Power Concedes Nothing

Power Concedes Nothing: The Unfinished Fight for Social Justice in America

Connie Rice (Scribner, 2012)

    Connie Rice had a path of high achievement set before her from infancy. Her parents met at Howard College, where her mother trained as a teacher. Her father had an exemplary Air Force career, which exposed Connie and her two younger brothers to a great variety of human environments, while shielding them from most of the racial hardships that other Black kids faced in the sixties. What could have been disruptive was embraced as adventurous: "On top of [her mother's] relentless academic tasks, she dunked us in whatever the new local culture offered–ballet, piano lessons, new food, painting, crafts, ceramics, horseback riding, archery, bowling, swim teams, drama, skiing, county fairs, high tea, or square dancing." That sounds manic, verging on comic, but it led to the kind of confidence that permitted Connie twice to walk into a new school and become class president.

    Within the Black American Princess bubble, there were also experiences that foretold what she'd use all that preparation for. Reading Anne Frank's diary, as a ten-year-old; navigating between terrible schools (Anacostia, San Antonio) and great ones (London, Shaker Heights); winning the debate championship of Texas; and spending one high school summer watching the Watergate hearings. "Every day, after scouring the newspapers for behind-the-scenes analysis, I stood at the ironing board, glued to the television. At first the Judiciary Committee's hearings, a cross between a constitutional show trial and a suspense-filled soap opera, were riveting enough."

    When, in due course, the immortal Barbara Jordan rose to be recognized, Connie Rice had a new heroine. "When she cross-examined a witness, challenged her colleagues on the committee, or parried with lawyers, I felt I was watching Elizabeth I incarnated as a black congresswoman from Texas." Jordan's full-throated defense of the Constitution, and her indictment of Richard Nixon's corruption, struck a chord in Rice that would propel her to law school and the work of social justice.

    But first, at her mother's urging, Radcliffe College. (Rice was one of the last people to be admitted to Harvard by accident, as the colleges proceeded toward their merger.) She studied Government, made some good friends, and took up martial arts. Her Tae Kwon Do was so strong that she took three years off to pursue it, medaling at the national championships, before going on to NYU.

     In her second summer there, she interned with the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund on death penalty cases. Here was an education! And one that seemed more significant than third-year classes, though she did enough to finish school. "Death row had ripped off law school's Socratic mask and shown me the sordid underbelly of our warped bar of justice." Rice moved on to a clerkship in Federal court, and even a year or so in a major law firm, just to show she could do it, before winding up in Los Angeles in the west-coast branch of the LDF.

     That's where the real story in this memoir begins, as Rice brings all this experience to bear on the violent culture of the gang-ridden streets, the violent culture of the Los Angeles Police Department, and the stultifying intransigence of government bureaucracy. Sometimes the work is on an individual level, as when she is enlisted to help a fugitive surrender without getting shot by the police on his way in. Other times, she makes herself heard with lawsuits, including one that resulted in the LA school district building 140 new schools, making up a deficit of thirty years without new construction.

     On whatever scale, the work is legal, it's political, and it's always personal. Her mission is to look out for the people deemed too poor for decent education, too down-and-out for police protection, too insignificant for elected officials to notice them. "I've learned that suing cops earns their respect but helping them to change earns their trust. I've learned to make adversaries into allies and, when necessary, to sue my friends and even my own board members, because it doesn't matter who holds it–power concedes nothing without a demand."

Any Good Books, December, 2019