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DEL.ICIO.USThe late Griffin Bell speaks, one more time
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This morning, National Public Radio broadcast a fine interview with the late Griffin Bell, the late U.S. attorney general. The talk was recorded in August, not long after Bell learned of his cancer.
Most fascinating is Bell’s description of his early support of school desegregation, which he came to believe was necessary in the years after World War II.
Bell also talked about bringing transparency back to the U.S. Justice Department after the Watergate schedule.
Bell died Monday at age 90. He was buried Wednesday in Sumter County, but a memorial service in Atlanta was held Friday.
Comments
By Crime Pays Sometimes
January 10, 2009 11:31 AM | Link to this
Obama will astonish us all on inauguration day. He’ll obliterate the last refuge of conservatism by exorcising the jingoistic jangle of jungle law that possessed our unjuried foreign policy. He’ll douse Bush’s divine rights of executive privelege with a baptism of you’re fired.
Obama will invoke the dormant phantoms of our founding fathers, unleashing the unconsummated bliss of our promised freedoms while he annulls the Cheney shotgun-marriage of church and state.
Obama will speak as our president, and our latent prophesy of justice will be fulfilled; our cautious faith in America restored; our new blushing Bride of Liberty will beckon globally to the wretched refuse of Bush Diplomacy: You are America too!
By Gary
January 11, 2009 3:48 AM | Link to this
It is interesting that Griffin Bell looked up school desegregation as his greatest accomplishment but sad that he and Gov.Jimmy Carter actually helped end the school desegregation case in metro Atlanta and, in exchange turn over control of the system to black leaders, leaving metro Atlanta one of the most segregated regions in South for decades, in striking contrast, for example, to Charlotte. I believe, this helped speed the outward sprawl of both whites and middle class blacks and Latinos searching for the kind of schools that were available across metro Charlotte. The sweeping resegregation of the city was followed by extremely rapid resegregation of major parts of suburbia since there was no overall plan for desegregation and housing and home lending discrmination were very severe. It is sad that Bell’s important work in cases from rural Georgia did not carry over to a vision for integration in the metro region.