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Scientists recently transplanted one snail's memory into another snail's brain, making the second snail think it remembered something that never happened to it.
Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that they could extract a part of a snail's genetic code and inject it into a second snail, changing the way the second animal acted, in an eNeuro study that sounds straight out of Black Mirror: Snail Edition.
Sea snails apparently have great long-term memories, so UCLA researchers were able to quickly train them to react negatively after giving them a small electric shock. The unfortunate snails who were shocked retracted their siphons for much longer than the snails who were new to the lab. The snails that developed the reflex in response to the zaps had essentially formed a memory of the experience in their nervous systems.
That memory was transferred via RNA molecules to the new snails, who hadn't yet learned to retract their siphons in anticipation of more shocks. After researchers moved the genetic material from a trained snail to a naive snail, the unsuspecting snail neurons immediately reacted to the zaps like seasoned pros, as if they remembered dealing with them before. The study doesn't mean we're anywhere close to being able to pass memories around at will, but researchers told BBC it was a huge step towards understanding more about memory development. Summer Meza
While much of the Northeast has been battling weeks of storms and flooding, the American West is drying up.
The National Drought Mitigation Center, housed at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, released a stark map Thursday that shows that fully one-third of the country is battling drought. Not only that, but in parts of Missouri and Kansas, areas suffering "exceptional drought" are expanding:
US #Drought Monitor 8 16 18: Drought is coverage up slightly this week to just over 36% of the area of the Lower 48 states, with exceptional drought (brown, D4) expanding in Missouri and Kansas. pic.twitter.com/ng2vhFgrPU
— Drought Center (@DroughtCenter) August 16, 2018
"Exceptional drought" is the most severe classification of drought conditions that exists, describing "widespread crop/pasture losses" and "shortages of water in reservours, streams, and wells, creating water emergencies," per the U.S. Drought Monitor.
While the country boomerangs between extreme weather conditions, President Trump has systematically sought to dismantle his predecessor's signature achievements — and that includes legislation related to climate change. Politico reported Thursday that in an effort to unwind the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which imposed emissions limits on power plants, the Trump administration is prepared to tweak the federal calculations of money saved by the rule. "They are cooking the books on technical analysis to try to justify preconceived conclusions that these regulations are bad," one climate expert told Politico.
Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee is shirking its climate change duties too, Ryan Cooper argues here at The Week. Read his indictment of DNC Chairman Tom Perez's acceptance of fossil fuel money here. Kimberly Alters
Stephen Bannon is making a war-themed hype film for Trump, hopes he will be 'jacked up' about it
President Trump's supporters are under attack. Or at least, that's the impression Stephen Bannon's forthcoming film is trying to make.
The Breitbart- and White House-ousted conservative has returned to his documentary roots to create Trump @ War, and he shared the dramatic trailer for the film with Axios on Thursday. The full-length feature will premiere Sept. 9 — the two-year anniversary of Hillary Clinton labeling Trump supporters "deplorables."
In an intense two minutes, Trump supporters are violently knocked to the ground. CNN's Don Lemon goes on an anti-Trump tirade. A clip of Trump walking with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May plays while someone praises Trump's foreign policy, cutting off right before the moment Trump awkwardly grabs May's hand.
Bannon has grand visions for the film as a potential boon for Republicans this midterm cycle. When the movie is over, he told Axios, every "deplorable" will be "literally standing on your chair with your pitchfork saying: 'I've got to get people out to vote.'"
Bannon consistently wrote, directed, and produced films pushing a far-right agenda before his brief White House stint, including projects like Fire From the Heartland: The Awakening of the Conservative Woman and Still Point in a Turning World: Ronald Reagan and His Ranch. Like its predecessors, Trump @ War also stars somewhat notable conservatives, including fellow ex-White House staffer Sebastian Gorka.
"How jacked do we think Trump will be when he sees this?" Bannon asked Axios when describing the film — seemingly well over the fact that Trump called him "Sloppy Steve" after his White House departure. Watch the whole trailer at Axios, and perhaps feel as "jacked up" as Bannon hopes Trump will be. Kathryn Krawczyk
"Queen of Soul" Aretha Franklin died Thursday while in hospice care at home in Detroit, her publicist confirmed to The Associated Press. She was 76.
The legendary soul and pop singer was reportedly "ill for a long time" with pancreatic cancer, and her friends and family had been warned that "death is imminent" just days ago. While receiving palliative care, Franklin was surrounded by family who said she was "alert, laughing, teasing, able to recognize people." Her nephew told People that "family is there with her. She's home."
"In one of the darkest moments of our lives, we are not able to find the appropriate words to express the pain in our heart," Franklin's representative said in a statement following her death. "We have lost the matriarch and rock of our family."
Franklin's singing career goes back to 1960, when she began recording hits like "Respect" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman." Her last performance was at a benefit for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in November 2017. Summer Meza
Don't let the haters and losers fool you — getting impeached is actually a solid strategic move for a shrewd president.
President Trump's loyal followers are ready and willing to back him if he gets impeached, Politico reported Thursday. In fact, many even claim it would guarantee Trump re-election in 2020.
Republican lawmakers and strategists say that if Democrats retake the House in the midterm elections, it would help Trump rally moderates and centrists who aren't won over by increasingly progressive liberals. And if a Democratic majority moved to impeach Trump, some argue, he would become more popular, much in the way that former President Bill Clinton's approval ratings rose after his impeachment proceedings.
Asked if impeachment would hurt Trump politically, a Republican analyst told Politico, "Of course not." Another adviser said the theory was "not crazy," saying that "if you're looking at the politics of it, it's not a terrible thing for 2020." Even though Trump himself has been publicly hoping for a "red wave" and expecting to keep a Republican majority in Congress, GOP operatives are behind the scenes contemplating the possibility of spinning a hypothetical impeachment into a win. His most avid supporters say Trump does best when his back is against the wall, reports Politico, and impeachment would be the ultimate wall to rally his base and garner sympathy. Read more at Politico. Summer Meza
Most Trump officials on TV apparently signed NDAs prohibiting them from disparaging Trump forever
Omarosa Manigault Newman's Unhinged publicity tour has spilled a bit of sunlight on President Trump's compulsory use of nondisclosure agreements on his campaign and in the White House. On Tuesday, the Trump re-election campaign filed for arbitration, arguing Manigault Newman breached the NDA she signed when she joined the campaign in 2016. She says she did not sign an apparently unprecedented and likely unconstitutional NDA at the White House, but other White House officials were more coy, including White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
A former White House and Trump campaign staffer tells The Weekly Standard that even lower-level White House recruits "had to sign them when we went into the building," summarizing the NDA as "straight-up 'No talking bad about Trump or his family.'" It was "snuck in with" other "actual forms you had to sign for the legitimate process of being onboarded," the former staffer said, and unusually, "everything got taken away as soon as we signed it."
On MSNBC, Trump campaign spokesman Marc Lotter said he signed NDAs to work at the White House and on both Trump campaigns, and they obligated him to refrain from saying disparaging things about Trump, his family, Vice President Mike Pence and his family, and any Trump or Pence businesses forever. Katy Tur asked the obvious question: "Say something happened while you were there that horrified you or appalled you or you felt was illegal, etc., and you left and you signed an NDA, you can't talk about it. So again, why should we trust anything you say when you're legally bound to say good things about the person you're coming on to talk about?"
The White House NDA is probably unenforceable, but as you watch current and former Trump campaign and White House officials on television, it's probably worth remembering that they all at least nominally signed away their right to criticize Trump in perpetuity — and Trump takes his NDAs seriously. Peter Weber
Ex-CIA chief John Brennan calls Trump's no-collusion claim 'hogwash,' says security clearance revocation shows panic
President Trump may have revoked former CIA Director John Brennan's security clearance on Wednesday, but he did not take away his ability to write or his audience for presumably informed criticism of Trump's actions. In an op-ed in The New York Times on Thursday, Brennan touches on Russia's contemporaneous denials that it was interfering in the 2016 election — "Russian denials are, in a word, hogwash" — and explains how Trump's public encouragement for Russia to hack and disseminate Hillary Clinton's emails made the CIA and FBI's job of stopping Russian election-tampering much harder:
Such a public clarion call certainly makes one wonder what Mr. Trump privately encouraged his advisers to do — and what they actually did — to win the election. While I had deep insight into Russian activities during the 2016 election, I now am aware — thanks to the reporting of an open and free press — of many more of the highly suspicious dalliances of some American citizens with people affiliated with the Russian intelligence services.
Mr. Trump's claims of no collusion are, in a word, hogwash. The only questions that remain are whether the collusion that took place constituted criminally liable conspiracy, whether obstruction of justice occurred to cover up any collusion or conspiracy, and how many members of "Trump Incorporated" attempted to defraud the government by laundering and concealing the movement of money into their pockets. [John Brennan, The New York Times]
Brennan then tied up the loose ends: "Mr. Trump clearly has become more desperate to protect himself and those close to him, which is why he made the politically motivated decision to revoke my security clearance in an attempt to scare into silence others who might dare to challenge him." Trump himself suggested to The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that he revoked Brennan's security clearance because of the Trump-Russia investigation. You can read Brennan's entire op-ed at The New York Times. Peter Weber
In Geneva on Tuesday, a U.S. State Department official warned a United Nations disarmament conference that Russia has launched a purported "space apparatus inspector" whose "very abnormal behavior" is "of great concern" to the U.S. government. "We don't know for certain what it is and there is no way to verify it," said Yleem Poblete, assistant secretary for arms control, verification, and compliance. "But Russian intentions with respect to this satellite are unclear and are obviously a very troubling development," especially given America's "concerns over many years that the Russian Federation is actively pursuing the development and deployment of anti-satellite weapons."
Alexander Deyneko, a senior Russian diplomat, told Reuters that Poblete's comments were "the same unfounded, slanderous accusations based on suspicions, on suppositions, and so on," and suggested the U.S. join Russia and China in developing a treaty to prevent an arms race in space. ("The United States has clearly articulated the many flaws of this draft treaty," Poblete said in her speech, and Russia's "hollow and hypocritical efforts are not the answer" given its routine violations of easier-to-verify arms treaties.)
Space weapons like "lasers or microwave frequencies that could just stop [a satellite] working for a time, either disable it permanently without destroying it or disrupt it via jamming," are a real concern, Royal United Services Institute analyst Alexandra Stickings tells BBC News. And they would be hard to differentiate from other satellites. But the Trump administration may not be in the best position to complain, after President Trump ordered a new military Space Force branch, she added. "The narrative coming from the U.S. is, 'Space was really peaceful, now look at what the Russians and Chinese are doing' — ignoring the fact that the U.S. has developed its own capabilities." Peter Weber


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MOUNT AIRY - The Western annexation time bomb has been defused -- or so it appears.
On Monday, the Town Council revealed it has been negotiating with Frall Developers Inc. about paying $1.25 million for 81 acres the builder had targeted for a hotly opposed development.
In three closed meetings over the past six weeks, town administrators and Frall officials have been working out a deal for the purchase of the land, located north of Prospect Road in Frederick County and referred to as the Western annexation.

subset: commoncrawl


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What is your position and role at Gillette Children's Specialty Healthcare? I am an audiologist and provide hearing evaluations and necessary follow-up for Gillette's patients of all ages! My job is to make sure those children and adults can hear everything they need to in order to communicate and live life to its fullest.
Do you have a favorite Gillette story or memory? Recently, a young sibling of a patient staying at Gillette decided to stop by my office window every time he and his parents took a walk down the hallway. Since they walked down the hallway a couple of times a day for several weeks we became fast friends! He would put his face right up to the window, and tap the glass. I made a habit of coming up to my side of the window and making funny faces for him. We both had a good laugh!
What do you like best about working at Gillette? I love being at Gillette because I get to spend time with awesome kids and families that remind me to be hopeful and optimistic every day. My patients and coworkers inspire me to work hard and always do my best.
Do you have any children or pets? My husband and I have two young boys - Bennett and Felix. They sure keep us busy these days! We also have two dogs – Sugar, the French Bulldog and Pico, the Chihuahua.
What are your hobbies outside of work? Outside of work, I spend time enjoying all of the great activities near our home in Como Park. My family loves walking and biking around the lake, going to the zoo and swimming in the neighborhood pool. I'm also a big music fan – my kids and I have dance parties in our living room!
What is one fun fact about you? Every year, as soon as the snow melts, I switch over from driving my car to commuting to work on my yellow scooter! Don't be surprised if you see me headed in to or out of the audiology office with a black motorcycle helmet on.


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Video E-cards: it was a matter of time.
Carded.tv: New Video E-card Site
It was just a matter of time before the free e-card movement would progress to free video e-cards. New service Carded.tv is brand-spanking new and quirky enough to pass the viral muster of Gen Yers. Forget about just plain-ol birthday video e-cards. No, here you can congratulate your friends for losing their virginity, or arriving to work with a hangover. Nice!
Perfect video e-cards, just in time for Valentine's Day:
Favorite Birthday video e-card:
Star Wars-themed Video e-card:


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Marc Marquez will not ride at the Phillip Island test, scheduled for next week, and will only return to riding at the first race of the season at Qatar.
After meeting with Dr. Xavier Mir in Barcelona today, Marquez was told it would be better to rest and recuperate as fully as possible before attempting to ride a MotoGP bike again.
The decision to wait until the race at Qatar also settles a potential argument over testing at Phillip Island and Qatar.
HRC had been contemplating sending Marquez to test with the satellite and Open class riders at Qatar, rather than the factory riders at Phillip Island, where they are testing tires for Bridgestone. Honda asked Race Direction for permission to allow Marquez to test at Qatar, but Yamaha and Ducati lodged an objection.


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Rafael Nadal seems to be angry about a lot of things lately. The US Open scheduling, the intensity of the entire season and how it (badly) combines the Davis Cup with the ATP tour tournaments, Roger Federer not taking his side. Now it's the Madrid Open changing from the traditional red clay to a new blue clay surface, which no one seems to like. More
Andy Roddick did beat Roger Federer earlier this month in the Madison Square Garden exhibition, but that wasn't suppose to reflect on big tournaments, on actually important ATP Tour Masters events. Well, it happened. For only the third time in his 24 matches with Roger, Roddick came out on top, winning 7-6, 1-6, 6-4 in the third round of the Sony Ericsson Open in Key Biscayne. More
Days before turning 30, Roger Federer is mounting up for another title chase and hopefully a 17th Grand Slam before time really runs out for the Swiss legend. As usual, there's that Rafael Nadal problem in the way, and more. More
With his fourth consecutive win over Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic continued his undefeated run in 2011, winning the Rome Masters, his 7th singles title of the year. More


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Latvian Miss world 2011
Here at E.a.t. Riga we are not the biggest fans of beauty pageants but we felt we had to cover this story. Latvia's Miss world 2011 did not win the bizarre annual beauty pageant, this honour fell into the hands of the Venezuelan contestant and probably just as well! Pictures of Alisa's Miskovska's past have emerged as seen here and it has caused a bit of a storm in the ever so politically correct world of pageants. Searching into this subject I found this video recently and although I think its great that she teaches the next generation how to figure skate I am quite happy that she does not represent the nation on the world stage! Got to love the accent though!


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Description - Fishing Adventure - Dress Up Games
Fishing Adventure : Click your mouse to cast. Press to pull the line. Put the fish in the basket.
The Number of Play : 3129 | Submitted : 2012-09-05 | Rating : 4.6
You are playing Fishing Adventure . Do not forget to play one of the other great Skill Games at StarSue.Net


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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Serena Williams will look to move one step closer to completing a calendar sweep of the four grand slams when she meets unseeded Kiki Bertens in a second-round U.S. Open clash on Wednesday.
Top seed Williams, seeking to become the first woman since Steffi Graf in 1988 to complete a rare calendar Grand Slam, will face the tall, big-hitting Bertens in the third match of the day at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
A well-rested Williams, who needed only 30 minutes to win her first-round match when her opponent retired with a knee injury, will start a prohibitive favorite against her 110th-ranked opponent from the Netherlands.
It will be the first career match-up between Williams and Bertens.
Defending men's champion Marin Cilic, the ninth seed, will also be in action as he faces Russian Evgeny Donskoy.
In other men's action, top seed Novak Djokovic will cap the night session when he battles unseeded Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer under the lights.
Serbian Djokovic dropped only three games in a first-round canter, but might get a tougher contest from world number 52 Haider-Maurer, who downed Canadian Vasek Pospisil in five sets on Monday.
Eighth seed Rafa Nadal, who survived a dangerous first-round opponent in Croatian Borna Coric, will be up against unseeded Argentine Diego Schwartzman in a daytime match in the Louis Armstrong Stadium.
(Reporting by Andrew Both in Cary, North Carolina; Editing by Frank Pingue)


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When you take a few steps back from the furor and zealotry and take a close look at whats happened here, you will quickly start to see the cracks. One problem is that Dell appears to be under the misguided impression that listening to the IdeaStorm community is the same as listening to customers. Its not. Anyone can register and become an instant member of the IdeaStorm community. What Dell listened to wasnt a cross-section of customers, but rather a pressure group.
There are a series of other pressure groups in operation on IdeaStorm right now, people who are putting their own agendas on the table and expecting Dell to carry them out. Now that Dell gave in to the request to have a Linux distro and responded by picking Ubuntu, the focus has shifted to having OpenOffice or Firefox preinstalled, or to having a greater range of Linux distros. Dells going to have to draw a line under some of these requests and reject them, which is going to be unpopular and Dell will have to suffer the consequences.
But its not just IdeaStorm thats flawed; how Dell has implemented and rolled out Linux is also flawed.
First off, Dell played favorites with Ubuntu over other Linux distros. After having used a number of Linux distros, Im convinced that Dell made the right choice in going with Ubuntu. Communities supporting some other Linux distros dont seem too happy with the exclusive nature of the deal. But thats how business works and my take on why Dell chose to partner with Ubuntu is because of the professional face that Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) presents.
Now that Dell is shipping PCs loaded with Ubuntu, there will be some who will expect Dell to support a whole raft of distros. Given the likely cost to Dell of testing systems, and especially given that Dell has admitted that desktop Linux will account for less that 1% of PCs shipped over the next 12 months, this is unlikely to happen. The open source community needs to keep one thing in mind Dells focus is not on building bridges with open source communities or promoting Linux over Windows. Dells focus is selling PCs and making a profit. Its not about charity; its about the bottom line.
There are other flaws in the way that the deal was implemented. The limited range of PCs that are offered with an Ubuntu install is a problem. Theres one notebook model (the Inspiron E1505n), one budget desktop model (the Dimension E520n) and one from the high-end XPS system (although its a low-end 410n). The base price for the E520n and E1505n notebook is $599 while the base price for the XPS 410n is $849. When you compare the prices to comparable systems running Windows Vista Home Premium, the difference in price is $50. But dig a little deeper and that $50 doesnt seem like much at all, considering what you get. When it comes to software support for the Ubuntu systems, users have the choice of serve yourself support at the Dell Community Forum or paying Canonical for a support package. No free telephone support from Dell for Linux.
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This section contains 1,808 words
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Unaccustomed Earth – Following the unexpected death of his wife due to heart failure during surgery, Ruma's seventy year-old father retires from his job at a pharmaceutical company and travels around the world. His travels were originally intended as family trips before his wife died. He sends postcards and updates on his travels to his pregnant daughter, Ruma, her husband Adam, and their three year-old son, Akash, who have moved to Seattle from New York. Having only visited Ruma and her family occasionally, Ruma's father asks to visit Seattle for a week before going to Prague in August. Ruma tells him he is welcome. Adam will be away that week for work for a hedge fund. Adam's job, though it keeps him busy, allows her to be a stay-at-home mom rather than a part-time lawyer.
Ruma worries that her father...
(read more from the Part One: Unaccustomed Earth Summary)
This section contains 1,808 words
(approx. 5 pages at 400 words per page)


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Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes About HealingQuotes about: Healing
Aliens Angels Animals Art Birds Birth Blessings Books Change Childhood Children Country Courage Creativity Criticism Darkness Desire Destiny Difficulty Dogs Doubt Dreams Dying Earth Emotions Eternity Eyes Faith Falling In Love Fame Fate Fear Feelings Flowers Future Gardens Giving God Greatness Grief Growth Healing Heart Heaven Home House Inspirational Inspiring Joy Language Letting Go Life Loneliness Love Lying Marriage Memories Morning Mountain Nature Neighbors Noticing Pain Painting Parting Past Patience Preparation Purpose Reading Reality Relationships Sadness Silence Simplicity Sleep Solitude Songs Sorrow Soul Spring Struggle Success Summer Terror Vision Waiting Walking Water Wine Winning Winter Writing
Think... of the world you carry within you, and call this thinking whatever you want to: a remembering of your own childhood or a yearning toward a future of your own - only be attentive to what is arising within you, and place that above everything you perceive around you. What is happening in your innermost self is worthy of your entire love; somehow you must find a way to work at it.
Rainer Maria Rilke
- Born: December 4, 1875
- Died: December 29, 1926
- Occupation: Poet
- Cite this Page: Citation


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Wil Haygood discussed his new book, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America with civil rights leader Elaine Jones. Harvard Law Professor Kenneth Mack moderated.
View video from other recent Kennedy Library Forums >>
Date: October 28, 2015
NANCY McCOY: First of all, I want to thank everyone for coming out on this really nasty night. We're so pleased that you were able to make it through all the traffic to get here for this very special program.
I'm Nancy McCoy, the Director of Education and Public Programs for the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. On behalf of Tom Putnam, Kennedy Library Director, Heather Campion, CEO for the Kennedy Library Foundation, all of my Kennedy Library and Kennedy Foundation colleagues, I thank you again for coming, and acknowledge our generous underwriters of the Kennedy Library Forums: lead sponsor Bank of America, Raytheon, the Lowell Institute, the Boston Foundation; and our media sponsors, the Boston Globe, Xfinity, Viacom and WBUR.
In the summer of 1967, after decades as a prominent civil rights lawyer who had won the crucial Brown v. Board of Education case, Thurgood Marshall took a seat before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He faced, among others, staunch segregationists Strom Thurmond, Sam Ervin, John McClellan and Committee Chair James Eastland, all of whom considered Marshall to be the public enemy of the South. And so began the contentious, dramatic and unprecedented five-day confirmation hearings for the first African American nominee to the US Supreme Court.
Wil Haygood once wrote that, "If there is a weed that grows through and underneath my work, I like to think it is a concern for the unknown, the lost stories." In his new book, Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America, he not only recounts this compelling, but rarely told chapter in American history, but also creates what he considers a kind of tapestry of the civil rights movement, spotlighting some of the unfamiliar challenges and battles Marshall faced, telling, for example, the story of his role as General Counsel for the NAACP in its fight against all-white primaries in the State of Texas. He delves into these and other important legal cases in Marshall's earlier career, probes his life on a personal level, and threads together stories of civil rights activities, politicians, and others whose lives entwined with his.
One of these people was President Kennedy. Mr. Haygood notes that it was Kennedy who finally took Thurgood Marshall off the road where he had labored for decades battling injustice and brought him into the federal judiciary. And another, of course, was President Lyndon Johnson, whose skillful political maneuvers cleared the way for Marshall's appointment to the Supreme Court.
Marshall stepped down from the Court in 1991, citing old age. At the time of his death, two years later, a New York Times editorial stated that, "On the Supreme Court today, there is no Justice who seems so similarly placed there to speak for the powerless by such a sweeping tide of history. There is no one whose life translates so magisterially into art."
Mr. Haygood, reflecting on Marshall's long record of service, remarks that he was the giant who made the Constitution come alive for many millions, and had truly turned it into a living document.
In addition to this most provocative portrait of Thurgood Marshall, Mr. Haygood is the author of four other biographies, including Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents, and whose life was the basis for the recent film, The Butler. He is currently a visiting professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Film at Miami University in Ohio. And previously, he wrote for the Washington Post and served for three decades as a national and international correspondent for the Boston Globe, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.
Mr. Haygood's book is available in our Museum store, and he has kindly agreed to sign books following the program. And we just learned this evening that CBS News Sunday Morning just named his book, Showdown, one of the five best books of the fall season. [applause]
Also on our panel tonight is Elaine Jones. Elaine Jones served as the first female Director-Counsel and President of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where her efforts led to a landmark Supreme Court decision abolishing the death penalty in 37 states, and where she successfully argued employment discrimination cases.
In 2000, President Clinton presented her with the prestigious Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Award. She's participated in many of our Forums here on race and civil rights, and we always so appreciate having her here back with us, because her voice and perspective on these programs is so much appreciated.
We're also pleased to welcome back to the Kennedy Library Kenneth W. Mack, the Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Harvard University. His research and teaching have focused on American legal and constitutional history, with a particular emphasis on race relations, politics and economic life.
He is the author of Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, and co-editor of The New Black: What Has Changed and What Has Not with Race in America. He's currently working on a book that examines the social and political history of race and political economy in the United States since 1975.
Please join me in welcoming Wil Haygood, Elaine Jones and Kenneth Mack. [applause]
KENNETH MACK: First, thanks to the Kennedy Library for inviting us here. Thanks to Wil Haygood for writing such a tremendously important book for us to read and receive at this particular time. Thanks to Elaine Jones, who I met– we were trying to figure out where we'd met before. I met Elaine Jones when I was in law school and she came to speak at Harvard Law School. At that time, I never imagined we would be on the same stage. And thanks to all of you for coming.
We're going to start by just talking a little bit about the book. I'm going to bring everybody in and we'll just have a little bit of a discussion about it. And at some point, we will stop and ask you all to participate with questions. So if you've got questions, hold them, and at some point we will move to audience participation.
So let's start with the book, and first question to Wil: As you mention in your book, there's been a lot of focus on Thurgood Marshall lately. Gilbert King wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Groveland trial, where Marshall is arguing in the Supreme Court. He's also traveling to places like Florida, putting his life in danger to investigate a case of a black man shot by a white sheriff in the aftermath of an interracial rape accusation.
Marshall's also the subject of the Laurence Fishburne one-man show, which also aired on HBO.
We know a lot about Marshall. We know he was born in 1908 in Baltimore. We know that he went to historically black Lincoln University and on to Howard Law School, where he graduated first in his class.
We know that when he went back to Baltimore, he promptly sued his hometown law school, which he couldn't go to because it was segregated, the University of Maryland, and desegregated it.
We know he followed his mentor, Charles Hamilton Houston, on to the NAACP's national office in New York, where for decades he was a one-man legal aid team, Supreme Court advocate, organizer, community organizer, just sort of everything that was needed in the movement.
We know that Thurgood Marshall was the principal lawyer who brought the Brown v. Board of Education litigation, assisted by many other lawyers in local communities and plaintiffs.
We know that President Kennedy nominated Marshall to a seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in 1961. We know that President Johnson named him as Solicitor General in 1965, bringing us to Marshall's nomination to the US Supreme Court in 1967.
So we know a lot about Marshall. And we also know that you are the author of some very well-received biographies – Sugar Ray Robinson, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Sammy Davis Jr. What made you want to write a book about Thurgood Marshall at this particular time? And what made you want to focus on the confirmation hearings in particular?
WIL HAYGOOD: Welcome, everybody. But first, since you tried to remember when you met Mrs. Jones, I'd like to say when I first became aware of your presence in the world. It was on Chesapeake Street in Washington, DC. And I had stopped your lovely wife, Lisa Jones, and wondered whatever happened to those days when I had been smitten with her [laughter] and I had been rebuffed.
KENNETH MACK: Politely, I'm sure.
ELAINE JONES: The better man won.
WIL HAYGOOD: Yeah. Rebuffed and heart-sickened. She had explained to me that she had met this gentleman and gotten married. And I tried to tell her, Do you realize that The Butler has made $150 million at the box office?
ELAINE JONES: She said it didn't matter. [laughter]
WIL HAYGOOD: Perhaps it was at that moment when I realized love is a powerful thing. [laughter]
But, to get to your question about Thurgood Marshall, why did I choose him? In 1954, that was the year of his titanic victory, a frail African American lady in Columbus, Ohio, was rushed to the hospital. She was pregnant, and she was from that civil rights-soaked city of Selma, Alabama. She, like many blacks, was on one of those freedom trains up from the South, with her parents. And she had, that day, in the fall of 1954, she had two children, twins, a girl and a boy. I'm that boy.
So if any black kid is born in 1954, it becomes stamped on their psyche. You just know that something monumental happened that year, and it was freedom through the school system, and that your parent must have been the happiest parent in the world.
And so, as I became a writer, years went on, I knew in some way that I was going to have to write about 1954. Just the massiveness of it. So 1954 meant Thurgood Marshall. So when I made up my mind that I was going to tackle him, I wanted an interesting way to go into his life.
I did not know that his confirmation hearings lasted five days, were stretched across 13 days, and his nomination set in limbo for six weeks before the US Senate. All of the nominees before Thurgood Marshall, their hearings lasted less than four days. But they were all white men. And so, no coincidence that Thurgood Marshall, who had upended many of the laws of segregation in the Deep South, that he ends up in Room 2228, in the US Senate, nominated by the Southern president who was hell-bent on integrating the Supreme Court.
So when I had that framework, it was like the last shootout at the OK Corral for these Southern Senators. Lyndon Johnson has said: "The 1964 Civil Rights Act is the first nail; the 1965 Voting Rights Act is the second nail; and the final nail in the coffin of white supremacy will be me naming Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court."
And as a writer who loves to write about drama, that was a story waiting to be written.
KENNETH MACK: Thank you. You mentioned President Johnson. As you point out in the book, both President Lyndon Johnson and Thurgood Marshall were born in the same year, 1908. Both Southerners. Humble beginnings. And I think more importantly, by 1967, they're both on one side of a great divide that's opening up, the divide between the mainstream liberal civil rights community and those who are moved more by the Vietnam War and black power.
Can you talk just a little bit about the relationship between Johnson and Marshall? Because this is one of the dramas of that moment. The president of the United States and an African American have a kind of relationship, which I think Kennedy did not have, and certainly none of the presidents before him had. But Johnson and Marshall do. Talk a little bit about that.
WIL HAYGOOD: Really good point. I think, now that I can look back on it, that there's no doubt that Lyndon Johnson was the first American president to have a real warm, human relationship with an African American male. There is just no doubt about it. Yes, Theodore Roosevelt did invite Booker T. Washington to the White House. But they were not friends by any stretch of the imagination. They were writing friends; they wrote letters back and forth, but friends just to hang around with? No.
In 1944, Thurgood Marshall was summoned to Texas to fight this case, which later became known as Smith v. Allwright. Blacks were forbidden to vote in the all-white Democratic primary. So Marshall took the case to the Supreme Court and won. He won, in Texas. And there was a young Senate candidate in Texas, who was starting to rise on Marshall's victory, because blacks started voting for this Senator. And he rose, and he got seniority, and he became the Senate leader. His name, Lyndon Johnson.
So you can argue very successfully: no Thurgood Marshall, no Lyndon Johnson. And that's the truth.
When Lyndon Johnson summoned Marshall to the White House on the day he nominated him, he said, "Thurgood, I'm nominating you because you're a lot like me. Bigger than life and we come from the same kind of people." And this was a white man saying that, saying that "we come from the same kind of people." It was just beautiful.
I went out to the Lyndon B. Johnson Library, and I came across a transcript of this conversation where, when Lyndon Johnson had left the White House and went back to Texas, and he called Thurgood Marshall one night and said, "Thurgood, I'm going to write a book." Thurgood Marshall said, "Well, what's the book going to be about, Mr. President?" And he said, "It's going to be about the hell you caused me to get you onto that Supreme Court. Because it was hell!" [laughter] And Thurgood Marshall said, "Well, Mr. President, if there's anything I can do to help you, I will."
A short while later, Lyndon Johnson died. So President Johnson never had a chance to write the book that he was going to write about the confirmation hearings. So I told my 23-year-old niece that, and she said, "So Uncle Wil, you've written the book that the president wanted to write." And said, "Well, hey, darling, that's a nice line, and I think I'm going to use it on my book tour." [laughter]
KENNETH MACK: That's great. One of the great things you do in the book is–
WIL HAYGOOD: Say that a little louder.
KENNETH MACK: Excuse me. One of the many great things which you do in this book [laughter] is you connect this sort of five days or one week, or whatever it is for the hearings back to all of this stuff, decades and decades of stuff that's happened before that connects Thurgood Marshall, both to the Senators who oppose him, and to the president who appointed him, and to African American communities around the country.
So I want to actually shift and ask a question to Elaine Jones. You are arguably somebody who Thurgood Marshall's work directly influenced the kind of life that you were going to lead. You were born in Norfolk, Virginia, in the segregated South. Your father was a Pullman porter, your mother was a schoolteacher, two occupations that were very much affected by the work that people like Thurgood Marshall were doing. You attended Howard University. You graduated in the year that Lyndon Johnson gives his "freedom is not enough" famous Howard University address. You're the first black woman in the University of Virginia's law school. You're kind of growing up, or as an adult, sort of up to the time of the confirmation hearings.
What had you heard about Marshall? What did Marshall mean to somebody like you? How did people talk about Marshall, think about Marshall and his role in their lives when you were growing up in the segregated South?
ELAINE JONES: Wil captures a lot of that, Ken, in the book, about Marshall's impact, especially in the African American community; in the Negro community, as Marshall recalled it. And so, I grew up in the segregated South.
And a series of cases that Marshall brought in the '30s, cases in the '30s, were the teacher equalization cases. Black teachers got paid one salary, white teachers another, even though they were teaching the same classes, the same level. A third-grade teacher at a white school just got 1,000 more a year than a third-grade teacher at the black school. It was just institutionalized, it was part of the system. And those cases were known as the teacher equalization cases. And they were some of the earliest cases that Thurgood Marshall– Charlie Houston may have joined one or two of them, but Thurgood Marshall stayed on that issue.
And so, my high school chemistry teacher was his plaintiff, was Thurgood Marshall's plaintiff in the case in Virginia. The case came out in Fourth Circuit. And so, it was a teacher equalization case. And so, she would talk about it. It was during chemistry, she's telling us about this issue. So it always had an impact.
And in my world, you simply had a social consciousness. You grew up knowing that your obligation was to go somewhere and get an education, especially if you had two parents who were supporting you, who cared about you. And you'd find a way to give something back.
So when I became head of the Legal Defense Fund, Thurgood Marshall was the first Director Counsel, I was the first woman and the fourth one. And I could sit at his desk and go through the files, and read Thurgood's files. And you just felt this closeness and this respect for what his life was about.
The year I became head of the Legal Defense Fund, 1993, January, was the same month and year that he passed. And I was fortunate enough to have been able to have seen him and known he and his wife, and spent some time. So I was just enriched by that.
But also Thurgood taught me some things. I mean, he had to raise the money, running all across the country. And he taught me that one of his greatest skills that he had as a lawyer– if Thurgood was sitting here, he would say, "Everybody, I appreciate the accolades and the applause, but I didn't do this by myself." He would tell you, "I had a lot of help."
There were a lot of lawyers, brilliant lawyers – Bill Hastie, the first black federal judge in the country; Bill Coleman, the first black to clerk on the Supreme Court of the United States; Charlie Houston; Charles Black. Black and white lawyers. Lou Pollak. Lawyers who came together and who brainstormed with Thurgood. And Thurgood had the force of personality, the talent and the skill to make these strong-minded, brilliant lawyers work together. Roll up their sleeves and work all night, and produce the document. And collegiality.
And that was his greatest brief, because not only could he do that among the lawyers, as you will see in Wil's book, he was able to do it in the community. When the community knew that Thurgood was coming to town, there was no time for dissention and disagreement. That was a time for harmony, identifying the goal, and working collectively toward it.
So that's the impact that he had on us.
And he also taught me about fundraising. You can be brief in fundraising. My first month there, I was sitting, scratching my head, and I said to him, "Thurgood, how did you raise this money?" And I went to the file and I saw the shortest fundraising letter in history. [laughter] Six words. Thurgood was a Mason in a society of men, and they were donors to the Legal Defense Fund. The six-word fundraising letter was: "Dear brethren, send money. Regards, Thurgood." [laughter]
KENNETH MACK: Thank you. That's a wonderful story. One of the real strengths of the book is how it connects the hearings to all kinds of people, all kinds of people all over the country. I want to ask Wil a question. Just the way that you connect Marshall's story to the stories of the people who are going to sit, I guess the word is in judgment in some way, shape and form, on him. The old bulls, you call them, the segregationist Southern senators, for whom this is the last big fight.
One of the strengths of the book is you just talk about how, if you look at the biography of this one it connects back to some old case, either that Marshall was involved in, or a case that was relevant to Marshall. Tell us just a little bit, give us a flavor of some of those stories that are in the book, how Marshall in fact is connected to the long history of the white men who were trying to oppose his conformation.
ELAINE JONES: Just before he answers that, when he answers that, I also want him to answer this – When I read that book, there were so many different stories. I mean, I know that Wil had a volume of material. And I wanted to know, how did he decide which stories to leave out and which ones to include? Because I know there were hundreds.
WIL HAYGOOD: Great questions, both of you. The connection of these men on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I knew I had to tell their life stories to make the book full. And two of the members on that ten-member committee, two of them had fathers who had murdered men in cold blood. Now, Senator Strom Thurmond's father, his daddy had murdered a man. Senator James Eastland's father had lynched two people – a black man and a woman.
So, no, I'm not saying that the senators had anything to do with that, of course, but they grew up in an environment of violence, of violent-seeking fathers. And so, that was something that I had to point out, and did not know until I started working on the book.
In telling the stories of the men: Sam Ervin, a learned man. Left his native North Carolina and came here to go to Harvard Law School, and was brilliant. Brilliant. And he trained himself to become of the foremost constitutional scholars in this country. And so, James Eastland, the chairman, told Sam Ervin, "Marshall is weak on the Constitution." Never mind that Marshall had taken 32 cases to the Supreme Court and won 29. No, "Take him down on that! He's weak." And never mind that Marshall had changed the American South. Their belief: "He's weak, you can cut him down by the Constitution."
Sam Ervin was a bibliophile. He collected books. Everywhere he went. He'd go to Amsterdam and he'd come back to his wonderful wife and she'd see him at the door: "Oh, you've brought 50 more books into the house! Goddarn it, Sam! Jesus Christ!" He'd go to New York City and he'd come back and he'd have 60 more used books. And she said, "Oh, my god, Sam, the house is falling apart, these books!"
He had amassed 30,000 books. A profoundly learned man. A constitutional scholar. Acknowledged as the smartest constitutional scholar in the US Senate. But nowhere, in none of those great books could Sam Ervin find equality for the black man.
And that is why– and I didn't understand it at first, the art designer– does anybody have the book? The art designer has Thurgood Marshall with his books on the cover. His books on the cover of this book, because that was very important. Marshall had fallen in love when he was 15 years old. And it was a great love. He knew he would never forget this first love. It was deeper than Cupid's arrow, thicker than that arrow. He thought about it at night. He told people about it. He couldn't get it out of his mind, this love.
He fell in love with the US Constitution. He had a miniature copy of it in his vest pocket that he would carry around. And Marshall would say to these senators and their staffs, "You're breaking the law. That's what you're doing, you're breaking the law. You are denying people their life and their liberty and their pursuit of happiness, all the things that we read in the US Constitution."
And I think Marshall, I can't imagine what was going through this mind. He's being quizzed by Strom Thurmond on the committee. And Strom Thurmond ran for the presidency of the United States on the all-white Dixiecrat ticket. And this man now is asking Thurgood Marshall, he said, "Can you name those who signed the 1861 slave codes?" And Thurgood Marshall was just staring at him. And Senator Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, said, "Ah, Senator Thurmond, can you?" [laughter] And Senator Thurmond said, "You're out of order! How dare you ask a question like that, young man? You're out of order." That was the scene inside of those hearing rooms.
But there were heroes, too. Young Senator Ted Kennedy was one of the heroes. Senator Birch Bayh was one of the heroes. Everett Dirksen, the Republican. Phil Hart was one of the heroes. There's something I'd love to read, if there's a second, about Phil Hart. He was one of the heroes. And so, there were heroes and these villains. And of course, no bigger hero in the book than Lyndon Johnson. I mean, him and Thurgood were the twin heroes.
People wonder, well, if there was all this stuff going on, how did Marshall win against all these senators? And Lyndon Johnson had convinced 20 – 20 – Southern segregation Senators not to vote against Marshall. And you might ask me, how in the world does that happen? Because senators go to Washington to vote; that's their bread and butter. They can brag about that.
And here's how it happened: Lyndon Johnson would get a senator on the telephone, two days before the vote. And he'd say, "Hey, big highway scheduled to come through your town next year. I love it. I know it's going to be beautiful. And my sources are telling me that they're thinking about naming this highway after you." [laughter] I might even come out for the ribbon-cutting. But now, I'll tell you what. Those highway funds just might disappear if I don't get my man onto the Court; that's all I'm saying." Click. [laughter] Then he'd hang the phone up, just click.
So that's how it got done.
ELAINE JONES: But those senators gave as good as they got.
WIL HAYGOOD: Yes, they did.
ELAINE JONES: Chairman wouldn't even tell him how long the hearings were going to be.
WIL HAYGOOD: Right. Before Marshall, every hearing less than four hours; and then with Marshall, they were extended every day for five days across 13 days. One of the bigger, shameful insults was Strom Thurmond had asked Thurgood Marshall, "Do you know, can you tell us, what's your opinion about Loving v. Virginia?" And that was a case where a black lady had been married to her husband, who was white. And they were in bed together as a husband and wife are wont to be; they were in bed together. And then a police officer in Virginia burst through their door, shined the flashlight under their sheets and arrested them for breaking the laws of interracial marriage.
Well, Marshall's second wife was Filipino. He first wife, African American, had died. He fell in love and remarried. And Strom Thurmond asked him, he brought that case into the hearing room as if he was going to embarrass Thurgood Marshall. The same Strom Thurmond, we would later learn, who had been engaged in statutory rape of his underage black maid in the family home.
Fathered a child. And that child, Essie Mae Williams, later admitted that Strom Thurmond was her father.
And so, yes, if Strom Thurmond had had a smart staff member, they might have leaned over and whispered to him, "Hey, Senator, I don't think you want to go there." [laughter] But he did.
That was supposed to bring shame upon Thurgood Marshall. But he was such a prideful guy. His wife, Cissy Marshall, was such a prideful lady.
All these characters, right out of – as one of the reviewers said, not me – right out of Central Casting.
ELAINE JONES: Wil has not answered my question, Ken, about how did you decide– which story did you decide to leave out, and how? How did you make the decision to make the cut where you made it? Because when I read the book and saw the many different stories, I happen to know there are so many more out there. And I wanted to know how you chose these. You had lot of material.
WIL HAYGOOD: The book always, to me, seemed to be a thriller. Some days I would be writing and I would be saying to myself, Wow, I wonder if he's going to make it onto the Court. This is some tough stuff that he's up against. And so, it just seemed to me that I had to be sharp and choose the certain characters to tell the story and stick with them. There were a whole lot of senators who helped, who I could have wrote about them. And then the book would have just been too long.
I wish I could have gotten more to Marshal's stories. He would tell stories on the road, as you know. And he told one that I love. Marshall knew this story well, and he would tell it. There was this man in Mississippi. He was a sharecropper. And his plantation owner wanted to make fun of him, and wanted to take him to the state capital of Jackson and have him go on a radio show, because he wanted him to make a fool of himself in front of some of his business friends.
And this sharecropper's named Joe. And Joe was taken to the radio station, and he said to the plantation owner, "Now, boss, you're telling me that I can walk up to the microphone and I'm going to be on the radio show? And people are going to hear it all over the South?" And he said, "That's right, Joe. Go on up there and say anything you want to say. I'm going to give you two minutes."
And then Joe said, "So I can tell my wife and my kids, because some of them are going up North, I can tell them how much I love them?" And the plantation owner said, "I told you, you can tell them anything you want."
And then the plantation owner walks behind some glass and he's staring into the booth, and he says to his friends, "Now, watch this old, black fool make an idiot of himself on the radio."
And so, the sharecropper walks up to the microphone and taps it, and he motions to his boss. And the boss says, "Go ahead, talk! Say anything." And Joe leaned down to the microphone and he started speaking real fast, he said, "Hello, my name is Joe Henderson and I'm being held against my will on the Stevens plantation. Somebody, anybody, come and help me!" [laughter]
Thurgood loved telling that story. He loved that story, oh, bless his heart.
KENNETH MACK: One of the great things about the book is you humanize a lot of different people, including Marshall, including the people who were opposing him. I want to bring one more person into the story. I'm going to actually wind up asking both of you a question about this person. This is Bill Coleman. One of the really interesting things in the book, you recount Bill Coleman as the alternative person that Lyndon Johnson is thinking about nominating if Marshall doesn't work out, if Marshall stumbles.
Coleman, of course, he's actually still alive; he's about 95 years old. He's a Harvard Law School graduate, first in his class. First African American to clerk for the United States Supreme Court. Assisted Marshall in numerous ways, including in Brown. He's a black Republican. A little bit more respectable than Marshall. Later on becomes Secretary of Transportation under Gerald Ford, where Elaine Jones works for Bill Coleman in the 1970s.
So I wanted to ask you both about Coleman. For Wil, I guess the question is– I think two questions. One is, how worried is Lyndon Johnson that Marshall's nomination is not going to go through. As you said, he's a kind of consummate wheeler-dealer. He reaches out to Bill Coleman. He's got something in his back pocket. So two questions. One is, how worried is he that Marshall's nomination is not going to go through? And tell us just a little bit about Coleman – background, your impressions of him, what did you learn in the book?
And I think for Elaine Jones, you worked for Coleman when he was Secretary of Transportation. I guess if Marshall had tripped up, Bill Coleman might have been the first black United States Supreme Court Justice. I kind of wanted Elaine Jones to reflect a little bit on, would that have been different? Would he been a different kind of judicial persona? The first African American Supreme Court Justice is a big deal. It is a part of history. How might we imagine that history differently, turn out differently, if in any way, with Bill Coleman?
But first Wil.
WIL HAYGOOD: That's a great question. My goodness, that is a great question. All right, Lisa, I see why you married him. All right, all right, bless your heart.
LISA JONES: You also met my kids.
WIL HAYGOOD: Yes, she's got great kids. A great father, here, great father.
ELAINE JONES: On point, get back on point. [laughter]
WIL HAYGOOD: Johnson, '64, he won a landslide victory, right? And I think his attitude was: "How dare these Southern senators make my nominee come back for a second day?" He was used to every Supreme Court nominees' hearings lasting less than four hours, too. He thought Marshall would go over there, answer some questions, and then they'd just send it to the whole Senate. But they didn't.
And so, on the second day it got rougher. Lyndon Johnson was hell-bent on integrating the US Supreme Court. So he told his staff, "Find William Coleman. These sons of guns think that they're going to embarrass me because it's going to get tough." Johnson knew it; he knew that the screws were now starting to dig deeper into Thurgood Marshall's life.
And so, Johnson summoned William Coleman, and William Coleman was in his home in Philadelphia. He caught the train down. The White House didn't want anybody to know about it. It was on a Sunday. I interviewed Mr. Coleman and he told me this wonderful story. He had no idea why he was being summoned to the White House. He was told on the telephone, "Don't tell anybody about it, and we want you to come in this door."
So he got there and faced the White House staff and the president. And he was told, "Look, Marshall might not make it. The knives are getting sharper by the hour." And Lyndon Johnson, who's a Democrat, said to William Coleman, who was a Republican, he said, "I think I can get you past these senators." And there were fewer civil rights cases in William Coleman's history than there were in Thurgood Marshall's, and William Coleman was told that they wanted him to be number two.
And he said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I worked with Thurgood Marshall on the Brown v. Board of Education case. I love the man. He's heroic. He's brave. I don't want to do anything that will lessen your fierceness to get him onto the Court." So he turned him down. But he did say, "What I will do, I'll make the rounds to all of the senators who seem to be wavering, at least those who know me personally, and I'll start heavily lobbying for Thurgood Marshall."
History very well could have been different. But as Miss Jones said, Marshall had this amazing ability to find talent and to bring talent into the room – black lawyers, white lawyers, female lawyers when it wasn't vogue to have female lawyers in the room. I mean, he would do that. He was a master at that, at getting in a room-- speaking of Louis Pollak, who I interviewed. He has since passed away. Federal judge out of Philadelphia.
And I remember sitting talking to him and I said, "Wow, it just seems like Thurgood Marshall was such a humble man." And he said, "No, he wasn't. He wasn't no humble man. He knew how great he was. He knew it. He knew how great he was." And then I just started laughing.
ELAINE JONES: Lou Pollak was former dean of the Yale Law School. And Lou Pollak, Bill Coleman and Thurgood Marshall all met each other in 1949. Bill was 29 years old. Thurgood was 41. And Thurgood and LDF had just won the case in the Supreme Court dealing with housing, the segregated housing.
KENNETH MACK: Shelley v. Kraemer.
ELAINE JONES: That's right.
WIL HAYGOOD: A case out of St. Louis.
ELAINE JONES: Shelley v. Kraemer, right, 1948. So this is '49, and Bill Coleman had graduated, and really couldn't find a job, so he and Lou Pollak ended up at the same firm in New York, because no Philadelphia firm would hire Bill. First in his class at Harvard; that didn't matter. And he clerked for Frankfurter and he'd gone into the Army, he'd gone into World War II and then had come back and finished law school.
To make a long story short, Thurgood and LDF were trying to get their legal theory, develop a legal theory on Brown. The cases hadn't yet been filed, because Thurgood's mentor, Charlie Houston, died in 1950. And Charlie Houston's death– Charlie Houston graduated Harvard Law School in 1922. He was Harvard Law Review as well. But Charlie Houston, his death spurred the group of lawyers who were trying to develop a Brown legal theory to finally attack Plessy. That had to evolve, because McLaurin, Sweatt, all those cases that they had worked on, they were around the edges; they were only the equal part of separate-but-equal. It was not really trying to root and branch get rid of discrimination.
So that's when they really got busy. When Charlie Houston died in April, all five of the Brown complaints were filed in 1951 and '52. So they were very busy during that period. Bill Coleman worked at the law firm during the day as a young lawyer, and would come to LDF at night in New York, and work another three or four hours, and then get back to Philadelphia, because he was still living in Philly. So he and Thurgood really developed a very close relationship.
Now, let's fast forward from '49 to '67; that's 18 years hence, right? Bill Coleman is your quintessential Philadelphia lawyer: pinstriped suit, gold watch, French cuffs-- the whole thing. All of the trappings. And so, it's interesting, he was surprised, I'm sure. I mean, we never discussed this, but he was, I'm sure. Bill is wily, smart and wily. I'm sure he was stunned when Lyndon Johnson told Bill that he was Lyndon's backup plan for the Supreme Court.
Now, Bill was not going to tell the president, "Yes, I'll be your backup plan," because he loved Thurgood too much, he would never do that. Secondly, he's not going to say no, because he's talking to the president of the United States; you don't look in his face and say no. So when I read your book and when I read what Bill said to the president it made sense to me.
Bill said to the president, according to Wil [laughter], according to Wil, "Oh, Mr. President, it's such an honor, but the pay is so lousy. [laughter] I've got kids I've got to educate. I've got tuitions I've got to pay, and I can't do it on that salary." Thinking that that's something that Lyndon would get right away, which he did get, because he didn't push it after that. And Bill said that he would go there and talk to other senators.
But the Bill that I know would have been very pleased to be on the Supreme Court of the United States. But he was not going to do it, take it under those terms. And I respect and admire him for that.
Now, Bill also became Chair of Thurgood's Board, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in the late '50s and '60s. Before Thurgood went up on the Court of Appeals, Bill Coleman was Chair of the Board. When I came to the Legal Defense Fund in 1970, Bill was Chair of the Board.
And so, what happened was, after a while, they had put me, after litigating the death penalty cases, they had put me down in Washington with Eastland and Thurmond and company on civil rights issues. Which is another story, for other books. But at least I got them on the back end of their tenure.
But Bill was asked by President Ford to be his Secretary of Transportation. And so, Bill then asked me to come to Washington – I was in New York at the time – to be one of his two special assistants. And I did. And we had fun. I said, "Bill, Department of transportation? What do I know about transportation?" He said, "I don't know anything either and I'm Secretary." [laughter]
So we go to Washington. And we have fun. Bill gave landing rights to the Concorde. The issue was the women, the Coast Guard was not admitting women. The Coast Guard, they couldn't get to sea, so he told me, "Elaine, work that out." And we had to fire the civil rights people, because they didn't know what they were doing. And then we had to start all over again. Finally, Bill made the decision to send women to the Coast Guard. And I met the commandant when he was bejeweled and beribboned and sat down and explained to him that women were going in the Coast Guard, and so he might as well get on board; we could certainly appreciate his support since it's his Coast Guard.
And then he taught me something else. He said to me, "Look, I noticed you around this department. And I know you're Southern and all of that." It shows you how he was a mentor. He was a mentor to me. He said, "You are calling these people, white men in their 50s, you're calling them Mr. This and Mr. That. And they're calling you Elaine. You are my eyes and ears. I want you to go home tonight and learn everybody's first name and come in here tomorrow and use it. I never want to hear another Mr. Anybody around this department from you." [applause]
See, those are the things I learned. And so when I told the commandant, I said, "Paul. [laughter] All you've got to do is show us how to do it."
KENNETH MACK: Thank you. [applause] I think it's time for us to invite all of you to be part of the conversation. So questions? Step up to the microphone. You are doing what Thurgood Marshall would want you to do. He always emphasized that these things were collective endeavors. So, questions?
Q: It is a privilege to be asking a question about the amazing Thurgood Marshall. My name is Beau Stubblefield-Tave, and I was born in Houston, Texas, in 1956. Some of us in this room will understand, I was born at Houston Negro Hospital in 1956. Some will say, Well, that was the South. Brigham and Women's, I worked with a colleague who helped desegregate that in the '60s. So hearing the success, hearing what people sacrificed for us to be where we are is such a privilege.
And I have to say, it took me an hour to get down here, so I didn't get to hear much of what you all said. But I want to ask specifically about the transition from being an advocate with the Legal Defense Fund to being a Justice on the Supreme Court. Because I look at some colleagues who have a challenge making that shift from advocacy for a particular group to being a justice for everyone, and yet not forgetting where you came from and what you need to do.
I would just like to hear you speak about how Marshall conceived of the transition when he agreed to be Justice, and therefore be responsible for interpreting the law for everyone, and yet clearly still being an advocate for those who have been oppressed by the system.
KENNETH MACK: Do you want to start, Wil?
WIL HAYGOOD: Who's the question for? Me or Miss Jones?
Q: Either would be a privilege. I intended it for you.
WIL HAYGOOD: Okay, I'll go first and then she can weigh in. Marshall, once he got on the Court, of course, it's a very short time there that the Court shifted to the right, and I don't think he was happy many of those years. He wrote a lot of dissents. A lot of dissents. And he would ask his law clerks when he was interviewing people to become his law clerks, "You better get used to writing dissents."
But he enjoyed his life on the Court. He had fun with it. He wrote some beautiful dissents.
Realize now, he was the first, as you said, the first, and it had to be lonely and all that. There was one white secretary who refused to work for him; she just said no. So she left. Sometimes he would be in the elevator and a group of people would get on and they would think he was the elevator operator. He would be out of his robe and they would say "third floor, please." And he's say, "Okay," he'd push three, and then they would get off and he would say, "Have a good time visiting the United States Supreme Court."
And just think of the psyche of that. It had to bring a funny tickle to his funny bone, but it also had hurt, too.
ELAINE JONES: Just quick, on the advocates question, most judges have been advocates. They have represented somebody, whether they had a private practice, whether they're in nonprofit. Whatever they're doing, they have taken a side of a case and they've argued it. And they have been advocates.
The judicia, I don't think, is too much of a challenge. Because as an advocate, you have to know both sides of the case. You need to know your side and you need to know your opponent's side. What is she or he arguing? What is the argument? And for you to be able to settle these cases and come to agreement, you have to know what's important to one another.
And so, as a judge, all you're doing is sitting up there and are relieved of the responsibility of representing either side. But you just sit there and you listen to both sides. And then you apply the law.
So LDF has a proud history of our cooperating attorneys and our lawyers going on the bench; the state bench and the federal bench. And people who've worked with us over the years and who've been superb judges – A. Leon Higginbotham. Nathaniel Jones, Court of Appeals. Nina Pillard, just went on the DC Circuit. We just had one of our former lawyers become a federal court judge in Connecticut.
And so, it's not a big leap. That's my view.
WIL HAYGOOD: I must share this. I was invited to New York City to the offices of the LDF – that's the Legal Defense Fund – where Miss Jones was the number four CEO of that group. And I was invited there yesterday to sign books at Thurgood Marshall's desk.
ELAINE JONES: We have excellent timing, don't we? [laughter]
WIL HAYGOOD: Yeah. And it just gave me goose bumps to do it. I sat there and I just thought of my mother from the South, and I thought of all those death threats that Thurgood Marshall had gotten. And I thought of just his life and what he gave. It really was extraordinarily moving, that they wanted me to come up there because of their feelings about the book, and they wanted me to do it. It was just a very powerful moment for me.
Yes, question?
Q: Thank you for the stories and the history and the insight that you've shared this evening. I'm Kelley Chunn, I'm from Boston. I have a background in TV news, public affairs, PR and cause-related marketing, so interested. I haven't read the book yet. I'm wondering to what extent you covered how this story was covered, particularly being a reporter, a former reporter, writer and currently a writer. How was it covered in the press? Were there any differences between the African American press and the mainstream press? And I can't remember back this far. Was it covered on television, were the hearings covered on television the way they are today? I don't have any memory of that myself.
And the other question is, upcoming books. I'm wondering what you might be working on next. And you definitely have a book in you, Miss Jones. Maybe a few. What might be next? Thank you.
WIL HAYGOOD: Not to quote this review, but there was a snarky review, a very snarky review. I don't have time to go look for that person. [laughter] But writers are very sensitive people, of course. Who said, "Haygood doesn't pay attention to how the press covered the hearings." The press was not allowed in the hearing room! James Eastland gave him two hours on the first day and then said, "get out." That's how powerful the Senate was. This was a very closed event as far as the media. And members of the media were loath to say bad things about powerful senators. Nobody made the connection about the Loving v. Virginia racial slant. It was offensive, but that wasn't written about.
And so, it got a little bit of coverage when it first happened, the announcement. But did they cover it on TV every day like they do the hearings now? Absolutely not.
But there is something– I'm so glad you asked that question, because this is somebody who heard about it on the radio. And this is a letter that was written to Senator John McClellan, a letter that was written to him. And I went to visit his archives in the state of Arkansas. Upon his death, his papers would not be open for 50 years. I started this book at 50 years and three weeks after he died. So I hopped on a plane and went right to Arkansas.
And I came across this letter that was written to the Senator by somebody who lived in his state. And it says:
Dear Senator, I am a resident of Arkansas and a law-abiding citizen who believes strongly in God, the United States Constitution and justice for all. Recently, I read an article concerning remarks made by you and another senator about Thurgood Marshall and his efforts to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Sir, I am a Negro, an American. I want you to know how I feel about Mr. Marshall's nomination. I'm sure that I can speak for all the Negroes in Arkansas. Mr. Marshall is just as qualified as any likely candidate that you know. It has been made quite clear which side you are on. We all know why you and the other Southern senators don't want him to be on the Supreme Court, and it's not because of the Constitution. You don't want him because he's black and that is the only reason.
Chances are that the nomination will be turned down, but we hope and pray that you will open up your heart and let all the hatred out and let Mr. Marshall's record speak for itself. Color doesn't make the person, Senator. It is character that makes the man.
If he doesn't get the nomination, there will be others who will seek after the same opportunity when it presents itself. There will be hundreds, Senator, and you can't fight them all.
One of these days, the president of the United States will be a Negro.
Sincerely yours, Barbara Ross.
Dear Senator, I am a resident of Arkansas and a law-abiding citizen who believes strongly in God, the United States Constitution and justice for all. Recently, I read an article concerning remarks made by you and another senator about Thurgood Marshall and his efforts to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.
Sir, I am a Negro, an American. I want you to know how I feel about Mr. Marshall's nomination. I'm sure that I can speak for all the Negroes in Arkansas. Mr. Marshall is just as qualified as any likely candidate that you know. It has been made quite clear which side you are on. We all know why you and the other Southern senators don't want him to be on the Supreme Court, and it's not because of the Constitution. You don't want him because he's black and that is the only reason.
Chances are that the nomination will be turned down, but we hope and pray that you will open up your heart and let all the hatred out and let Mr. Marshall's record speak for itself. Color doesn't make the person, Senator. It is character that makes the man.
If he doesn't get the nomination, there will be others who will seek after the same opportunity when it presents itself. There will be hundreds, Senator, and you can't fight them all.
One of these days, the president of the United States will be a Negro.
Sincerely yours, Barbara Ross.
July 19, 1967, the second day of the Thurgood Marshall hearings. She lived at 2103 Delaware Street. It says here, "no answer." She did not even get an answer. She was considered invisible. Well, guess what?
ELAINE JONES: Considering what he may have said, maybe it was the right thing to do, to not
WIL HAYGOOD: But history can be magical, the arc of it. I've tracked down Miss Barbara Ross. She lives in Texarkana, Arkansas, to this day. She was a 19-year-old college student when she wrote this letter. And I told her that I'm going to be in her neck of the woods on my book tour next month, and I'm going to bring her a copy of this letter.
She told me, she said: "My daddy had bought me a manual typewriter that previous Christmas. And I had my transistor radio on the back porch, and I was home from college and I listened to a little snippet of the hearings, and I just knew he wasn't going to get on the Supreme Court. And I told my dad that I wanted to write a letter. And he told me that it might get me in trouble. And my college professors, two of them who I called and asked for advice, they also told me not to write it. But I did."
When I reached her on the telephone, I said, "Mrs. Ross, you are my hero." [applause] So she might not have gotten a reply from the Senator, but her letter is in my book. [applause]
KENNETH MACK: We're almost at time. I think we have two people in line. I think I'd like both of you to ask short questions, and then we'll have one final round of answers. So each of you ask a question, and then we'll answer.
Q: Thank you. This has been an absolute privilege. Speaking of arcs, there are generally long arcs on crucial social justice issues. Miss Jones, as you spoke about, between the teacher equalization cases and Brown v. Board of Ed, there were two decades. In order to make change over a time period like that, not only do you have to persevere and persist, but you've also got to stay relevant in the hearts and, more importantly, the minds of the general public. Can you speak to the way in which, and the characteristics and the capabilities that allowed Thurgood Marshall, but also many others at the LDF, to continue and work on issues over a long period of time to actually create change.
KENNETH MACK: Okay, and then question number two.
Q: I wanted one of the stories that broke your heart because you couldn't include it in the book.
KENNETH MACK: Both great questions. Who wants to go first?
ELAINE JONES: Well, let's hear that first.
WIL HAYGOOD: One that, if I would have had room, then I guess I would have told even more of this particular story. Harry and Harriette Moore were voting rights activists in the State of Florida. She was a schoolteacher, and he was first full-time employee for the NAACP. On Christmas Eve, 1951, they went out to have dinner. And while they were gone, several Ku Klux Klansmen climbed under their house and set sticks of dynamite. And that was Christmas Eve.
Their daughter, Evangeline Moore, was on a train going to Florida, to spend Christmas with her family. She was sitting in the segregated car. The Moores came home, finished wrapping their gifts, crawled into bed and the dynamite exploded at three o'clock in the morning. Harry Moore died instantly.
The next morning, when Evangeline Moore got off the train, she looked around and said, "Where's Mom and Dad," and her uncle was there and told her, "Your dad has been murdered and your mom is at the hospital and we have to rush you there right away to see her."
And they did, and the doctors told Evangeline Moore, "If your mother can hold on for seven days, then we believe she'll make it." She died on the sixth day, Harriette Moore.
So I just felt that I wanted to write more and more about that story, because it gripped me so much. And if we may, if I can indulge you, I'd like a moment of silence for Evangeline Moore. She died just yesterday.
[moment of silence]
Thank you.
ELAINE JONES: There are other stories like that, but the Moores' is a very rich story. And many, many people don't know it, I mean, what they were doing in the Florida Panhandle in the late '40s and early '50s. And then, in the book though, Wil talks about how they knew the men who did it; they identified them. They knew the four of them who did it. Nobody, I don't think, was ever convicted.
WIL HAYGOOD: No.
ELAINE JONES: Nobody was ever convicted. But there are a lot of unsung heroes and heroines like that during the struggle for social justice. But I'm glad the book lets the Moores live once again.
WIL HAYGOOD: There was one more for the lady who asked that question. When Thurgood Marshall came down to Charleston, South Carolina, to start the Briggs case, which morphed into the Brown v. Board of Education case, there was this young black senior in college. And he stood in line with his ham sandwich and his cold water, sometimes, for two hours, because the courtroom would be so crowded; everybody wanted to see the great Thurgood Marshall. And this gentleman later went on to become a very great lawyer, Judge Perry.
ELAINE JONES: Matthew Perry.
WIL HAYGOOD: Matthew Perry of South Carolina, who died maybe two years ago. But he also has a building named after him. And I had a whole section on Matthew Perry leaving his home in the morning, going, standing in the hot sun to watch Thurgood Marshall. I probably had, I don't know, maybe 15 pages. And it just wouldn't fit. So that's a story that–
ELAINE JONES: And Strom Thurmond ended up making Matthew Perry the first black federal judge in South Carolina.
WIL HAYGOOD: It's a great story on so many levels. But there was just no room.
ELAINE JONES: I just want to say, on the question about the staying power, these issues have been with us too long. And they are still with us. They're still with us. And fits and starts, we make progress and we retrogress. We make progress and we– but we, all of us, no matter our race and color, we're Americans and we believe in this democratic experiment we've got here. We have got to solve this issue of race in the United States. I mean, we really do.
And sure, we're not where we were, but we're so far from where we need be. And this growing economic inequality is just making us the haves and the have-nots. But tactics have to change. Strategies have to change. But what has to remain the same is the commitment, our vision and our collective energy. We have to understand that is our time now. And we have to do what it is we can do between that dash – between birth and death – to solve; to solve this problem. [applause]
Q: I know you're done, but please forgive me, because there is a Ballad of Harry T. Moore by Sweet Honey in the Rock. I just want to make sure people know that. It's only a brief snippet, but it gives you a little flavor of who that amazing family was.
ELAINE JONES: And our issue today is voting rights. There's voting disenfranchisement. We've got to turn that around. We've got to get the right to vote back for all of our people who are citizens and are entitled to vote. And we shouldn't be subject to the whims of those who want to discriminate and separate based on whatever notions they have of entitlement.
KENNETH MACK: So two things before we go. Reminding you all that Wil Haygood will be signing copies of the book afterwards, I think in the bookstore, which is right out there. Actually in the lobby, he'll be signing books. So feel free to purchase and get one signed, and we will continue the conversation.
But first, let's thank Wil for writing the book. [applause] And thank you to Elaine Jones for coming and for a lifetime of service. [applause]
WIL HAYGOOD: Thank you.
KENNETH MACK: Thank you, all
JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUMColumbia Point, Boston MA 02125 (617) 514-1600


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The Media Boss
About This Show
The Core Influence of Marketing & Media.Read more »
The Core Influence of Marketing & Media.Read more »
In The Media Boss Podcast, we help you to succeed with your marketing and media efforts, and this show is for you! Whether you're expert who's been in the field for years — or you haven't even made your first move yet! We can all reach for higher levels of success in business and in life! This Week's Quick Tip: Art of Networking: Highlights some insights on The Art of Networking, what's the purpose of networking and why it is considered as business tool, must-have skill and how do you benefit even if you own a small business. Feature Segment: In today's feature segment, I'll be sharing with you some thoughts and ideas to protect your launch from being killed. And few major things that could mess up your product launch easily, if you just avoid them! Here's a short list of things we focus on: Weak Offer. Bad Positioning. Cold List of Customers. Not Conversation with Your Customers. Weak Launch Story. Finally, I want your launches to be so successful. And I'd love to hear your success story. Launch #LikeABoss This Week's Blog: P0ach Blog - P0ach.com Announcements: We're officially listed in Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to our show directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and other devices. Audio Plugs instructions mentioned in Listener Feedback Request. Follow The Media Boss on Twitter and Like The Media Boss on Facebook. Subscription Links: If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe (and leave a review) in iTunes. You can hear The Media Boss Podcast on Stitcher SmartRadio. (*) Stitcher allows you to listen to your favorite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond. Read more »


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Showing maker mark with additional "M"...object is foot long seving spoon (displaying button/knob rest on rear). Is this super letter a date code?
Porter Blanchard Added "M" Mark
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Re: Porter Blanchard Added "M" Mark
Was able to find the Blanchard (Gardiner MA) practice of adding a smith's single intial stamp appears to have likely continued with the new shops (Pacoima/Calabassas) in California. If by chance this is an inverted mark, then Lewis Wise (c.1950-70) might be the actual maker. However, I have not yet been able to find any "M" name linked with P-B, apprentice or other, so no final conclusion is drawn yet.
Re: Porter Blanchard Added "M" Mark
Porter Blanchard made no flatware after 1955; it was made by his son-in-law Lewis Wise. Blanchard's grandson, Troy Wise worked for the firm, is still alive and could answer your question if you can find him. He lives in Alaska. See:
Good luck in your research.
Good luck in your research.
Re: Porter Blanchard Added "M" Mark
Added for ref.: Technically, a "Dressing Spoon". A matching fork was made, causing these to often be called salad servers. (The narrow profile would seem to negate that use.)
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Safe House Security
A high-end Corporate Presentation for Safe House Security to promote the services delivered by the company. The main purpose was two fold. First to create awareness in the common people about Security Related issues and Home Automation. Second was to promote the company for the services offered by Safe House Security. It was a tough task and the complete day to day activities of a person need to be involved. This was accomplished using character animation depicting the complete days work form morning wake-up to going to bed in the night. The animation revealed the different stages of security of the house and also the Home Automation to make day to day activities a easy task.
Below is the other videos of Safe House Security:
About Safe House
Safe House Services


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When I first heard about this debate, I was a little skeptical. Between the parade of guest stars and the announcement of a live stunt, I thought this thing had a whiff of Will & Grace desperation stink. And while it didn't reach the level of President Bartlet's debate drubbing of Rob Ritchie a few seasons back, it was still pretty darn exciting to watch Bobby Simone and Hawkeye Pierce get it on without a net.
First off, did we need Ellen DeGeneres playing host? I dig Ellen as much as the next guy (or girl), but she doesn't exactly ooze executive-branch gravitas. I was also kinda surprised they started with a backstage segment. I guess director Alex Graves really wanted to try his hand at a live West Wing walk-and-talk.
Wasn't Alan Alda's long opening pause great? For a minute, I thought he had lost it like Admiral James Stockdale in the 1992 VP debate. Vinick's gambit to dump the debate rules turned out to be a stroke of genius. On this judge's scorecard, Vinick and Alda both scored knockouts. Politically, Vinick came off as sensible and passionate. From his line about putting all of
I really thought this was going to be a coming-out party for a


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Reeva Steenkamp may have had her skull crushed on the night she was shot dead by Oscar Pistorius, it was claimed yesterday.
A bloodied cricket bat found by police at the South African Blade Runner's home was last night at the centre of the case.
Detectives will run forensic tests to see who the blood belonged to, amid reports it could also have been used by 30-year-old Reeva to protect herself as she was gunned down.
A source close to the investigation said: "There was lots of blood on the bat. Forensic tests will show whose it was."
Officers have specifically asked analysts to test for traces of steroids and other drugs.
As well as bullet wounds to the head, arm, hand and hip, Reeva suffered a fractured skull, a postmortem revealed.
It was also claimed a cartridge was discovered in the bedroom of 26-year-old Pistorius after the Valentine's Day slaughter at his Pretoria home.
The source said: "The suspicion is that the first shot, in the bedroom, hit her in the hip.
"She then ran and locked herself in the toilet. She was doubled over because of the pain. He fired three more shots. She probably covered her head which is why the bullet went through her hand."
After the shooting, Pistorius is said to have made an 3.20am call to dad Henke begging him to come to his house.
When they arrived he was said to have Reeva "dangling" in his arms as he tried to give her mouth-to-mouth.
Pistorius allegedly told his sister Aimee something terrible had happened and he had shot Reeva by mistake, thinking she was a burglar. She has given a sworn statement to police, it is believed.
Sources claim police have a "rock solid" case against the Paralympian. The gold medallist's family have hit back by insisting detectives have no evidence to bring a murder charge.
But Henke and his wife said they have "zero doubt" his son acted on instinct when he shot Reeva.
He added: "It's totally absurd to even suggest anything different. When you wake up in the middle of the night, and crime is so endemic in South Africa, what do you do if somebody is in the house? Do you think it's one of your family? Of course not."
Other relatives said Pistorius is as "numb with shock as well as grief".
A family statement said: "We have no doubt there is no substance to the allegation and that the State's case strongly refutes any possibility of premeditated murder or indeed any murder at all."
It is believed security guards manning the gated community where the athlete lived were first on the scene after the shooting. One said: "He was almost collapsed and full of remorse."
Justin Divaris, a close friend of Pistorius told how the athlete called him after the tragedy.
He added: "He said, 'There has been a terrible accident, I shot Reeva.' Next thing his neighbour picked up the phone and told me it was true. I was in total shock. I asked, 'Is she OK?' She replied, 'No. She's not OK.'"
On Saturday, TV bosses broadcast film of Reeva on reality show, Tropika Island of Treasure, in Jamaica. In an interview before leaving, the model spoke about leaving an impact on life. She said: "The way you make your exit is so important."
Relatives of Pistorius fear the tragedy could kill his ailing grandparents Gerti, 89, and Henry, 95, who have been on medication ever since. Daughter Heidi Drew said: "This could mean their end."


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Nora Dershlit is Still Psycho for iCarly!
Guess who's back and who's still psycho!? Nora Dershlit!
Miranda Cosgrove gets cozy with one of the many party-goer mannequins in this new still from iCarly.
In the upcoming episode, "iStill Psycho," After receiving word that Nora Dershlit (Danielle Morrow) is going to be released from jail, the iCarly kids set out to try and keep their old captor behind bars. Things take a turn for the worse after Nora and her parents capture the gang.
Freddie (Nathan Kress) finds a way to get a message to his mother, but will Mrs. Benson be able to come to their rescue before it's too late?
JJJ was on the set during filming and found out that the cast was freaked out by all the mannequins.
"You think that they're real and they're just keeping really still," Jennette McCurdy told us. "It's freaky!"
"iStill Psycho" premieres on Saturday, December 31st @ 8PM ET/PT on Nickeldeon. 10+ pics inside…
"iStill Psycho" Preview
Posted to: iCarly, Jennette McCurdy, Miranda Cosgrove, Nathan Kress


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Sean Bean: I was a Bowie clone
Sean Bean: I was a Bowie clone
Sean Bean has revealed he used to dress up like David Bowie.
The Lord Of The Rings star, who will turn 50 in April, told The Times he used to glam up like the 70s rock star when he was a teenager.
Sheffield-born Sean said: "I wore similar outfits to Bowie. The truth is, I was a clone. I dyed my hair red, wore jumpsuits and big stack heels decorated with stars.
"People in Sheffield thought I was a poof. A weirdo. Which encouraged me to do it even more. I risked getting my head kicked in for a while, but then glam rock became more mainstream and dyeing your hair, wearing make-up and dressing up became more acceptable."
The Sharpe star also revealed that after seeing Ken Loach's film Kes, he bought a kestrel, trained it and let it fly free.
Sean will soon appear on screens in Channel Four's Red Riding, a Tony Grisoni adaptation of David Peace's Red Riding Quartet that is set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders.
The actor said the script was one of the most harrowing he had read.
"The scripts were dark and perverse," Sean said. "I've never read anything like it. It's oppressive from the very start. It's one of the most horrible stories I've ever been involved with.
"But very rewarding. We didn't get
paid much because the money went on the screen, but nobody was
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