| It is sometimes easy to dismiss people who have risen to positions of high importance as somehow being different from the rest of us; that they were "born with a silver spoon in their mouths." While Justice Louis B. Butler Jr., the first African American to sit on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, is an affable and warm individual and holds a position of great importance, he also carries the scars from wounds inflicted in a race conscious society. He has risen in spite of the barriers placed in his way. On February 21, Butler, the great, great grandson of a freed slave, spoke to a packed conference room at the Wis. Dept. of Workforce Development as the keynote speaker at its Black History Month celebration. Butler spoke of his own history growing up on Chicago's south side during the modern day civil rights era, the era of the murder of Emmett Till and the beating death of an African American for being on the wrong side of the street in Cicero, Ill. Butler's great grandparents had owned the first African American owned store in Austin, Texas where young African American men would go if rumor had it they were going to be the victim of a lynch mob. They would be placed in an empty flour barrel kept in the store for just such an occasion and quickly carried away on a "hay ride" with people singing until they got out of town. Butler's own grandmother had to leave Austin at the age of 12 because she was light-skinned and light-skinned African American women were oftentimes raped in Austin. It is within this context that Butler too has faced his own challenges. When he was 8-years old, his grammar school principal interviewed him about what he would like to be when he grew up and Butler said he wanted to be the President of the United States, a dream many young children had. But his principal thought this was unrealistic and summoned his parents to the school. "'Maybe he's too far advanced for his age group,'" Butler recalled the principal said to his parents. "'Maybe we should put him back with children who are more his age. Maybe he'll get more realistic if we do that.' So they concocted this plan to put me back from the second grade to the first grade. Now I don't know any of this is happening. My father -- shrewd negotiator -- joined the church just so I could get into the school. He wasn't very religious. My father decided we needed to do something about this. He asked the principal, 'How's he doing in school?' ' Well, he's doing okay.' 'What's his rank?' I was first in the class at that point. Things change when you get older. 'How does he get along with his friends?' 'He gets along fine.' Then I'm not sure I see the problem.' 'Well, he has the unrealistic goals.' So my father wonders if there is something they can do because I was doing fine in the second grade and there was no reason to put me back. So the principal decides to come up with an option. They pulled out what was known then as the 'Uncle Funny Bunny Book.' The Uncle Funny Bunny Book is given to my father to be given to me. And I'm given three weeks to go through and answer the book from cover to cover." "Now I have no idea this discussion is taking place," Butler continued. "I'm just a young kid who likes to play baseball and go outside. I liked to hang out with my friends. I was just learning how to play chess. I had all of these things I wanted to do. My father came home and said, 'Look at this.' And I looked at it. Now you have to understand that some of us are proficient in some areas and not proficient in others. And foreign language has never been one of my skills. And when I saw this Uncle Funny Bunny Book, it looked like Greek to me. It was just over my head." Butler was essentially grounded for three weeks except for the benevolent brief reprieves his mother snuck in behind his father's back. Each day, Butler tried and failed to make headway. One day, while he was watching cartoons after school before his dad came home, the "light bulb" went on. He picked up the book and answered all of the questions in about a half an hour and showed it to his mom. "She looked, she smiled and said, 'Wait till you father gets home,'" Butler recounted. "Usually that was a bad thing. When he came home, I was hiding. I was nowhere to be found. But you knew the booming voice would come. He had the same routine. He would come in, sit at the kitchen table, push his chair back, throw his feet on the table and you would hear the voice, 'Louis, come here.' So I come into the room and I think I am in trouble. He said, 'Did you do this?' And I said, 'Yes.' 'Good job,' he smiled and I didn't hear another thing about it. As far as I knew, that was the end of it. He went back and took the book to school and I was allowed to stay in second grade. Everything was fine and dandy. It wasn';t until a half year later as I started the third grade that I realized what had happened. I had been given the third grade annual reader to finish in three weeks as a second grader without the teacher teaching me how to do it. I had been set up to fail. I was eight years old. Now think about that as a young man. What would that have done to my dreams if that had gone through and happened the way it was set up? " Butler had also been steered away from attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an undergraduate by a high school counselor who was reserving the school's two chances at having its students enrolled at the UW for two White students even though Butler was head of the student council. She told Butler he wasn't smart enough to attend the UW. Butler was devastated -- but through the support of a counselor at a community center, he enrolled at Lawrence University. Butler later got his revenge by graduating from the UW Law School. As a lawyer, Butler has also encountered barriers and attitudes based on race. At his first court room appearance as an appellate court lawyer, Butler represented an African American man. "The judge didn't particularly like public defenders, didn't particularly like Black people, and I had one of the worst clients in the state whom I was representing and he had filed something I didn't even know about. I remember having to go through experiences talking with judges who would talk down to me and expected more from me than they would expect from the average lawyer. It reminded me as I grew up that you had to be twice as good to just be in the room. And if you succeeded in making an impact, if you got people to really believe that you could do the job and that you were okay, then you weren't seen as 'Black.' You were seen as one of the 'good ones.' And that's one of the experiences I had as an appellate lawyer when I was seen as one of these 'good ones.' And you have to make decisions as a lawyer. How am I going to confront this? Am I going to -- as some of my friends have done recently -- jump in the judge's face and call him an ignoramus and he had better get in the 21sy century, this is not how he should talk to people? Or do you think about the clients that you represent and you have to hold it in and try to sit down there and 'Well, he thinks I'm one of the good ones.' Can I use this some kind of way? And those are the decisions you are forced to confront. And those are decisions that don't always make you feel good. If you are making these decisions and you don't stand up and you don't confront it and you don't tell the person that they are all wet, you feel less than human. But if you do confront it and you do stand up in their face and you do tell them they can't talk to you that way, then every time you come into their courtroom, they have their thumb on you." And even when he became a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, it didn't mean that Butler was exempt from snap decisions based on race. Butler, an avid golfer, was playing golf at the Lincoln County Golf Course when he heard about a vicious car theft and assault that had occurred in the clubhouse parking lot. After he finished around 8 p.m., and was getting to leave, he saw two golfing partners and he could see that the steering column in their car had been peeled away. They were talking with a Glendale Police Officer and he approached them. "They told me their car got stolen," Butler recounted. "I said that I thought I heard about it. I kid you not. The officer goes to the command stance. Puts his hand on his gun and said 'What is it that you know?' I'm sitting there thinking 'What?' And he starts interrogating me about what I know and what I found out. I was sitting there and these two guys know what's going on. They are both White and they're laughing. They know this guy is clueless and all of a sudden up comes another car screeching to a halt, which elevates the situation. And an old friend of mine, Chuck Hall, who is not White and about 80 years old, jumps out of the car and I will not use the language he used. He started cursing the police officers out for their inability to get to the scene on time. He's got this stream of profanity going on. Now the officer is looking at Chuck and looking at me and doesn't know what he is dealing with. All of a sudden Chuck looked up and saw me there. He said, "I'm sorry Your Honor. I didn't mean to say all of those things, but you know these so and so police; they just don't come when they are supposed to.' Now the only thing heard from this guy's communication was 'Your Honor.' The hand slipped away from the gun. He gets out of the command stance. And he starts talking very politely. And the two guys whose car was stolen were having a ball. They were laughing their tails off. We talk about issues of profiling. We know they exist. I'm on the court and I see them every day." Butler feels that it is important for successful African American professionals to serve as role models for young people coming up, to let them know that the road may be difficult, but they too can succeed. "There is a lot that it takes out of men and a lot of other Black attorneys as well," Butler observed. "I don';t want to pretend that it is an easy road. For a lot of young attorneys coming up, there is a lot they have to put up with. And a lot they have to go through to do their job to the best of their abilities. But if we all understand that and understand they are there to do what is right by our constitution and by our justice system, then I think it is a wonderful profession." And by doing the right thing, hopefully Butler and others can prevent history from repeating itself for the African American generation coming up. |
| Justice Butler spoke at the DWD Black History Month luncheon Personal Black History By Jonathan Gramling |
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