JOHN WALKER (1937-2019): A FIGHTER WE KNEW

As Thanksgiving approaches, we step back and honor the life and work of John Walker, the Arkansas civil rights lawyer and state representative who died October 28 at age 82. Walker's work had national implications. All three of us knew him in some way. We mourn his loss for different reasons. 

John Walker grew up in Rob's hometown of Hope, AR where he lived until 1952 when he left for Texas and high school graduation in Houston. He returned to Arkansas for an undergraduate degree from Woodson's AM&N College. After graduate school at New York University, he earned his law degree in 1964 at Henry's Yale University.   

Walker opened a Little Rock law practice in 1965. He won a seat in the Arkansas legislature in 2010, serving until his death. We remember him for the years between starting that practice and his death. 

Henry's Memories 

It was an audacious idea hardly anyone would have believed if I'd made it up. Ten years after John Walker told me, then a wet-behind-the-ears freshman at Yale, he planned on starting a civil rights law firm in Arkansas and I should attend law school and join him, I found myself doing just that. John and his wife invited me to dinner one spring night in 1964 when he made that seemingly ridiculous suggestion. He was only graduating from Yale himself that semester.

While practicing with him, first at Walker, Kaplan, and Mays, then at Walker, Hollingsworth, and Jones, I witnessed and played a small part in changing life for minorities and women in Arkansas and elsewhere in America. John, his partners, and associates made a difference still not fully calculated. Thousands of lives improved because of the work those lawyers did under John's leadership. 

He possessed a brilliant legal mind, thought faster on his feet, and more effectively organized large volumes of information than

any lawyer I observed during my years of clerking in the federal courts or in practice. He used his skills in carrying out his mission of wringing justice and fairness from a flawed system. He was my friend and I am grateful for the opportunity he gave me to participate in a cause I hold dear. Little did I know his outlandish suggestion in 1964 was just another of his bold, but accurate, predictions.
  

Woodson Cried

I cried when I learned of John's death. Though I am grateful for what he did for me, that's not why I cried. I cried for what racism robbed him of.

  

After he hired me in August 1976 we toured downtown Little Rock in his powder-blue

1974 Lincoln Continental for a private conversation. He was 40. I was 26. He sought to boost my self-confidence by telling me he believed my having graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School meant that I was one of the smartest lawyers in Little Rock. I was not convinced, though I appreciated the gesture. 

  

Soon, I assisted him in a murder trial in Conway, where I witnessed one of his signature trial tactics. On the morning of the trial he made a plethora of oral motions to the utter consternation of the judge and prosecutor. The prosecutor wilted under the pressure and offered John's indigent black client a deal, allowing him to plead to a lesser offense and receive probation. The defendant

later became a millionaire businessman. John introduced me to employment discrimination law when he dispatched me to Crossett in the spring of 1977 to interview class members for weeks in the Georgia Pacific case. The case eventually settled.

I cried because living in a racist society had cheated John, as it had my own father, of the opportunity to be whatever he wanted to be, as opposed to what he felt compelled to be. My father wanted to become a millionaire farmer. It was not to be. He was restricted to being a farmer in the hills of Conway County because the alluvial farmlands in the county were reserved for white farmers. In the same way, John

became a civil rights lawyer because becoming a business tycoon, law professor in a major university, or federal judge were not realistic opportunities for him. When others celebrate him as a civil rights advocate, I fight feelings of anger that because of racism he did not feel the freedom to do something else.

Will the day ever come when there will no longer be a need to celebrate fighters against racism? Not knowing the answer to that question is why I cried.  

Rob's Recollections 

Even though we hailed from the same town, I knew John Walker less well than my colleagues. We never worked together; indeed, I wasn't a lawyer when I lived in Little Rock and watched him from afar. That didn't keep me from admiring his work or appreciating that America requires people like him.  

John Walker took on powerful forces, using the tool those forces couldn't control - our national dedication to the rule of law. By fighting segregated schools, employment discrimination, and wrongs in criminal justice,

John Walker made Arkansas better. In his sliver of the world, he used the law in holding the system accountable.  

Ironically, I saw Walker up close in one of his losing battles. In 1977, he took on the Arkansas Razorback football establishment.

In those days, the team won a lot and enjoyed sacred cow status. Walker challenged coach Lou Holtz's suspension of three black players over a dormitory incident involving a white woman. As a sportscaster at a Little Rock television station, I covered the story closely.  The players remained suspended, a threatened boycott by other black players fizzled, and Walker lost his court challenge. Still, the fact Walker took on the case inspired respect I hold until this day.