Word: courtroom
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Despite detailed questioning of three witnesses in the Fort Jackson, S.C., courtroom, Attorney Charles Morgan Jr. of the American Civil Liberties Union was unable to find any evidence that Green Beret men had tortured or even beaten Viet Cong. What they had to tell were gory tales about...
Alabama-born and bred, Johnson could not be more sensitive to his state's cherished traditions and prejudices. His courtroom in Montgomery is only seven blocks from the statehouse, where a band played Dixie while Jefferson Davis was sworn in as Confederate Presi- dent, and where
Catfish Row. Since 1955, one of the principal battlegrounds of the law has been the district courtroom on the second floor of Montgomery's post office, a federal outpost that flies the Stars and Stripes rather than the Stars and Bars that top the statehouse. Frank Johnson's courtroom is stylishly WPA, a towering place with ornate ceiling beams, a gallery, and a bench that stands before a blue wall studded with gold stars. Through a door in the starry wall strides the judge, lean and tanned in his unvarying crisp black suit, white shirt and black...
Mutual Bell. One civil rights lawyer says that Johnson "runs his courtroom like a ship in the old tradition, like an English man-o'-war. He is about as good as a trial judge can.be." Another rights lawyer calls Johnson "entirely fair. You can never tell whether he's going to rule for you or against you." Even lawyers on the other side of the civil rights fence cannot restrain themselves. Adds...
Johnson's mother was born Alabama Long. His father was once elected Winston County probate judge, and young Frank loved to hang around Daddy's courtroom listening to lawyers arguing cases. (Johnson's only child, Johnny, 18, does the same today.) All the same, Johnson did not decide to become a lawyer until he had graduated from Mississippi's Gulf Coast Military Academy, worked as a surveyor, spent a year in business college and, at 19, married a Winston County girl named Ruth Jenkins. Both worked their way through the University of Alabama...