W.J. Michael Cody and Memphis Pro Bono

While it comes a bit late - my household, like every other in America, has been plagued with colds -- I wanted to thank the Memphis Bar Association for honoring me with the 2014 W.J.Michael Cody award.  

Lawyers in Memphis know Mike Cody well.  Those who aren’t lawyers should remember his name from when he was the Attorney General for the State of Tennessee, and probably have heard about his legendary running career.  

Mike Cody is a lawyers’ lawyer (he even won the “Lawyer’s Lawyer” award), not just because of the way that he practices, but because of his lifetime of commitment to public service and upholding and improving the law.  He is an expert on ethics in government.   As a prosecutor, he was zealous and fair, a quality that is essential to justice and sorely missed in this country that first week of December.  

As I told my audience of lawyers that night, during that week I remembered a discussion in graduate school about the existential crisis facing us social workers -- at what point have we stopped advancing social justice, and instead become the duct tape supporting an unjust system that is doomed to fail?  And now I am  a lawyer, like every other man and woman in that room.  My very identity is tied to this ridiculous system that is so exclusive, expensive, and repressive.  Should I even keep going, or is my work the equivalent of trying to bail out the Titanic with my boot?

But it’s not just me.  Michael Cody is bailing too.  No, he’s not bailing, he’s reinforcing the hull and having the summer associates toss over all the poker chips to reduce the weight.  And it is not just us.  There are hundreds of lawyers in Memphis doing exactly the same thing.  I run into at least a dozen others like me every day, lawyers who are doing pro bono work, lawyers who are active in their churches and non-profits and neighborhood groups, lawyers who spend their evenings trying to make justice more accessible, even though inaccessibility and injustice is what pays their bills.  The commitment to pro bono and access to justice here in Memphis is unlike what I’ve experienced anywhere else.  Something about Memphis is different.

When Mike Cody was a young lawyer (younger than I am now) he approached his boss, Lucius Burch, about a request from the ACLU to represent Dr. King pro bono to lift an injunction so that he could lead a second march in support of sanitation workers on April 5, 1968.  In 2011, Mr. Cody wrote about that experience for the University of Memphis Law Review.  He writes about the legal and political issues the movement was dealing with at that time, about the legal work  by Burch Porter & Johnson and the Ratman, Sugarmon Firm, about his personal experiences working with Rev. Andrew Young and Rev. James Lawson,  sitting in meetings with other SCLC leaders including Ralph Albernathy, Jesse Jackson, and Dr. King himself.  Mr. Cody describes taking a break from preparing documents and going to the Mason Temple, where he heard Dr. King deliver what we now know as the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech.

How many Memphians were in that church that night?  How many labored and sacrificed to organize the April 5 march, only to have their hearts crushed.  How many labored for the first march, and walked away feeling more a million times more discouraged than I felt?  Not just the civil rights leaders that kids read about in school now, but all the men and women who packed their lunches, rounded up their neighbors, rallied their churches, and put their lives on the line.  But they didn’t stop.  They marched again and again and again, generation after generation.  They didn’t give up on the system or tear it down.  Its still riddled with injustice, but it has changed and it will again.  They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it wasn’t destroyed in a day either.  In fact, it’s still standing, its just a different thing entirely.

That night in 1968, Dr. King called out to Memphis, called us by name, and said “either we go up together, or we go down together.”  I think Memphis still hears that call today as it echoes through the streets, and that’s how I like to explain this amazing thing we are growing here.  This town has welcomed me wholeheartedly, schooled me on what lawyers’ commitment to justice should really be, and I am honored to be a part of it.  Don’t stop now, Memphis, I want to see it through with you.

I strongly recommend reading the University of Memphis Law Review Article.  It’s heartfelt, not too long, and timely.

http://www.bpjlaw.com/upl_docs/cody_mlklawjournal.pdf

- Anna