THE VFA PIONEER HISTORIES PROJECT

Lucy A. Williams

“I believed in fighting racism and inequality from my very earliest days.”

Interviewed by Judy Waxman, Oral Historian, June 2023

JW:  Would you introduce yourself, please, with your full name and when and where you were born?

LW:  My name is Lucy Ann Williams. I was born in Fort Worth, Texas, on January 4, 1948.

JW:  Lucy, we have the same birthday.

LW:  I didn’t know that.

JW:  Neither did I. Oh, wow. More to come on that, okay. So, tell us about your childhood. Did you have siblings? Were there religious influences? What influences were there?

LW:  Well, like I said, I was born in Fort Worth. I grew up in East Texas in a small town called Gilmer. I’m a middle child. I have an older sister and a younger brother. East Texas is very racist. My father was a Southern Baptist minister, was preaching integration in the 1950s and he got death threats for doing that. I heard the N word all the time when I was growing up, including in my family from my grandparents. But my father was, like I said, preaching integration. And because he was getting death threats, we finally, when I was in fifth grade, moved to Oklahoma. That had a huge impact on my life.

The other thing that happened in my early life, which had a huge impact, was that I had polio, and my father was the primary person that did my physical therapy so that I could overcome the effects of the polio. He would always say to me, I think in order to encourage me to do all the exercises I had to do, was, “Lucy, you can do it. You can do anything you want to do,” which I think made me a very strong woman from the beginning. Now, this was at a time when my culture of the south was telling me that girls couldn’t do anything they wanted to do. Girls were supposed to be, when they grew up, if they went into paid labor at all, nurses, secretaries, or elementary school teachers. But that was not the direction I ended up going, obviously.

JW:  Right. That’s why I became an elementary school teacher, for a time. Well, with all that religious background; did you go to church every week? I mean, your family must have been religious, right?

LW:  We went to church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, sometimes Thursdays. Religion played a very important part in my life, which I honestly think grounded the trajectory of my life. Because when I went to college – I went to Baylor University in Waco, Texas, which was my family college, a Baptist school – I was part of the very progressive part of that college which was immersed in liberation theology. And there I did a lot of work on racial inequality, poverty imbalances, and that, I think led me to do much of the work later in my life.

JW:  Because you continue to work on those imbalances professionally, right?

LW:  Exactly. And I should also say, when I went to college, kind of following the trajectory of, you’re supposed to be a grammar school teacher or something, everybody said, “Well, you’ll get a teaching certificate, right?” And my father said, “Lucy, do you want to be a grammar school teacher?” I said, “No.” He said, “Well, then why are you going to waste 18 hours of your college on education courses to get an education minor? Don’t do that.” So, I didn’t. I got a degree in History and French.

JW:  And so, you just went on to law school?

LW:  No, no, no. But I have to say, I think my getting involved in the women’s movement and my evolution as a feminist began as a child. It was gradual, it evolved. I was a feisty little girl from day one. My mother always said, “Lucy, you’ve got to stop being so pushy or boys won’t like you.” And I didn’t stop being pushy. Instead, when I finished college, where I had been progressive and been part of this very progressive group of college kids who were part of the civil rights movement, and working on civil rights issues, I then moved to D.C. with my History and French majors. I started to work at the Federal Trade Commission as something called a Consumer Protection Specialist.

Now, to leave home as a young woman was just not done at that time in the South. You stayed at home until you got married. My sister had already gotten married to a minister and was living in Texas. So, I headed off as a single young woman and moved to D.C. Got my own apartment with some friends. This was right after the Nader Raiders had cleared out the Federal Trade Commission, and it was becoming a really exciting, vibrant place to work. They were doing some really great work, and I met some women lawyers there, and I got to be good friends with them. And I thought, “Wow, women can be lawyers.”

That was very exciting to me, and I decided to go to law school. Now, being in D.C., this was in the late 60s, also of course, I was very involved in the anti-war movement, going to demonstrations. So, like I said, my life was just kind of evolving, opening up in many ways, in multiple progressive trajectories.

JW:  So, when did you start law school?

LW:  I started law school in 1971. I went my first year at Georgetown, because I wanted to stay at the Federal Trade Commission to keep my job. But I then married a man who was in my class at Georgetown. He decided to quit law school, and go to divinity school at the University of Chicago. I transferred to the University of Chicago and did my second two years at the University of Chicago Law School, and graduated there.

Now, University of Chicago is another story.  There were only six or seven women in the University of Chicago in my class out of 150 law students. I didn’t have a clue what the University of Chicago Law School was like. It was a very conservative law school, but I didn’t look into it. I just thought, “Okay, John (my now ex-husband) wants to go to Chicago. If I get in, we’ll go.” He and I had a deal, because I was a strong feminist, he said, “If you don’t get in, I’ll delay going to divinity school until you finish law school.” But I got in, and I went to law school at U of C.

University of Chicago was a very traditional, old school, humiliate the students type of experience, a very strong Socratic method. But I will recount one story that kind of tells you a bit about myself. In John’s divinity school, we were going on all kinds of retreats. And on one retreat we had gone on, we had been talking a lot about rape and sexual abuse.

And then I came into my evidence class the next week, and my professor said, “Rape victims lie more than other victims.” And when you’re cross examining, it’s important to know that, because you have to, in your cross examination, you have to be particularly – I can’t remember exactly what the wording was, but you have to delve into the fact that they’re going to be lying. And so, I, after class, went to his office; and you don’t do that at the University of Chicago, you do not go and talk to your professors. I went to his office and I said, Professor X, “This is what you said in class. Can you give me the empirical data that supports your position?”

And he said, “Well, there is no empirical data yet, but everyone who practices in the field knows that it’s true.” I said, “Well, then, since there’s no empirical data, would you mind clarifying that in class?” So, the next day in class, he came in and he said, “Ms. Williams came to my office and asked me this question.” He recounts our conversation, and then he said, “I want the class to know that even though there is no empirical data yet, everyone who practices in the field knows that it’s true.” So, it was like squish me like a little bug.

That was my experience in law school. But it also tells you how I was pushy and how I was a feminist, and I was not going to be deterred in being outspoken. But I don’t think even at that time, I identified as being part of a movement. I just knew I was who I was, and I was going to speak out.

JW:  That was still, we’re still in the early ’70s then. I don’t know if there was much activity going on in the women’s movement in Chicago. Did you become aware of it at some point?

LW:  Right after law school is when I came out as a lesbian, and I was living in Chicago. I was working in Chicago, and I became part of the Hyde Park lesbian community. If I needed to say a particular time that solidified my immersion in the women’s movement, you would probably pick that. Although, I wouldn’t say my immersion in the lesbian community was a major part of my identity with the women’s movement. I think my identity in the women’s movement was much broader than that. But certainly, becoming part of the Hyde Park lesbian community was a place that my knowledge of the women’s movement broadened a great deal.

At that time, I was working on the west side of Chicago with the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. The west side of Chicago is predominantly an African American community, and I (as a white woman) was primarily working with poor women. I was doing a general practice, but a lot of issues around social welfare benefits, unemployment insurance and things like that, and tenants’ groups, but with a lot of really wonderful poor African American women. One of the things, and this is something that identified me when I really immersed in the women’s movement, was I became aware of the number of women who were experiencing domestic abuse and domestic violence, and nobody was doing anything about it.

In 1976, Dell Martin wrote her groundbreaking book, Battered Wives, that shattered the wall of silence about the abuse that millions of women were experiencing. But for those of us today, it’s hard to believe what it was like back then. No one talked about domestic violence. There were no accurate statistics about domestic violence. Police routinely did not respond to, or report complaints of domestic violence. And as a new lawyer, I, with one other dear friend, a woman named Eileen Sweeney, convened a group in Chicago that expanded into an Illinois wide coalition against domestic violence with representatives from around the state.

We didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We began monitoring courtrooms in Chicago. Documenting the treatment of women who filed complaints against their abusers, filing numerous lengthy letters with the presiding judges in the courts, documenting instances that people I don’t think would even believe now.

Judges were suggesting that the man and the woman kiss and make up. They would ask demeaning questions about whether the woman had been faithful. What had she done to cause it? Judges were routinely dismissing the complaints.

We then went on to draft and pass legislation amending the State Injunction Act to add a section specifically on domestic violence. We then wrote grant proposals and obtained funding. We set up the first domestic violence shelter in Chicago. We ultimately set up a statewide network of shelters. Then, we funded and established a domestic violence legal center at the Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago. We were doing massive amounts of media work.

I tell you all that, because the thing was, all the leadership at Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago were men. They thought a lawyer’s job was just to litigate. To litigate and do impact litigation. In addition, working on domestic violence was family law. That was not what Legal Assistance Foundation of Chicago did. So, Eileen and I had to go to the executive director of LAF and convince him that it was worth it for him to support us in spending time doing this work.

Now, bless his heart, he said, “Eileen and Lucy, you’re good. You’re good lawyers. I trust you. If that’s what you want to do, do it.” And we busted our asses. And we did what, when I look back on it, was amazing, because we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. I worked on that issue for three to four years. Eileen and I both then left Chicago. I moved to Boston, she moved to D.C. Neither of us ever worked on domestic violence issues again, but we had done something that then went on in Chicago to this day. I know it’s still going on. And that is one of the most meaningful things in terms of working on the women’s movement that I know Eileen and I ever did. We talked about it for many years.

JW:  I do have to add for our viewers that my current spouse, who I’ve been with more than 40 years, was one of those men at your organization. And he has told me, I don’t know if it’s you or Eileen or both, that you describe the kind of lawyering the men were doing as the, “Ejaculatory style of law.” Is that correct?

LW:  That is correct, and I love your husband very much. We did have to convince him and others that impact litigation was not the way to address the problem of domestic violence; I did a lot of impact litigation at LAF and I loved doing impact litigation, but there were some problems that impact litigation at was not the way to solve a complex issue. I have to say, at that time, some lawyers, particularly in New York, and I believe it was either in LA or San Francisco, began doing the domestic violence work by suing the police. And Eileen and I thought about that, and were watching what they were doing and decided, no, that’s not the way to do it. That’s not the magic bullet. That was what we called multiform litigation or multiform practice. That we needed to address the problem from a ton of different perspectives, and that’s what we took on.

JW:  So, you moved to Boston then, and did you move with your partner?

LW:  Yes. Faith and I have now been together 45 years. I moved to Boston. I began working at a place called The Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, still working primarily on poor women’s issues. I worked there for 13 years, still working on social welfare and low-income employment issues, primarily representing organizations.

I represented a welfare rights group, I represented the Mass Coalition for the Homeless, I represented a group of pregnant and parenting teens. I continued to do class action litigation, I did legislative work, I did regulatory drafting. I did a lot of work on how social welfare benefits and secondary labor markets are two sides of the same coin, particularly for poor women. How poor women go through the revolving door of being in secondary labor markets in inflexible jobs, and then need a safety net when they come out. And how  unemployment insurance is not the safety net for them because of the unemployment insurance restrictions that define low-wage workers as non-workers, even though they are workers. And so, they need another safety net when they are ejected from the secondary labor markets.

So that was the area that I was working in primarily while I was at Mass Law Reform. But again, I was fighting for poor women, and that’s the area I have been working in my entire life. And then, after 13 years at Mass Law Reform, while I was working also with law students from Northeastern University, I decided to join the faculty at Northeastern University Law School here in Boston. For those who don’t know Northeastern University, it’s the country’s preeminent public interest law school. It puts out between 40 and 60 of its students every year, sending them into various public interest jobs around the country and around the world.

I’ve been here since 1990, training some of the most outstanding poverty and human rights lawyers. For the last three plus decades, my students have gone on to major roles in public interest law – one is the head of the National Immigration Law Center. Some are litigation directors of ACLU. Some are the heads of major LGBTQ organizations. They’re in legal services and other nonprofits all over the country. And hopefully, I’m creating new generations of people to continue to do the work that I’ve tried to do. I have to say, I don’t see my involvement in the women’s movement in isolation. I see it as part of a fight against class inequality, poverty, racial inequality. It’s all integrated.

JW:  I’m going to ask you this. When you went to the Northeastern David Williams law school, did you experience sexism, in the faculty, or in the procedures there?

LW:  No. Northeastern has a very diverse faculty. We have probably more women than men on the faculty, and we have a lot of faculty of color as well. So, I didn’t at all. I was the first out LGBTQ faculty member here. Now, we have quite a number of LGBTQ.

JW:  That’s really great. So, it sounds like you’re still an activist in your own way. Are you marching? Are you doing traditional things as well? Obviously, you are an activist.

LW:  I think the older I get, the more lefty I get. And in addition, I think my students push me all the time, and I think I push my students all the time. So, it’s a two-way street. I think I move left every single day. I didn’t mention, Faith and I raised two beautiful daughters and we have three beautiful granddaughters now. And I’m training my granddaughters to be feminist, even though they’re only two and a half, and one. I sing We Shall Overcome when I’m putting them to sleep. I sing the African National Anthem.

JW:  So, when you came out, you talked about again, how religious your family was. On the other hand, your father was an incredible influence, telling you could do and be whatever you wanted to. How did they react to you coming out?

LW:  Oh, my father was deceased by the time I came out. The rest of my family did not react well initially, but they came around. It was not easy at first, but family love is stronger than other things.

JW:  That’s wonderful. You said that in a way, you were always a feminist before there was even a label.

LW:  Yes, I think I was.

JW:  And so that kind of thought, movement, activity, really shaped your life, would you say?

LW:  I would. I mean, I think I was a pushy little girl from the beginning, and I think I believed in fighting racism and inequality from my very earliest days. I think this was part of my religious upbringing, and I don’t think it’s just Christian. I think it’s Muslim, and I think it’s Hindu, and I think it’s Judaism, and I think it’s Buddhist. I mean, it crosses all religions, or Atheism for that matter. I think it’s morality that was deep in my soul from day one of my life, and I think my family taught me that.

But I think that what I care most deeply about is fighting for people to have not only income and asset equality, but to have powered equality, to have health care, to have education. I should just tell you, Judy, I tell my students now, for the first 30 years of my life, I worked on domestic poverty, and I didn’t solve domestic poverty. So, then I turned to work on international poverty. So, the last 15 years of my life, I’ve been working on global poverty. I didn’t even mention that.

The last 15 years of my life, I’ve been working on international human rights. I convene a group called the International Social and Economic Rights Project. Which is a by-invitation-only organization of about 40 activists, judges, academics, primarily from the Global South, working on how we can make justiciable constitutional principles in constitutions from Argentina, Colombia, South Africa, India, Canada; that’s not the global south. But I’m working with these people on how we can use grassroots organizations and the judiciary to create equality internationally.

When I tell you that I just become more lefty day by day, I decided to take on international poverty and international inequality. And then my latest thing I’m working on is how to make multinational corporations liable for their subsidiaries in the Global South when they destroy the environment and destroy the livelihood of poor farmers and fishers in primarily the Niger Delta and Zaire.

JW:  And you’re working with people in those countries?

LW:  Yes.

JW:  That’s incredible.

LW:  I’m not going to quit working. When you ask if I’m still an activist, of course. I just expand my activism.

JW:  That’s great. Wonderful.

LW:  There’s always more work to do.