Time: 1997 (with flashbacks starting just after D-Day, WW II). Occasion: Lecture by Federal Justice Frank Johnson. Place: Harvard Law School. Like the new graduates whom he addresses, we hear "Stars Fell on Alabama" and soon fall into fascination with the Alabama boy who became the judicial star of the Civil Rights Movement.
Right off, Will Stutts' engaging, well-named Frank argues the difference between lawyers and politicians who call themselves lawyers. Then he shows how, over 44 years, the latter caused problems for the former-type lawyers like himself. But luck and timing always came into play. Stutts/Johnson seems to get younger as, arguing his first big case -- the longest court martial in U. S. history -- on "military lawyer duty," he defended soldiers who roughed up deserters on orders from superiors. "The worst kind of criminals," he concluded, "think they're above the law."
Back to civilian life, Frank Johnson became disillusioned with "lawyering" due to the kind of clients who sought him out. He got involved in politics when he worked on Eisenhower's campaign for president. Frank would subsequently answer Ike's call to be a United States Attorney, handling an important case of Negroes in involuntary servitude. He brushed up against his old schoolmate George Wallace, only to confront him later when he accepted another of Ike's recommendations: at age 37, Frank became America's historically youngest federal judge.
After his move to Montgomery, Frank Johnson occupied center stage in the Civil Rights conflict, from Rosa Parks' passive protest to the capital blacks' bus strike through the confrontation with Wallace over enforcing the Voters Rights Act. Stutts/Johnson winces over the political attention it brought Wallace. He's sad for his beloved state as he makes us visualize Wallace becoming governor and the powder keg that was Selma. The Sunday, when troops charged Negroes who knelt in a road and sang hymns, is again Bloody. But both because of and sometimes despite Wallace, Lyndon Johnson and Martin Luther King -- but mostly Frank Johnson behind the scenes -- another, better day comes. Stutts robustly embodies Frank's commitment: "When politician don't do their job, the courts must."
A special program note draws attention to the news of Frank Johnson's death in Montgomery in July 1999 being overshadowed by that of John F. Kennedy Jr's fatal plane crash the same day. Will Stutts' performance goes a long way toward penetrating the shadows from which Frank Johnson brought forth the light of law, exposing politically cunning as well as prejudiced people to discomfort. Stutts' own timing is admirable.
