think everyone should know about
- [00:15:53.770]habeas corpus history is that because of the very
- [00:15:57.290]nature of habeas corpus, which essentially goes against illegal
- [00:16:01.590]detainment, we can learn a lot about marginalized groups.
- [00:16:04.230]And I hope that in the future, individuals keep using
- [00:16:07.610]habeas corpus to look at marginalized groups because we saw
- [00:16:10.430]a wide range of individuals use this tool that we
- [00:16:13.510]usually don't think about when we think about American legal history.
- [00:16:16.650]And I think it'd be really interesting for future
- [00:16:19.650]academic legal inquiry to really look at not only just
- [00:16:23.710]women, but immigrants and other categories that have been discriminated
- [00:16:27.730]against in American history because of misogyny, racism, or xenophobia.
- [00:16:33.190]Thank you.
- [00:16:36.450]Hello, my name is Madison Mendiola. I'm a senior at the University
- [00:16:40.470]of North Florida. I'm a double major in political science and philosophy.
- [00:16:45.010]So studying habeas corpus cases really made me interested in the
- [00:16:47.950]individual stories that happened behind these
- [00:16:50.310]cases, how these people got here, essentially,
- [00:16:53.230]why are they, what did they, what caused, happened, and why did they
- [00:16:58.090]think that they should be able to be free using a petition of habeas corpus.
- [00:17:01.430]And so I use a word that's a bit too light in this
- [00:17:03.950]context, I just want to say there was a lot of drama that was
- [00:17:06.410]happening in these cases. So one case that I happened that I looked at
- [00:17:10.650]very early on was this case of Ludwig, who was
- [00:17:14.150]arrested for grave robbery.
- [00:17:15.930]So my immediate question was, why do you want to
- [00:17:17.710]rob a grave? That seems odd. And so hypothesis one was,
- [00:17:21.930]okay, well, doctors at this time illegally get bodies to
- [00:17:25.690]study anatomy, so maybe that's why he was robbing a grave.
- [00:17:28.089]So I continue reading through his case, and, like, but he
- [00:17:30.690]sets the body on fire. And so I was like, okay, hypothesis
- [00:17:33.970]number two. So I looked at the newspapers, I find
- [00:17:36.770]out what's happening is Ludwig is helping his friend commit insurance fraud.
- [00:17:41.330]What they're doing is they take the dead body, they put it in the
- [00:17:43.610]friend's house, set the entire thing on fire.
- [00:17:46.870]And they're trying to say that, oh, he died,
- [00:17:49.290]I should get the life insurance. And so what
- [00:17:51.370]in this case, made me really realize was that there
- [00:17:54.010]was a lot going on, even behind the simplest things.
- [00:17:57.010]Like we tend to even look over these complex cases,
- [00:18:00.690]the history behind that, but even in this simple case
- [00:18:02.770]of grave robbery has such a history behind it,
- [00:18:05.590]what else is kind of lying beneath the surface here.
- [00:18:08.490]And so this turned into my larger project about license ordinance
- [00:18:12.230]laws, which sounds quite boring. And so that's like,
- [00:18:15.710]that's the immediate red flag, oh, something's boring,
- [00:18:17.970]maybe there's something here too.
- [00:18:20.050]And so, it might not seem that an important
- [00:18:24.330]question would be, well, why does the state suddenly say
- [00:18:27.010]that dentists need to have diplomas? That
- [00:18:28.750]seems almost straightforward. Okay, I would like my
- [00:18:31.030]dentist to have a diploma.
- [00:18:32.590]But there's a lot of these politics that's happening behind the
- [00:18:35.190]communities here, and behind why the state decided, okay, now we can
- [00:18:39.190]have this ordinance, or how these dentists who didn't have diploma kind
- [00:18:43.950]of counteracted to it and how they reacted to this new policy.
- [00:18:48.650]In those cases like that, there's also this case of the Lee Fong
- [00:18:52.190]that I talked about, which was a Chinese public laundry house ordinance.
- [00:18:56.510]And so that case may seem, well, we liked our public laundry houses to have
- [00:19:00.570]its own standard of safety, health regulations,
- [00:19:02.910]we don't want it catching up on fire.
- [00:19:04.670]But it turns out that this ordinance wasn't really about
- [00:19:07.090]health regulations at all. We actually find out by researching it,
- [00:19:10.930]that it was a part of these larger sets of ordinances that
- [00:19:14.070]were specifically targeting Chinese laborers as part of this
- [00:19:18.330]malicious action against Chinese immigrants and
- [00:19:21.230]Chinese residents within the Pacific Coast.
- [00:19:24.370]And that case itself was barely covered in the newspapers. That's a case
- [00:19:27.910]that I only would have found because we had the writ of habeas corpus towards it.
- [00:19:33.670]And so something I really want to highlight here that
- [00:19:35.530]I've learned at the Digital Legal Research Lab and doing these
- [00:19:38.550]cases is just the importance of curiosity and asking why, seeing
- [00:19:42.830]these cases and trying to figure out the people behind it,
- [00:19:45.490]and what motivated them to do the things that they did and what
- [00:19:49.670]motivated the legislators and the governments
- [00:19:52.490]to create the laws that they did.
- [00:19:55.290]Because it's these simple questions, the case of why did this guy decide
- [00:19:58.250]to rob a grave? Why are these dentists so angry at this ordinance?
- [00:20:02.150]Why are they saying that this act that was made for public
- [00:20:04.650]health is discriminatory? These questions that lead you
- [00:20:07.550]into these bigger phenomenon and these bigger social
- [00:20:10.330]histories behind all these cases.
- [00:20:13.350]Thank you.
- [00:20:16.160]Hello, everyone. I'm Zoë Williams. I'm a rising
- [00:20:19.040]sophomore at Howard University, where I study political science.
- [00:20:23.760]When I first entered this researchship, my understanding of how
- [00:20:27.200]marginalized people in legal history has greatly
- [00:20:30.220]expanded, which I was greatly unaware of the
- [00:20:32.520]role in that environment.
- [00:20:33.500]It was very, my knowledge was very limited to cases such as
- [00:20:37.220]Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Brown v. Board.
- [00:20:40.180]But since learning about freedom suits, how
- [00:20:42.740]Black mothers have to use habeas, how Native
- [00:20:44.720]mothers have to use habeas, Chinese immigrants
- [00:20:47.260]and their relationship with habeas, I can now
- [00:20:49.620]think of marginalized people's participation in the
- [00:20:53.300]legal system as one of the actions they can take to respond to racism or
- [00:20:58.760]harm or violence or sexism committed against them.
- [00:21:01.640]This is not only just a form of resistance against the systems of
- [00:21:05.700]oppression that they're under, but also demonstrates their
- [00:21:08.440]advocacy and their struggle for their justice, for
- [00:21:11.380]their rights, for their liberation.
- [00:21:13.320]And walking away from this, I also understand how to use legal history to
- [00:21:18.640]further identify the strategies used by marginalized
- [00:21:20.960]people to stand up against their oppressors.
- [00:21:25.660]And one of the most surprising things I came across, and something
- [00:21:29.260]that I had to learn as well, is that in some instances of the
- [00:21:32.220]cases that don't necessarily have any success or have
- [00:21:35.380]very small and minimal case files or have writs that are denied, they
- [00:21:39.560]are just worth as much as pursuing as larger
- [00:21:42.560]cases because they can also have very significant events
- [00:21:45.860]and history attached to them.
- [00:21:47.380]I had to learn that the history doesn't necessarily
- [00:21:50.860]exist only inside the habeas corpus petitions. The petitions
- [00:21:55.780]rather could just be used as a benchmark to find
- [00:22:00.080]resources to other significant events and identify important historical figures.
- [00:22:07.580]As I was working on my personal project, I did a
- [00:22:11.120]project in Seattle on a pickpocket order issued by the
- [00:22:14.460]chief of police, and I was looking at one of the
- [00:22:18.220]legal advocacy of African-American women at
- [00:22:20.680]that time and also community mobilization.
- [00:22:22.660]And I began to recognize how habeas corpus can be used to
- [00:22:26.000]fill in missing pieces of history, because while doing some
- [00:22:29.140]background research, there was already a book on the Black
- [00:22:32.520]community in Seattle in the 18th and 19th century, and they had a
- [00:22:37.140]very brief mention about the pickpocket order.
- [00:22:40.600]But without access to the habeas corpus petitions, one of
- [00:22:44.600]the victims could not have been identified. There
- [00:22:46.800]was minimal information on the barriers that the
- [00:22:49.080]Black women faced when going through, when facing the judge
- [00:22:52.620]and facing the justice of the peace.
- [00:22:54.780]But habeas, they provided that much in context, and
- [00:22:57.740]I think that's what research is all really about.
- [00:22:59.620]People embark on their personal research projects and they're
- [00:23:02.580]trying to provide a puzzle piece to a larger story.
- [00:23:04.560]And habeas has been so instrumental in helping
- [00:23:07.500]me fill in that missing information, so...
- [00:23:15.700]Hello everyone, my name is Veronica Sargbah. I am a rising sophomore here
- [00:23:20.740]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I'd
- [00:23:23.200]studied landscape architecture and minoring in history.
- [00:23:26.800]I feel like my work in the lab has given me the opportunity to
- [00:23:30.060]access live information that I wouldn't really get the
- [00:23:33.100]opportunity to even glance at in a basic civics class
- [00:23:36.820]or even an AP course.
- [00:23:39.460]And it also really pushed me to humanize a lot of history
- [00:23:44.000]and other things in these cases, because I feel like with an introduction
- [00:23:47.860]that we've had through our basic education system, it's kind of taught
- [00:23:51.260]us to see those just as kind of as figures in a textbook,
- [00:23:55.480]or kind of just basic documents that we need for a test. So it really
- [00:24:00.200]allowed me to humanize a lot of the things I was
- [00:24:02.380]reading and going through.
- [00:24:04.160]Through my research, I got to learn the many usages
- [00:24:07.080]of habeas. My main interaction with habeas was
- [00:24:10.160]through wrongful enslavement.
- [00:24:12.340]And this perspective kind of gave me, this allowed me to
- [00:24:16.140]have the perspective of how Black litigants interacted with the law system.
- [00:24:20.900]Many people believed that Black people didn't really interact with the law or
- [00:24:25.580]interact with the circuit courthouses until
- [00:24:29.400]after the Dred Scott decision in 1857.
- [00:24:32.520]But the cases that I got to transcribe and see over
- [00:24:35.840]provided that even before the Dred Scott decision and even before
- [00:24:40.720]the Emancipation Proclamation periods, Black
- [00:24:43.280]people were utilizing habeas and other types of law to test for
- [00:24:47.940]their freedom, and they were winning.
- [00:24:49.640]And it was kind of allowing them to, it was giving them
- [00:24:53.200]the voice that they were kind of taught not to have. And I
- [00:24:57.100]feel like that was something that was really big for me because I
- [00:25:00.280]didn't really know too much about habeas before I got to the lab.
- [00:25:04.680]So it really allowed me to be able to further amplify
- [00:25:07.200]voices that otherwise wouldn't have been heard as soon or at all.
- [00:25:14.770]Hello, my name is Isabella Ferrell. I'm going to be a rising junior
- [00:25:19.650]at West Virginia University and my major in international
- [00:25:23.190]studies in political science.
- [00:25:25.850]So, legal history, this changed the definition of what
- [00:25:28.830]I thought legal history was. I originally assumed it
- [00:25:31.310]was just laws and statutes. Things passed by Congress,
- [00:25:34.910]but it's actually a bunch of really compelling stories.
- [00:25:39.490]Stories that are certainly worth telling. For example, over the course
- [00:25:43.550]of the summer, I had the privilege of looking at the story
- [00:25:46.030]of Tom Burgliss. He was a Greek immigrant, and in 1960,
- [00:25:50.010]he traveled across state lines with Maria Campbell, an
- [00:25:52.710]19-year-old, or prostitute.
- [00:25:55.250]Authorities argued that he had traveled across state lines
- [00:26:02.250]and that she was still a prostitute, but the
- [00:26:04.510]pair argued that they had actually been married and
- [00:26:06.790]that Campbell had agreed to give that life up.
- [00:26:09.350]Burgliss was ultimately convicted, but he challenged
- [00:26:11.710]his conviction through habeas corpus. He argued that
- [00:26:14.590]he was denied his right to a fair trial, that Campbell
- [00:26:17.090]faced significant witness intimidation,
- [00:26:19.790]and that hearsay was allowed into testimony against him. It's also
- [00:26:26.210]worth noting that there were clear genephobic undertones to the trial.
- [00:26:31.030]Ultimately, the case was dismissed, his petition was
- [00:26:34.610]dismissed, but we don't know what happened to
- [00:26:38.490]Burgliss, but it's still a story that's worth
- [00:26:41.450]telling because it's emotional, it's personal, and it's complicated.
- [00:26:46.970]Otherwise, for habeas corpus in general, I think it's important to note
- [00:26:51.870]its versatility. It's so applicable in such a wide variety of cases.
- [00:26:56.110]The cases that I analyzed focused on the sexual policing of Italians
- [00:26:59.550]and Greeks in the early 20th century, and
- [00:27:01.810]in these cases alone, habeas was used for
- [00:27:03.730]so many different charges.
- [00:27:04.810]It was used to combat charges on prostitution, living
- [00:27:08.330]with someone you're not married to, working in a
- [00:27:10.890]brothel, trafficking, even marrying your cousin.
- [00:27:15.610]So, a lot of different sexual policing cases that it was applied in,
- [00:27:19.910]and also other cases beyond sexual policing that I encoded in the lab.
- [00:27:24.090]In one case, a man practicing medicine without a
- [00:27:28.290]license used habeas to argue that he was being
- [00:27:31.130]denied his right to property after authorities that he
- [00:27:34.070]couldn't practice anymore because he didn't have a license.
- [00:27:36.950]In a different case, Ike Samanski was imprisoned
- [00:27:41.190]because he didn't pay a fine that would have allowed him to sell jewelry, but he
- [00:27:45.870]argued that he had actually already paid the fine.
- [00:27:48.630]So, it's just, it's an applicability in so many
- [00:27:52.070]different circumstances, it's certainly worth
- [00:27:53.870]talking about. And the common denominator, even though these
- [00:27:57.030]cases are all so different, is that they're compelling stories
- [00:28:00.070]and they're stories worth telling.
- [00:28:10.110]Thank you all.
- [00:28:12.950]We'll have some time for questions, both from the
- [00:28:16.730]audience here in the room and also from those online.
- [00:28:20.950]So, if you're online and you have questions, please get
- [00:28:24.470]them ready and send them in on the chat, right?
- [00:28:27.270]Thank you.
- [00:28:28.370]Yeah. Okay.
- [00:28:30.150]Terrific. Well, thank you all. We really appreciate all the work
- [00:28:34.710]that you've done in the Digital Legal Research Lab this summer.
- [00:28:38.130]The Phenomenal Juneteenth webinar that you all hosted back in June, and all
- [00:28:44.470]of your presentations and your posters at the Research
- [00:28:47.570]Share, they've been fantastic.
- [00:28:49.990]And so, I want to hear a little bit more from all of you about
- [00:28:55.150]a couple of issues that to one degree or another you've brought
- [00:28:59.610]up in this conversation.
- [00:29:01.810]One, and I'm going to start with Chikamso, because you refer to
- [00:29:07.010]real people in real cases. And I'd like to hear more from as
- [00:29:14.030]many of you like to answer this, about how you handle the
- [00:29:18.390]realness of this history, the proximity of these stories to you, to ourselves.
- [00:29:28.570]And, and how this experience maybe made you think differently about the role
- [00:29:34.030]of the historian. We have one mic. Okay. Maybe you could lead off.
- [00:29:40.980]Thank you Dr. Thomas.
- [00:29:43.700]That is a great question. And that's something I think the lab did a
- [00:29:48.920]great job of teaching us about and instilling in us that role of historians.
- [00:29:55.680]Historians in cases like these need to be very, very
- [00:29:59.320]empathetic and very, very intentional in how they tell these stories.
- [00:30:04.100]They need to not just pass, you know, making sure the
- [00:30:07.520]language is appropriate and correct and conveys,
- [00:30:11.260]conveys the stories and histories of these people
- [00:30:14.240]in a respectful way.
- [00:30:15.660]But we also have to make sure storytelling is accurate. It's
- [00:30:20.380]full of the appropriate context and it's like my, you know, cohort
- [00:30:25.520]member to mention humanizes the stories that these
- [00:30:28.740]people are telling because at the end of the day, you know, these people aren't
- [00:30:33.920]alive, you know, they can't tell us what exactly they want us to say about them.
- [00:30:37.620]So we have to be very intentional in how we do that to make sure it's
- [00:30:41.020]in a way that does not perpetuate any more helpful ideas or
- [00:30:44.760]twist the truths of history.
- [00:30:47.560]And it's not the same.
- [00:30:50.060]Yeah.
- [00:30:59.060]Just to expand off of what Chikamso said.
- [00:31:05.380]But yes, it definitely gives like a very humanizing turn to it. One thing that
- [00:31:10.460]I would always have to do as I was going through each case that I read
- [00:31:14.280]was always have to take a little half, you know, just kind of learning as a
- [00:31:20.480]historian that of course like these stories can
- [00:31:23.180]be very compelling but they're also very graphic.
- [00:31:26.200]And you have to understand the boundary between your
- [00:31:30.100]own personal, like, you know, your own personal well being,
- [00:31:33.520]and also understanding that, yes, like it is essentially your job to be
- [00:31:39.020]able to convey the story in a palatable manner, but with not also
- [00:31:44.220]not putting yourself at detriment of it.
- [00:31:46.480]And I feel like with reading through many things
- [00:31:51.080]that these are most of the time we're the first
- [00:31:54.040]people to look at these cases. So it's going through
- [00:31:56.840]our filter onto the database, and so on so forth.
- [00:32:02.240]And I'm really glad because at the beginning of the 10 week
- [00:32:05.860]process, we had a lot of sessions where we
- [00:32:08.400]were reading articles and enabled us with the correct language
- [00:32:10.880]with articles that also taught us how to conduct ourselves as historians
- [00:32:16.040]and how to convey these stories properly.
- [00:32:19.180]So I feel like we're given a lot of material to
- [00:32:21.880]make sure we do these stories justice while also
- [00:32:25.320]doing ourselves justice.
- [00:32:41.660]I think one of the biggest lessons in that moment that I
- [00:32:45.020]learned is just understanding that you have your own
- [00:32:48.200]personal experiences and biases and stuff that are
- [00:32:53.860]not based on these stories.
- [00:32:58.440]My colleagues have mentioned that we have a responsibility
- [00:33:01.120]to tell this story. We also have the responsibility
- [00:33:03.960]to be as objective as possible while still being
- [00:33:10.240]true to the content and the emotionality of these stories.
- [00:33:13.520]So just making sure, is this what happened or is this
- [00:33:17.580]what I hope happened, you know, that distinction is obviously a lot
- [00:33:23.180]of these stories like people said are very heart wrenching very
- [00:33:27.420]difficult, lots of very horrible things happening to people, the real people.
- [00:33:34.440]So it's, there's a difference between well I hope that what happened was this
- [00:33:39.900]because I want these people involved in these stories to have
- [00:33:43.480]the best possible outcome.
- [00:33:45.140]But if I don't have concrete proof of that, making sure that
- [00:33:47.560]what I'm saying is true.
- [00:33:53.490]I have one more and then I'll open it up.
- [00:33:57.650]Almost all of you spoke about a different sense of the legal
- [00:34:04.150]history that came out of this experience for you about what lies beneath
- [00:34:11.010]the surface of any given case, the recasting rethinking of American legal
- [00:34:19.230]history and so I guess I want to hear some more reflection from
- [00:34:22.350]any of you who would like to speak to this about what
- [00:34:25.150]mythologies in American history.
- [00:34:28.889]Do you think, based on your research, or are or were
- [00:34:34.510]in your experience, call in question what what mythologies in American
- [00:34:38.370]history are are out there that are now in your mind
- [00:34:42.530]having gone through this problematic or need to be discussed further.
- [00:34:47.489]I think one thing that I've seen is sometimes people call into
- [00:34:56.360]question whether the petitioner which is essentially the
- [00:34:59.040]plaintiff, the usual petitions are the people bringing
- [00:35:02.480]these actions to the courts.
- [00:35:04.980]And I think something that we should realize is at the end of the day,
- [00:35:08.180]the petitioners have to go to the attorneys
- [00:35:09.900]and they have to take the first step forward.
- [00:35:14.400]Petitioners don't just get the case there, one by the
- [00:35:18.880]attorney, they have to have the action and they have
- [00:35:21.000]to be the individuals that have the power to do
- [00:35:25.800]it and I think going forward, I would hope that
- [00:35:28.460]American legal history challenges the sense that attorneys are the
- [00:35:31.880]ones driving these cases because there's a lot of instances
- [00:35:35.260]and not only the cases that I saw, but also
- [00:35:37.380]through freedom suits where individuals question this and I think it
- [00:35:41.520]through the numbers that we have seen as a cohort, we've seen
- [00:35:45.020]that that is not accurate, and that American legal history sometimes says
- [00:35:50.160]that, but we need to look, as other people have said, at
- [00:35:53.680]the lower courts, and to really understand what these
- [00:35:57.180]petitioners are doing
- [00:36:08.440]it's difficult to go up against these institutional barriers, but they do
- [00:36:13.940]it and they do it well and they do it for themselves.
- [00:36:23.530]Another thing would be is kind of the actors in your case, just
- [00:36:30.970]because they have a certain title doesn't mean that that's what they believe in.
- [00:36:35.150]I have, I've had like many lawyers and attorneys in my cases
- [00:36:40.770]who were defending the petitioner, who was, you know, saying like, oh, I
- [00:36:47.350]want my freedom and things of that nature and they were also
- [00:36:50.890]pro-slavery best people and for example, in my case, one of my respondents,
- [00:36:58.690]you know, who did the kidnapping and harmed
- [00:37:03.090]most of the people, if not all the people, and in my cases, he later went on
- [00:37:07.350]to represent Dred Scott in the Dred Scott decision.
- [00:37:10.310]He was one of his lawyers, and that puts into perspective on
- [00:37:13.210]how many people at that time, they were, not
- [00:37:17.670]everything they were doing kind of showed their true
- [00:37:21.610]morality or their true beliefs.
- [00:37:25.310]And like, I feel like a lot of it would be like as simple as
- [00:37:28.730]a, as a simple Google search, because like, there are like
- [00:37:31.610]some information that I found on like, Facebook groups and things
- [00:37:34.390]of that nature, but I feel like going through this whole
- [00:37:36.610]process, it's really taught me how you can't really associate somebody
- [00:37:40.190]with their actions, because you have no idea what's going on
- [00:37:43.470]behind closed doors, because everybody has their own bias, everybody has
- [00:37:47.270]their own personal things going on.
- [00:37:49.150]And it really put into perspective how a little murky and
- [00:37:54.290]muddy everything can kind of get because it's like, well, how could
- [00:37:58.050]you be doing this? And then right after that, you're, you're
- [00:38:01.930]defending somebody else for their freedom when you've taken away somebody else's.
- [00:38:13.520]Yes.
- [00:38:15.880]I don't feel like I can speak too much to Dr. Thomas's question of
- [00:38:20.560]like, for failing mythologies that might be about my, above my grade as a
- [00:38:24.380]historian, but at least about my assumptions before the program.
- [00:38:29.260]I think a common theme amongst all of us was
- [00:38:32.580]talking about Supreme Court decisions, who we're very familiar with.
- [00:38:37.480]But just the idea of law I always thought was
- [00:38:40.920]a very static thing, that it was written with a quill
- [00:38:45.900]like 200 years ago, and did go through much changes since
- [00:38:48.840]then. So studying it for me always seemed a little funny.
- [00:38:55.700]But I think one thing, especially since we've been
- [00:38:58.580]talking about the Supreme Court is that reading these
- [00:39:00.720]cases I realized that for every case that goes
- [00:39:02.780]through the Supreme Court there are 10,000 that don't.
- [00:39:06.140]And legal precedent is being decided amongst all levels of legal tradition.
- [00:39:13.480]And really just that, you know, it's kind of like a history from below where I feel
- [00:39:18.840]like we, I always thought of like a Supreme Court decision as
- [00:39:21.600]like a decision on the case but I never thought about how many
- [00:39:24.420]times it had to go through various boards to
- [00:39:26.580]actually get to the Supreme Court in the first
- [00:39:28.000]place, which I knew, but I somehow never connected.
- [00:39:32.460]But I think it just really reveals like how people really drive these
- [00:39:37.620]types of legal actions, as Miranda was saying previously, and how I always looked
- [00:39:42.800]at legal decisions as some things like the justices decided,
- [00:39:46.320]but really the action to even bring those appeals up is
- [00:39:49.300]something that's led by people and petitioners.
- [00:39:51.480]And I think looking at it from a person lens has really helped to,
- [00:39:56.000]as Chikamso said, humanize these different stories that we've
- [00:39:58.860]looked at and really think about how these legal decisions
- [00:40:01.020]and how these actors interact.
- [00:40:07.860]Adding on to that, I also want to mention, you know, back to the
- [00:40:12.680]question of mythologies surrounding the legal history. I think
- [00:40:16.100]something a lot of people don't realize, or I guess
- [00:40:19.400]something a lot of people assume about legal history
- [00:40:21.580]or legal practice is in, you know, earlier American history,
- [00:40:26.780]it seems, it seems I think was very, you
- [00:40:28.620]know, exclusive, you know, lawyers were these big shot people
- [00:40:32.200]and they brought these cases.
- [00:40:34.640]Like Miranda was saying, people who was the lawyers leading these cases
- [00:40:38.600]to courts and such, but it's really, really interesting
- [00:40:42.380]to learn through my work in the lab this summer
- [00:40:45.160]that a lot of the legal knowledge that was gained and people
- [00:40:48.460]practicing legal action was really community based.
- [00:40:51.680]And that's something that was very, very eye-opening, very, very
- [00:40:54.840]interesting to know that the history of legal knowledge, like gaining
- [00:41:00.260]legal knowledge was a heavily oral tradition in the early
- [00:41:03.780]American history, which is something a lot of people don't realize.
- [00:41:06.280]And that was really, I really reflected on how, like Miranda again
- [00:41:10.420]was mentioning, it was a people driven effort and it was a people
- [00:41:14.380]driven effort. And above all, you know, ways of
- [00:41:17.540]all misconceptions, misconceptions people may have had, these
- [00:41:21.040]marginalized groups, they knew what they were doing, you
- [00:41:23.540]know, they made a way when the way needed to be made and they came out on top.
- [00:41:28.820]And I don't know they were winning these cases, they
- [00:41:30.420]were winning their freedoms and it was really beautiful to see
- [00:41:33.260]and to learn all these other things.
- [00:41:36.940]And well, okay, let's turn to some questions from
- [00:41:39.880]the audience. I have more questions, but we'll turn
- [00:41:42.660]to some questions from the audience and in the
- [00:41:44.960]room and then online, let's go in the room first.
- [00:41:48.840]Any one in particular for the group as a whole.
- [00:41:53.160]I guess this is kind of a broad question, but did you notice
- [00:42:01.400]that certain kinds of petitioners were more successful in
- [00:42:08.080]these cases than others?
- [00:42:12.570]Were certain kinds of petitioners more successful than others in your research?
- [00:42:18.470]Who wants to speak to that?
- [00:42:22.090]Yeah.
- [00:42:23.770]Well, my research was mostly focusing on underage military enlistees and
- [00:42:30.370]in a majority of those cases that were filed, it was, well,
- [00:42:33.950]the category itself was already successful around 80%.
- [00:42:37.470]All those petitions that were submitted were more
- [00:42:41.610]successful. The underage enlistee was discharged from service.
- [00:42:49.790]And in a lot of those cases, it was parents or
- [00:42:53.430]family members who were petitioned on behalf of the violent parties.
- [00:42:59.710]So, I was in for my personal research experience.
- [00:43:03.830]Parents petitioning for their children in that kind of
- [00:43:08.250]environment was extremely successful.
- [00:43:10.950]Yeah, Zoë.
- [00:43:15.550]I don't know if I can say I know that some
- [00:43:18.130]pieces were more successful by the instance of knowing when some
- [00:43:22.170]petitioners having been denied their success because of
- [00:43:25.910]being a certain demographic or identity type
- [00:43:29.370]of angle because in my personal project, I was working on an 1899 Seattle police
- [00:43:35.670]order where the chief of police in Seattle,
- [00:43:37.530]he issued an order saying to his patrolmen to arrest all Black women
- [00:43:41.730]suspected of being a pickpocket and of all the Black women that were arrested,
- [00:43:47.710]I know for sure that three of them filed a petition to the judge and
- [00:43:53.110]all three of their writs were denied.
- [00:43:55.390]And this was extremely anomaly because the judge at the time, Judge Warren Jacobs,
- [00:44:00.770]he had around, we have around 30 cases or so of him in the database.
- [00:44:07.110]And 70% of the writs that come before him he allowed and only four
- [00:44:11.070]writs he has ever denied, and for the writs he
- [00:44:13.310]denied, three of the writs were the Black women
- [00:44:16.050]arrested on the pickpocket order.
- [00:44:17.510]So that just kind of shows to like that certain people
- [00:44:22.570]were not given the same consideration when
- [00:44:24.670]going above judges or about going up to justice of the peace so.
- [00:44:32.210]Yeah, that was a little bit about
- [00:44:33.830]the barriers that Black litigants were facing.
- [00:44:39.190]Yeah, just to kind of add on to what Zoë was saying, which does
- [00:44:43.390]kind of get away from your question a bit, to provide
- [00:44:45.990]a bit of context. It's definitely hard to tell when someone
- [00:44:50.030]would be successful or not.
- [00:44:51.710]Like I'm kind of reading through the case and I'm
- [00:44:53.430]like this argument is clearly bad. This guy has clearly
- [00:44:57.490]done the crime he's in jail for and they're like
- [00:45:00.510]okay yeah I'm going to hear your writ, and I'm like, huh.
- [00:45:02.830]And it's like there's someone that's like, okay, this is clearly
- [00:45:05.470]a bad law, and they're like, no writ, and I'm like, huh.
- [00:45:09.170]So it's very arbitrary in a way that becomes infuriating and
- [00:45:13.730]as Veronica was talking about that's when you
- [00:45:15.710]want to separate yourself, you're like, okay, case
- [00:45:18.330]is there. I'm here.
- [00:45:19.750]No need to think about this too much. So, yeah,
- [00:45:23.550]I definitely want to just kind of add that context there.
- [00:45:28.630]One more.
- [00:45:30.110]One helpful thing too is that when the database does go live
- [00:45:36.650]for the general public, there are filters on there that let you look
- [00:45:40.690]at demographics and rates of success with that too.
- [00:45:44.130]So even though we might not know the exact statistic
- [00:45:46.310]on the top of our head, that will be available.
- [00:45:48.430]Yes.
- [00:45:50.970]Right.
- [00:45:52.750]Look, and then we'll go to online.
- [00:45:58.350]Hi, I'm really interested in what you said about
- [00:46:03.330]occupational licensure and I was wondering if you could expand
- [00:46:06.070]a bit on what the connection is to habeas corpus
- [00:46:08.510]there and kind of what you saw in your research.
- [00:46:10.690]I agree.
- [00:46:13.830]So, occupational licensing really happened
- [00:46:20.720]during the Progressive Era, especially at the beginning
- [00:46:22.800]when we're looking at like, when it was mostly within the local government
- [00:46:26.860]so your city ordinances.
- [00:46:29.020]So what's happening here is, at least on the medical side of things, there was
- [00:46:33.100]the rise of science and medicine, those two
- [00:46:36.020]things used to be seen as quite separate.
- [00:46:38.360]So it was during this time of like germ theory you know
- [00:46:40.480]it's like actually science should be tied to
- [00:46:42.240]medicine, people who want to practice medicine or
- [00:46:44.760]like dentistry should be licensed.
- [00:46:47.440]And so, we're going to start creating those occupational licenses
- [00:46:51.140]that's happened there. And then with the case of like Lee
- [00:46:54.100]Fong, it kind of uses a similar rhetoric of using that
- [00:46:57.000]health licensing, oh, we care about the health of our public.
- [00:46:59.960]At this time, Washington had also had many fires
- [00:47:02.860]still kind of using that type of feel like we
- [00:47:05.760]have to make sure you're building safe so doesn't catch
- [00:47:07.420]on fire on the whole city go into flame again.
- [00:47:10.440]So what's happening. So that's kind of the background, and those things can then
- [00:47:14.240]be used maliciously, as seen in Lee Phong's case. So how
- [00:47:17.460]that ties in the habeas corpus is the way I kind of view it,
- [00:47:21.560]especially when it came to like the dentists was at one
- [00:47:25.020]point they were practicing.
- [00:47:26.940]Like some of these people have been in the trade for decades without
- [00:47:30.260]a diploma, and they've been fine. And then suddenly
- [00:47:32.480]the city puts their foot in and it's like
- [00:47:34.680]you can't practice this anymore.
- [00:47:36.460]And so, at that end, which is like, I'm kind of separated from
- [00:47:40.400]saying like, Oh my gosh, he's such a victim of this license that he
- [00:47:45.540]didn't have a diploma, right, but that he did
- [00:47:47.900]at least have justification of feeling quite wronged in
- [00:47:50.980]that instance, right, because he was, that's how he
- [00:47:54.400]was making his money, it would have been a lot of work to then
- [00:47:56.760]go back into a diploma.
- [00:47:59.600]And so, in that instance, it's really shows out because of
- [00:48:03.400]these new policies coming in and being enforced, and when people
- [00:48:06.640]get arrested for it, they file a writ of habeas corpus because they're basically
- [00:48:10.120]just trying to continue living the life, as in going through the profession.
- [00:48:14.240]Thank you.
- [00:48:20.350]Okay.
- [00:48:21.490]One from the queue online.
- [00:48:23.450]Do you want to read it, Kaci?
- [00:48:27.650]Okay.
- [00:48:29.310]Okay.
- [00:48:30.250]From my colleague Jess Shoemaker in the College of Law. Okay, we've
- [00:48:34.670]all met earlier. I really appreciate the comments about
- [00:48:37.430]humanizing both ligaments and attorneys in the legal process,
- [00:48:41.190]as well as expanding the range of legal decisions that are included
- [00:48:45.510]in our understanding of the law.
- [00:48:48.690]I'm curious if anyone has broader thoughts on what we can
- [00:48:53.130]learn about the role of the state, more broadly, from these decisions.
- [00:48:58.090]Both as initial incarcerating force at times, like
- [00:49:02.250]I think random is just referring to in terms
- [00:49:04.430]of licensure laws, right, and incarcerating, arresting people for,
- [00:49:09.310]for violating those even though they practiced for decades.
- [00:49:14.170]And as emancipatory potential, the habeas court, for example, are the
- [00:49:18.410]lives and experiences of judges as the actors who bring the
- [00:49:21.830]law to life and actually enforce them, enforce it relevant to
- [00:49:26.370]these stories or the histories of judges, experiences
- [00:49:30.150]of judges, relevant.
- [00:49:40.730]I'll try to be brief so others can talk. I know with, like, my cases, they were all under one judge, which
- [00:49:46.590]is Judge Hanford. And the thing about Judge Hanford is he would
- [00:49:51.050]have an impeachment trial, and during the case of the dentist, it
- [00:49:53.830]would be revealed that he was drunk while listening to the case.
- [00:49:56.490]And it does make you wonder if, like, maybe he was in an
- [00:49:59.250]especially grumpy mood at the time. Maybe that's why he was less lenient.
- [00:50:03.970]And so, as someone who's also interested in judicial politics, I
- [00:50:07.990]find the questions of how the judges and
- [00:50:10.510]the social background and also the ideological backgrounds
- [00:50:13.890]play into the cases.
- [00:50:15.950]I want to say it is almost a bit difficult to tell, especially in
- [00:50:20.970]these cases, just because a lot of writs of habeas
- [00:50:23.690]corpus are touching on these huge ideological questions, but also
- [00:50:29.390]a lot of them aren't.
- [00:50:30.810]And so some of my research is kind of deciding, is looking
- [00:50:33.110]at the background because, like I said, some of
- [00:50:35.270]these laws that seem innocuous weren't, and some of
- [00:50:37.870]these laws were very pointed.
- [00:50:39.510]So I would say, from my research, I can only speak
- [00:50:42.450]about Judge Hanford here, he was a complex man who is
- [00:50:46.930]some of the background of him, like maybe being drunk
- [00:50:50.290]while listening to the case could have impacted the case.
- [00:50:53.090]But I would really, I'm quite cautious about trying to
- [00:50:58.030]make those connections without really getting more past these habeas cases.
- [00:51:11.770]Yeah, so, all right, last thing on this question.
- [00:51:16.110]In terms of, you know, the state's role in these cases, and
- [00:51:20.530]specifically surrounding my project, the states had a very heavy hand in
- [00:51:24.050]it, they have a lot to do with it.
- [00:51:25.850]Not only in, you know, as the force that detained these
- [00:51:31.050]people, these pictures, but also as the force that kind of set
- [00:51:36.790]up a context in which they weren't able to be, you know,
- [00:51:40.070]detained so specifically with my project that surrounded the 1917 Immigration Act.
- [00:51:45.570]It is one that has a lot of political history
- [00:51:49.270]behind it, and how it was applied. It was applied
- [00:51:53.450]generally in like, you know, racial contexts as being discriminatory
- [00:51:57.650]towards Asian migrants, but also politically, you know,
- [00:52:01.510]discriminatory, attractive challenge.
- [00:52:03.790]Communist or anarchist ideas in organizations. And so that's something
- [00:52:08.550]that popped up a lot and the connection that came about
- [00:52:11.210]is that there was a lot of state sponsored, political, and
- [00:52:17.530]otherwise, you know, interconnected play between the legal field and state
- [00:52:25.910]application of these cases. And it's really, really interesting to
- [00:52:29.750]see that come up during my research, and it was just
- [00:52:33.370]kind of like puzzle pieces and clicking in, because this person
- [00:52:36.450]doing this and that person doing that and it's all connected.
- [00:52:39.130]So, you know, some of these cases that I looked at, the petitioners were
- [00:52:42.790]all under the same attorney.
- [00:52:44.770]They were all seen by the same judge because
- [00:52:47.210]a lot of people came out of the same, you know, district court. And
- [00:52:50.170]so there was always an interconnectedness between
- [00:52:53.590]the state, between judges that obviously, you know,
- [00:52:57.790]as humans, people have their own biases that whether
- [00:53:01.310]or not they were applied to the cases that they
- [00:53:02.850]saw, it's, you know, the question, but that's something
- [00:53:06.010]that really didn't show up a lot in this research.
- [00:53:08.830]So, actually, hang on to the mic, because one of our questions here is about
- [00:53:15.010]immigration and your, your project was, of all of them, the most focused on it.
- [00:53:21.190]And so the question is about experiencing,
- [00:53:23.610]we've experienced multiple changes in the legal climate
- [00:53:25.930]as it relates to immigration.
- [00:53:28.870]This person is wondering if anybody on the panel noticed
- [00:53:31.590]any parallels between the legal history, the
- [00:53:36.250]legal outcomes that you're studying, and what
- [00:53:39.570]we've seen recently today.
- [00:53:43.650]So, in terms of outcomes for the cases that I oversaw or,
- [00:53:48.310]you know, look that there was a lot ended in deportation, the majority,
- [00:53:52.990]which was unfortunate, but the majority ended in deportation, in terms of
- [00:53:57.130]these cases, and it was just that kind of
- [00:53:59.910]hostility overall towards immigrants.
- [00:54:02.410]Not only the Asian immigrants that were exclusively denied
- [00:54:07.670]entry based on that ass language, but also that political
- [00:54:12.670]aspect that I was talking about again.
- [00:54:15.570]And, you know, it's very interesting to see throughout the
- [00:54:19.810]history of immigration and immigration legislation in
- [00:54:23.250]America, how there's always kind of been that tension and hostility.
- [00:54:27.290]And the only thing that really changes over
- [00:54:29.590]the years is who it's directed towards, you
- [00:54:31.590]know, so in early American history, it was a lot about Asian
- [00:54:35.970]American, Asian immigrants, Chinese, Japanese, specifically, you know,
- [00:54:41.890]we move towards different European migrants that are,
- [00:54:44.810]you know, more shim like Irish or Italians
- [00:54:48.190]and Southern Europeans and we have questions that
- [00:54:51.770]the tension is against.
- [00:54:53.250]And so there's always a different, you know, major group and you
- [00:54:56.450]know today we have Hispanic immigrants or Middle Eastern immigrants that are
- [00:55:00.970]more shunned and restricted and so that's something that is kind of
- [00:55:05.270]constant, is that level of restriction is that level
- [00:55:07.870]of pushback against immigration.
- [00:55:10.430]And it's really just who it's aimed towards is what I see as constant.
- [00:55:16.150]That answers the question.
- [00:55:18.990]Yeah.
- [00:55:19.170]Another question from the audience. Yes. Yes.
- [00:55:26.670]I feel like I can project but
- [00:55:27.850]it's so awesome every year to see all the work that students do in this
- [00:55:33.830]lab. My name is Kali Patterson. I'm the Project Coordinator with
- [00:55:37.470]the UCARE Office.
- [00:55:38.890]And so it's always so meaningful to see the work
- [00:55:41.110]that you do how it impacts you and just also like
- [00:55:43.910]see everyone at the end of program kind of go back
- [00:55:47.190]to their home states and universities and share that out so
- [00:55:50.390]I guess my question is kind of two parts, thinking about community
- [00:55:54.930]and thinking about really how
- [00:55:56.710]much and how important it is that all of you have really been some
- [00:56:00.190]of the first people to kind of look at these cases in a while.
- [00:56:03.690]I'm curious about your plans or even whether they're like
- [00:56:06.970]set in stone or whether it's like I would love
- [00:56:08.970]to do this, like what you plan on doing to kind of disseminate and share
- [00:56:12.870]some of the things you've learned
- [00:56:14.290]with maybe, you know, we think about our academic community like
- [00:56:18.430]yesterday's poster session, but if there's any other ways that you're interested
- [00:56:21.610]in working on kind of sharing that information. And secondly, as
- [00:56:27.110]a program coordinator, it's important to me to kind of think
- [00:56:30.150]about ways to bring folks with our students
- [00:56:33.290]to kind of learn about the work that you're doing. And
- [00:56:35.950]so if there is someone who, whether it is like policymakers or
- [00:56:40.250]organizers of the community, like who else outside of our academic community,
- [00:56:45.150]do you think needs to kind of hear or know this information.
- [00:56:49.490]So two parts.
- [00:56:52.910]Yeah.
- [00:56:53.790]I know for me, as soon as I get back to Texas, my
- [00:57:00.590]dear home state, that has been a running joke on the last two years.
- [00:57:06.110]I'm very excited to go home, but as soon as
- [00:57:09.350]I get back to my home institution, Texas
- [00:57:11.310]A&M-Corpus Christi, I'm already planning on meeting
- [00:57:13.830]with some of my professors to discuss everything I've done
- [00:57:17.510]here in the last 10 weeks.
- [00:57:18.570]And I'm very excited because from what I understood, they didn't
- [00:57:22.490]know too much about you to be at Corpus Christi there.
- [00:57:24.610]So I'm really excited to go to their office as soon
- [00:57:27.370]as I get home and, you know, have those conversations with them.
- [00:57:30.390]And maybe show them something that they don't know that I have had the privilege
- [00:57:34.390]to learn in response to community members that I think should know more about this.
- [00:57:39.850]I think marginalized groups, a lot of the times we don't see
- [00:57:44.790]ourselves portrayed in American history and it's really crucial
- [00:57:49.010]to see ourselves in spaces that we don't
- [00:57:52.610]traditionally think about ourselves in.
- [00:57:54.550]I know for me, I think I talked briefly about how,
- [00:57:57.310]to me, the American legal history was predominantly males. And as
- [00:58:02.630]a Latina woman, it was really inspiring to see women of
- [00:58:06.290]all ethnic groups be there in those spaces and advocate for themselves.
- [00:58:11.070]And I think going forward, just writing this
- [00:58:13.090]information with individuals in the same spot as
- [00:58:16.370]me would be really influential for them to feel that there's a
- [00:58:19.690]history of looking behind them.
- [00:58:21.510]That's actually something Dr. Laura Muñoz told me
- [00:58:24.090]from UNL that there is so many people that have come behind before
- [00:58:28.490]you that maybe they aren't highlighted in American
- [00:58:30.530]history, but they were there.
- [00:58:32.110]And I think that's really important, especially as people go into
- [00:58:35.190]spaces where they traditionally don't think
- [00:58:37.070]they are, but they have been. And it's important for them to
- [00:58:39.750]know that because that leads the world to individuals who think that
- [00:58:44.190]those spaces aren't there for them.
- [00:58:51.380]For me, firstly, I'd like to make a unique position coming from what
- [00:58:55.020]we should come to because we both come from historically
- [00:58:57.060]Black colleges and universities.
- [00:58:59.340]And there is this hole in history that I feel like a lot of students at my
- [00:59:02.680]university, I want to be aware of Black people
- [00:59:04.860]having, you know, just like a lot of representation.
- [00:59:11.520]And I would love to share more of this information with my professors.
- [00:59:15.300]And it's like when I have the opportunity in
- [00:59:17.360]my classes or in other instances when I have a
- [00:59:20.260]chance to do a personal project or an education
- [00:59:23.280]that's about something, I'm maybe more impressed towards looking in
- [00:59:26.920]again to the level of history that Black people,
- [00:59:28.760]because I generally just want more people to know more
- [00:59:31.760]about Black people's space because
- [00:59:34.880]I just feel like that's a large reason why a lot of people go
- [00:59:38.020]to HBCUs in general because they know their stories are going to be valued here.
- [00:59:41.720]And so I know that the stories of Black people don't get
- [00:59:43.960]to be so greatly appreciated if it's more like
- [00:59:47.000]generally promoted at HBCUs.
- [00:59:49.560]So I don't know, I feel like maybe like five years to ten
- [00:59:52.100]years out and I don't know how long it takes to make a class.
- [00:59:54.200]That's a good question.
- [00:59:59.060]I generally hope that in the future that more HBCUs can have
- [01:00:03.840]just great problems around Black people and legal
- [01:00:06.120]history because I think it's so empowering for
- [01:00:08.160]Black students to know that.
- [01:00:12.980]Well, when I get back to my own institution next week, which I
- [01:00:18.360]moved back on campus, I honestly, okay, so I'm
- [01:00:23.600]a landscape architecture major.
- [01:00:25.180]So a lot of people are really confused on what I've
- [01:00:28.220]been doing all summer.
- [01:00:29.780]So that's kind of like my plan, like, oh, we should be
- [01:00:31.640]doing something else somewhere else.
- [01:00:32.680]But I feel like it's just stuff that I use to expand my
- [01:00:38.700]knowledge because I feel like even if you're not
- [01:00:41.160]in this specific field, these are things that I feel
- [01:00:44.040]like we deserve to know.
- [01:00:46.180]And I feel like these really, in a sense, kind of shape
- [01:00:48.900]our perspective on American history.
- [01:00:51.160]Because like I said, basic civics classes only provide
- [01:00:54.380]very vague information.
- [01:00:57.100]And even going into your second question, Kali, it's kind of like the people who
- [01:01:01.500]should be here are people who are teaching history to the
- [01:01:05.080]next generation of students.
- [01:01:06.660]So we know these cases and things of that nature that
- [01:01:11.240]involve regular people and don't kind of involve too many monumental things.
- [01:01:17.080]We're in the era where everybody fangirls over Hamilton all the time.
- [01:01:21.320]Yeah, like kind of infancilizing history and stuff like that.
- [01:01:25.380]And I feel like people don't really understand
- [01:01:27.340]how real and raw all these cases are.
- [01:01:30.660]And I feel like having the database kind of as a resource for future
- [01:01:34.240]history teachers and other teachers in any type of field to
- [01:01:38.240]utilize is really important.
- [01:01:40.000]And I feel like it's also important to other
- [01:01:42.260]disciplines, because you have to know the history of
- [01:01:45.260]the area that you're working in before you can do anything because we
- [01:01:49.820]are in a very political time where many things go into several
- [01:01:54.220]like contextual actions that you can be.
- [01:01:57.020]So I definitely feel like, like Zoë said, I
- [01:01:59.940]I don't know how long it takes to make a curriculum, but chop chop.
- [01:02:12.770]Anybody else on this?
- [01:02:16.900]One or two more questions.
- [01:02:20.440]Yes, Colton.
- [01:02:26.750]So for the past several weeks you have been working in
- [01:02:31.130]a variety of different programs like learning XML,
- [01:02:35.350]working on the O Say Can You See project, working on the
- [01:02:38.510]Petitioning for Freedom project.
- [01:02:40.570]And I'm sure I would hope you guys have learned quite a few skills
- [01:02:44.290]and abilities along the way.
- [01:02:48.330]And I was just wondering, is there anything that
- [01:02:52.630]you feel like you've learned like skill wise or working
- [01:02:55.070]with the program wise that you feel like will
- [01:02:56.570]be of great use once you guys graduate from undergrad.
- [01:03:00.670]And if anything that you've learned here has like helped either change
- [01:03:05.430]or like solidify what you want to do after you guys graduate.
- [01:03:09.670]What comes next?
- [01:03:17.430]Definitely, like how to be a case file and like,
- [01:03:21.350]you know, shift through all the legal jargon because I do
- [01:03:24.410]want to go to law school and I think like, that
- [01:03:26.810]is something that's like really transparent so I would say that.
- [01:03:32.230]I want to say why it's one of my interests is in 19th century history.
- [01:03:37.310]So, you know, practice reading 19th century person's long hand
- [01:03:40.950]is a useful skill, hopefully, you know, like in grad
- [01:03:47.730]school and for further research.
- [01:03:54.940]He won the theme of writing, reading. I think something really important
- [01:04:00.600]that this experience really bolstered is skills in writing,
- [01:04:05.600]editing, editing my own work, editing others works, we do a lot of that.
- [01:04:09.500]There's a lot of writing. Thank you.
- [01:04:12.440]And it was really great to see kind of build up
- [01:04:17.800]skills in editing your own work, getting rid of that passive voice.
- [01:04:22.900]And some that will be really helpful in me helping others,
- [01:04:26.740]you know, because I'm writing to my home institution so that kind
- [01:04:28.860]of work is really important for me to be able to learn
- [01:04:31.460]to myself so I can help, you know, guide others with that.
- [01:04:34.060]So that's something that's really important. And as well as Rashawna
- [01:04:37.060]mentioned, you know, that legal field sphere, it's more to read
- [01:04:41.100]this legal information and kind of cut through all the jargon
- [01:04:44.460]and get the facts of the case and get the story happening.
- [01:04:48.660]And that will be really important skill to have in law school
- [01:04:51.820]and which I also like to go into. So yeah, really good information.
- [01:04:55.860]Yeah.
- [01:04:56.580]Okay, sorry.
- [01:05:00.820]This program is kind of surprising I didn't
- [01:05:04.220]expect it but gave me a better look into how to network and how to make
- [01:05:10.400]connections with people in fields that I'm interested
- [01:05:12.240]in and find those little connections of things
- [01:05:16.680]that I really like, and people who can help me reach those goals and people who
- [01:05:21.420]we can mutually benefit from each other's work.
- [01:05:24.640]Is it that one?
- [01:05:26.440]Oh, okay.
- [01:05:31.240]I think one of the biggest skills that I took away from this was
- [01:05:37.200]empathy, which is important. It's not a technical skill but it's
- [01:05:41.280]certainly an interpersonal one.
- [01:05:43.800]Because for me, after this, I'll go back and
- [01:05:46.400]I'll volunteer at my college's law clinic, and actually, there's
- [01:05:51.080]an innocence project there, and many of the calls
- [01:05:53.660]that we get have to do with his corpus petitions.
- [01:05:56.520]So, I think being able to actually translate the
- [01:05:59.680]knowledge of the legal process that I learned from reading
- [01:06:02.320]the case, I'll actually have a better understanding of what
- [01:06:05.980]they're going through and I'd better feel calls that way.
- [01:06:17.840]And then, any other next steps or things that you're
- [01:06:21.800]thinking about after this.
- [01:06:26.020]I just want to add. Yeah.
- [01:06:32.180]So, this is like my first research experience.
- [01:06:38.080]And they always say like, you want to go to grad school,
- [01:06:40.980]you should get a research experience to know that if you're going to
- [01:06:43.620]actually like it. And I won't name names, but I know some people
- [01:06:46.760]who like maybe I don't want to go to grad school after this.
- [01:06:50.440]For me, I think I'm kind of the opposite. I was like,
- [01:06:52.320]Hey, this is really enjoyable.
- [01:06:54.660]I'm sure it's going to be a lot more stressful.
- [01:06:56.220]I'm sure you can tell me that that is a grad student, but I really
- [01:07:00.900]enjoyed it and I want to do more stuff like this in the future. Thank you.
- [01:07:05.920]We'll do one more from our guests online.
- [01:07:21.240]And this question starts with something that Chikamso mentioned.
- [01:07:25.640]So Chikamso mentioned how the law was very community based
- [01:07:29.360]and less the latest than we thought.
- [01:07:34.320]Do you all believe that this tradition has been carried over into modern law as well?
- [01:07:39.760]In other words, how do you compare what you see or know
- [01:07:43.580]about our current legal landscape with the past landscape that you studied?
- [01:07:50.700]And you all touched on this in one degree or another, but I
- [01:07:53.140]think just a sharper point.
- [01:08:04.480]I feel like the way that the community aspect of like the sharing
- [01:08:10.420]of the legal system from the era that we're researching
- [01:08:14.520]and compared to now.
- [01:08:16.859]Right now, we're really in a major social media era
- [01:08:20.120]and I feel like the community has transferred onto there.
- [01:08:25.319]Even through the times now, we're about to go
- [01:08:27.439]into presidential election and I feel like a lot of
- [01:08:31.040]people are using social media as a way to share information that people otherwise
- [01:08:35.060]wouldn't be able to get.
- [01:08:36.920]And stuff like that with different projects like the impact
- [01:08:39.779]project and things of that nature kind of shared basic
- [01:08:42.220]information that people need to know before they go to
- [01:08:44.920]the polls, before they go locally and things of that nature.
- [01:08:50.800]And even kind of telling college students how to vote from
- [01:08:53.960]your college town if you do go to school out of state.
- [01:08:56.979]And I feel like with those two transferring things, of course,
- [01:09:00.899]like with the way the legal system went back then was more
- [01:09:03.319]like a word of mouth type of thing.
- [01:09:04.920]Like, oh, this person used this, let's go talk to them and stuff
- [01:09:08.359]of that nature. It's more so like we're kind
- [01:09:11.380]of sharing within ourselves through media, whether that's posting on
- [01:09:14.859]our stories or whether that's you showing the post to somebody and explaining to
- [01:09:18.740]them and kind of figuring out together.
- [01:09:20.439]As I feel like with everything being such like a Google search away,
- [01:09:23.859]it's so easy to be, it's easy to drown certain things out, but I
- [01:09:28.200]feel like specifically with me and my friends, we've kind of found a way
- [01:09:33.399]to utilize social media to educate each other, and then educate a broader skin.
- [01:09:49.000]Okay, I'm going to ask you a question, just to sort of grab things up here.
- [01:09:55.040]Ethan mentioned the word riveting, reading these cases
- [01:09:59.720]and finding riveting, just reading them was riveting.
- [01:10:03.500]And I want to ask each of you to reflect on
- [01:10:06.080]or tell us something that was just absolutely riveting. It's like you,
- [01:10:12.040]you've been thinking about this for 10 weeks, or four weeks, or
- [01:10:16.120]what is it, what is it that tripped that wire for you.
- [01:10:21.080]So while you're thinking about it, Roshawnna's gonna lead.
- [01:10:25.000]Hello, like I mentioned before, my primary focus on
- [01:10:29.800]my cases was Black women. So one of the cases that found really
- [01:10:33.660]interesting and very riveting that really resonated with me
- [01:10:37.100]was the case of Millie.
- [01:10:39.180]She was a Black mom and she took a shit for her freedom
- [01:10:42.540]with her two children, Eliza and Bob, that were six years old at the
- [01:10:46.340]time, and her writ was granted and she was released from the custody of
- [01:10:50.560]Mattias Rose, which was her enslaver, and she was granted the sum of $500.
- [01:10:56.040]And I was just like taking them back, I was like, oh my
- [01:10:58.480]gosh, wow, like, that's such a substantial compensation at
- [01:11:02.420]the time and it's a subtle nod to just being
- [01:11:08.140]able to overcome such an institutional barrier
- [01:11:11.900]at the time as a Black woman in such
- [01:11:14.180]a racially charged environment.
- [01:11:16.360]And so I just, I was like, very riveting. That was like
- [01:11:19.520]a really strong case that I loved and it covered in my research.
- [01:11:23.560]You go, right? Yeah, that's about it.
- [01:11:26.500]You go and then everyone else can think about it.
- [01:11:30.180]One case that stuck with me was, I forget what
- [01:11:33.940]year, I think it was late 1890s, there was a
- [01:11:38.120]saloon brawl in which about like 50 people had spilled
- [01:11:41.840]out onto the street and were making a ruckus apparently.
- [01:11:45.580]And there was a constable that went out to kind
- [01:11:48.340]of stop the fight, I suppose, and two gentlemen named Matt
- [01:11:53.400]Purrier and G.L. Jeffrey told the constable that he had no
- [01:11:57.520]business involving himself in the brawl, and eventually
- [01:12:00.280]they started brawling.
- [01:12:01.940]And Matt Purrier apparently like pulled out a gun and
- [01:12:06.620]G.L. Jeffrey bit a cop's hand, and I was very shocked.
- [01:12:11.460]One thing about the newspapers is that, especially seeing all the old photos
- [01:12:15.060]of presidency, pink history is very professional,
- [01:12:17.980]like, boys, and it's kind of messy.
- [01:12:21.900]But they enlisted the help and the legal representation of
- [01:12:27.360]Alan Gardner, who was a prominent Black attorney
- [01:12:30.740]in their community.
- [01:12:32.920]And eventually they got off on fines after they petitioned for rid
- [01:12:36.340]of habeas corpus, which I found really impressive because
- [01:12:38.560]their charges were assault and mayhem, which is
- [01:12:41.820]not something I heard before.
- [01:12:43.460]So I think when I said riveting, that was probably what I
- [01:12:45.540]was kind of conceptualizing that.
- [01:12:48.460]Who else wants to go? Thank you.
- [01:12:53.260]One of my most interesting cases, I think, for a variety
- [01:12:56.840]of reasons, was the case of a man named Sonny Lahey.
- [01:13:00.900]And he was from the greater district in Muscogee Nation, and he
- [01:13:04.980]was accused of murdering someone on an Indian territory on Indian land.
- [01:13:11.640]So it was very interesting that the state was then trying him
- [01:13:16.880]and holding him because traditionally that is either
- [01:13:19.860]done in the jurisdiction of the tribes themselves
- [01:13:22.800]or in federal jurisdiction.
- [01:13:24.880]What was increasingly more interesting about him is
- [01:13:28.280]this case was brought by his Indigenous wife, which
- [01:13:33.120]was really pointing to the fact that there are
- [01:13:36.300]these various evil actors that we don't think about.
- [01:13:40.360]And that was really fascinating.
- [01:13:41.600]Additionally, we found from supplemental research
- [01:13:43.940]that Sonny was an Afro Indigenous man, showing he held multiple marginalized
- [01:13:49.480]identities and was a legal player.
- [01:13:53.860]It does seem like he eventually decided to dismiss his
- [01:13:58.860]own petition, but was shortly released from prison after that.
- [01:14:02.780]So even if his petition wasn't in the typical
- [01:14:07.140]terms, for example, it was he did get out of
- [01:14:09.640]jail. So it's very interesting case that highlights the
- [01:14:14.040]variety of legal players that we saw in this database.
- [01:14:26.620]So I have an interesting case of grand larceny. So this guy
- [01:14:30.920]who steals $2,000 worth of like otter pelts from
- [01:14:35.420]someone, and he crosses the state boundaries as
- [01:14:38.820]a way of like getting away.
- [01:14:40.280]And what happens is, and I'm blanking on what
- [01:14:43.200]state he ran away from, but the mayor of that state sends a
- [01:14:46.240]telegram saying this guy is a criminal, he's a fugitive
- [01:14:49.960]of justice, please arrest him.
- [01:14:51.880]And then the mayor of, he's fleeing to Washington, the mayor
- [01:14:55.740]of Washington is like, okay, I'm gonna send my police chief after him.
- [01:14:58.840]And so, kind of a straight-forward case. And I just found it interesting
- [01:15:03.088]because this would be the argument of why he should be freed
- [01:15:08.220]after he got arrested in Washington was
- [01:15:10.820]I don't think the mayor, that was actually the mayor that sent that telegram.
- [01:15:15.300]And I was like, hmmm.
- [01:15:16.820]So cases of impostor mayor telegrams, I'm not too sure.
- [01:15:23.060]So, and then like part of that was okay, there has
- [01:15:25.460]to be something here. And I found other cases that mentioned some
- [01:15:30.760]doubt about the validity of telegrams, which almost made me wonder, and
- [01:15:34.680]I haven't researched this so this is like all hypothesis number one.
- [01:15:39.940]Makes me wonder if there was some doubt because it was like,
- [01:15:43.360]not a common practice. Like, this could be easily forged. And I
- [01:15:47.500]just found that interesting because it's a ridiculous claim.
- [01:15:50.060]That's probably not the mayor of sending the telegram,
- [01:15:52.520]but then it's like maybe this will affect something larger.
- [01:16:00.780]So sorry I know I already talked about this, but it's the
- [01:16:03.900]reason why I picked this as my personal project because I think
- [01:16:07.300]it's riveting that the chief of police can just call an order
- [01:16:10.440]asking all his patrolmen to arrest any Black woman
- [01:16:13.340]suspected of being a pickpocket.
- [01:16:15.460]And the city was going to enable that behavior except for a
- [01:16:17.980]local council Black men stood up to it. So, I just thought that was
- [01:16:22.920]insane because the city stood behind them for doing that.
- [01:16:26.940]And if it wasn't for like a small local organization of Black men stood up to it
- [01:16:32.140]and he would have got away with that. And I also think it was
- [01:16:33.780]very interesting that a resolution was able to get him to recind his
- [01:16:38.460]order that it wasn't a riot or protest or something other of that
- [01:16:43.900]nature or multiple habeas corpus being brought forth
- [01:16:46.840]again and again and again. Rather it was just a resolution
- [01:16:50.527]saying that the police had too much power, and they were very successful in that nature, so...
- [01:16:56.060]I think something that I had like a series of like five cases, and
- [01:17:01.800]I feel like each case like I'd like my jaw dropped in one way
- [01:17:05.940]or more, but I think one thing that kind of really had me like
- [01:17:11.680]up late at night thinking about and like me like randomly making the sandwich.
- [01:17:15.440]Was kind of how specifically Lydia Titus she petitioned on behalf to have
- [01:17:23.740]all her children to essentially get them freed from
- [01:17:28.800]her previous enslaver's son.
- [01:17:31.900]And I think what really makes it even more kind of just jaw dropping in
- [01:17:38.620]a sense, it's just the context around the time where she did it. This is like
- [01:17:42.380]the 1820s, where Black men and Black women don't have their children
- [01:17:47.320]because in the process of them being free,
- [01:17:50.380]their enslavers decided to keep their children and
- [01:17:52.880]things of that nature.
- [01:17:53.620]And at this point, she's freshly widowed, so
- [01:17:56.280]she's a single mother, she's taken care of and watching over over
- [01:18:00.220]watching over 160 acres of land, which is
- [01:18:04.960]their homestead in a free territory, and all of her children end up
- [01:18:09.380]getting kidnapped by her previous enslaver who she
- [01:18:12.960]has petitioned against previously for her freedom in
- [01:18:16.420]his one, and she won all of those petitions.
- [01:18:19.900]And the thing that also makes this so much more like a side eye moment
- [01:18:24.220]was all these petitions were underneath the same
- [01:18:26.780]charges, but she wasn't able to just do one big petition where she's like, Oh, I
- [01:18:31.740]petitioned on behalf of all these people, she
- [01:18:34.500]had to file five separate ones, and then they were all happening at the same time.
- [01:18:42.180]And then they all had different lawyers. That is
- [01:18:46.420]so expensive. And then on top of that, that
- [01:18:48.940]is so emotionally draining because not only did these
- [01:18:51.680]children just look like father, she just lost her husband.
- [01:18:54.980]So it's kind of like, it really puts into perspective on how much as
- [01:18:59.120]not only as a freshly free person, but also
- [01:19:02.300]as a Black mother, did she have to fight for
- [01:19:05.060]her children and she won.
- [01:19:06.420]And unfortunately, not too long after they got back home from all the
- [01:19:10.760]proceedings, she ended up passing away. So she really never got to solve her
- [01:19:16.480]victory because it felt like after, you know, every W she took, you
- [01:19:20.760]know, they were just kind of being sore losers, and it sucked a lot.
- [01:19:23.860]But the bright side is all these children that's
- [01:19:26.640]we live as free people and they ended up keeping
- [01:19:28.760]their families safe. So I feel like there were
- [01:19:32.300]a lot of sad endings in these series of cases.
- [01:19:36.080]There are also a lot of good endings that allowed me to crack just like the
- [01:19:40.040]smallest smile like I gave like slight chuckles
- [01:19:43.780]but like, no, no, like I was so fast.
- [01:19:50.590]I think for me, like Madison was saying earlier,
- [01:19:55.770]figuring out the why, that was pretty riveting. And
- [01:19:58.930]this one case I did, it was a petition of Charles Lopez on
- [01:20:02.930]behalf of Nellie Louisa Lopez.
- [01:20:05.530]The case file was pretty detailed thing. It just basically
- [01:20:11.150]said that he was petitioning for custody of his child.
- [01:20:15.330]And he, like the case details were the mother of
- [01:20:20.070]the child is not fit to care for the child.
- [01:20:23.030]Some stuff like that didn't have the means and have the
- [01:20:25.430]support. And it was through newspaper research that I actually found
- [01:20:29.410]the whole story. So clicking on each individual
- [01:20:32.790]newspaper article highlighted something different and gave it such
- [01:20:36.070]a fuller picture of the case.
- [01:20:38.290]The reason why Lopez was petitioning to get his daughter back
- [01:20:42.710]was because he was just released from jail two months ago.
- [01:20:46.050]And where he put that petition in. And it was
- [01:20:50.310]really weird to in a case file, the petition or
- [01:20:54.190]the red to bring the Nellie Louisa before the court,
- [01:20:58.730]it was served to someone totally different that wasn't the mother.
- [01:21:02.250]It was a person by the name of O.H. Reither. And I
- [01:21:05.250]was like, who, who even is that? So, after
- [01:21:09.130]doing newspaper research, I found that she actually
- [01:21:12.290]ran a home for orphans.
- [01:21:14.310]So there's so much more to the story than just the case file indicated. And I
- [01:21:20.290]think figuring that out through chronicling America and
- [01:21:24.650]typing in those dates and typing in the state and finding those
- [01:21:29.410]newspapers with the names in them was just, it was just really
- [01:21:32.970]fulfilling because you got, you finally got the
- [01:21:35.290]whole story that the case file didn't tell.
- [01:21:43.940]Thank you.
- [01:21:45.560]Anybody else?
- [01:21:47.080]Yeah.
- [01:22:13.440]Yeah.
- [01:23:10.360]I think there's not a specific case that, you know,
- [01:23:13.200]jumped at me as we're being, they're all very interesting.
- [01:23:15.440]But I think kind of like Ryan is really touched on the
- [01:23:19.300]process of getting all the big solids, you know, sparse in detail and
- [01:23:24.440]then putting the pieces together what happened with supplemental
- [01:23:27.480]resources and resources and things that's really that research process
- [01:23:31.680]was really, really exciting for me personally.
- [01:23:34.860]And that's something I really enjoy doing. And as well as, you know, in
- [01:23:38.080]my personal project, something that would really
- [01:23:39.680]jump out to me and something I still think about is in my cases, many,
- [01:23:45.480]a majority of the European immigrants were connected
- [01:23:47.660]to the industrial workers of the world, the union that I
- [01:23:51.240]mentioned, the labor union.
- [01:23:53.400]And in many of their cases and their hearings, they,
- [01:23:57.540]you know, were questioned about their membership was the IWW and
- [01:24:00.400]many of them, you know, rejected the memberships they always know
- [01:24:04.320]I'm not a member anymore like I don't believe in ideas.
- [01:24:08.800]Well, you know, they're being proof of them being members just a few months
- [01:24:14.520]ago. So it's like, okay, are you going really not believe or is it
- [01:24:19.720]just, you know, you're trying to protect yourself from the law, which is a
- [01:24:22.240]very, very reasonable thing to know, you know, something that many of them did.
- [01:24:26.000]I was, you know, so I think that's something that
- [01:24:27.980]really really stood out to me and I'm like, so yeah.
- [01:24:32.880]Well, I think you have sense of just how riveting this whole panel
- [01:24:40.460]has been and how riveting this research is in the digital legal research.
- [01:24:49.440]And we're very grateful for this cohort of great students from
- [01:24:54.360]all over the United States and from the University of Nebraska. We're
- [01:24:58.420]grateful for the National Science Foundation, the REU program, the UCARE
- [01:25:02.920]program here in Nebraska, and the great experience that we've had together.
- [01:25:07.340]It's been, you have inspired me. I know you've inspired
- [01:25:10.820]Professor Jagodinsky and I think right now
- [01:25:14.360]you're inspiring everybody in the audience here in the room and online.
- [01:25:18.560]And so those of you who are online, thank you for
- [01:25:20.020]joining us for this webinar on U.S. law and race and on
- [01:25:23.400]the summer research program. And we hope you have a terrific
- [01:25:27.300]rest of the summer and congratulations to this whole group right here.
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