Metro

Bill
Goodman

An unwavering fighter
for civil liberties.

C

"Detroit's a wonder-

ful, great city," says

civil rights attorney Bill
Goodman in front of the

Spirit of Detroit statue

at the Coleman A. Young
Municipal Center.

Judith Doner Berne
Special to the Jewish News

T

he idea of electing a black man
as president of the United States
was not even a tall tale when law
clerk Bill Goodman spent the summer
of 1962 at a small civil rights law firm in
Virginia working on desegregation cases
throughout the South.
It was just a television tale (President
David Palmer on Fox TV's 24) in
September 2003 when civil rights attorney
Goodman helped settle a major class-
action lawsuit against the New York Police
Department for racial profiling in stop-
and-frisk procedures.
Now, the Nov. 4 larger-than-life tale
of Barack Obama's presidential victory
makes Goodman, a native Detroiter, say:
"In some ways, it blows my mind and in
some ways, it seems perfectly appropriate.
"The election of President Obama
reflects a breakthrough:' Goodman says.
"It does symbolize and reflect real sub-
stantial change in our society. For the first
time in many years, we have someone
who really can provide leadership to a vast
number of Americans."
It was on his Detroit Mumford High
School senior trip to Washington, D.C., in
the spring of 1957 that Goodman made
his initial stand for civil rights.
When a Virginia restaurant refused to
seat the black students in his class, he and

another white classmate refused to enter
the restaurant. "We stayed on the [tour]
bus with them;' he recounts.
It was a prophetic action for Goodman
who, after graduating from the University
of Chicago Law School in 1964, has cham-
pioned civil liberties cases for over 46
years — primarily in Detroit.

Guides Removal Of Mayor
Goodman most recently made headlines
as the Detroit City Council's special coun-
sel in its successful investigation and
removal of Kwame Kilpatrick as mayor of
Detroit.
"He was the key player in analyzing
and engineering the appropriate strategy
on behalf of the city against Kilpatrick,"
says University of Detroit Mercy law pro-
fessor Larry Dubin, who has never met
Goodman but has followed him closely.
"I have been well aware of his reputa-
tion as an extremely competent lawyer
who has tremendous integrity and an
abundance of knowledge about consti-
tutional law," says Dubin, a Birmingham
resident who often comments on legal
cases for both the local and national news
media.
"He [Goodman] not only helped the city
council's forfeiture actions, but also set the
stage for Gov. [Jennifer] Granholm to do
what she did," Dubin says.
"Much about it was very sad:' Goodman
says. "I took no joy in Kilpatrick's resigna-

tion:'
At the same time, "I feel very engaged
with the city as a result of that experience,"
says Goodman, whose downtown practice,
Goodman & Hurwitz, specializes in civil
rights litigation.
"Countless people came up to me and
said how grateful they were that I was
working on the problem. It made me feel
very responsible. In some respects, I felt
burdened."
But he has had burdens before — and
carried them equally high.
For one, he follows in the footsteps
of his father, the late Ernie Goodman, a
legendary Detroit civil rights lawyer who
co-founded in 1951 with the late George
Crockett Jr. the first racially integrated law
partnership in the United States.
For another, he served two stints as legal
director of the Center for Constitutional
Rights (CCR) in New York City, includ-
ing after 9-11. In 9-11's wake, he told
the New York Times, "My job is to defend
the Constitution from its enemies. Its
main enemies right now are the Justice
Department and the White House

Homegrown Activist
Politicians and celebrities regularly
gathered around their parents' north-
west Detroit dinner table, according to
Goodman's older brother, trial lawyer Dick
Goodman.
On various nights, they included folk

singer Pete Seeger, actor/singer Paul
Robeson, Vice President Henry Wallace
(who spoke out during the race riots in
Detroit in 1943), actor Zero Mostel and
Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, to name a
few.
"Politics was the stuff of the day:' Dick
said. "There was a constant polemic going
on around our dinner table'
Working alongside his dad at the law
firm of Goodman, Eden, Millender and
Bedrosian, Bill was involved in the defense
of participants in the Attica, N.Y., prison
uprising; of civil rights leaders later
elected to public office in Alabama who
were wrongfully charged with mail fraud,
and of hundreds of anti-nuclear, anti-war
protesters at Williams International in
Walled Lake, manufacturer of jet engines
for cruise missiles.
He also defended labor activists during
the nearly 2-year-long Detroit newspaper
strike in 1995-97 and hundreds of student
anti-war and civil rights demonstrators
during the '60s and '70s.
"Bill Goodman has been a consistent
advocate for the powerless, working on
behalf of racial justice since he got out of
law school — and he's never wavered,"
says Kary L. Moss, executive director of
the American Civil Liberties Union of
Michigan.
In 1977 in Michigan, the ACLU filed

Bill Goodman on page A20

JN

November 13 • 2008

A19

