Private: A Conversation with Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Civil Rights Leader Ted Shaw

by Paul Guequierre

They may have taken different paths to civil rights stardom, but those paths started at the same place—the public housing projects in the Bronx, New York. Last night, attendees of the 2014 ACS National Convention got a glimpse into the events and personal journeys that got U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and her longtime friend, civil rights leader and attorney Ted Shaw, where they are today.

The two—who were high school classmates nearly 50 years ago in the Bronx—had a spirited conversation in front of hundreds of lawyers, judges, law professors and students and civil rights activists at the 2014 ACS National Convention. They shared their experiences growing up in tumultuous times during the civil rights movement in public housing and how that helped shape who they are today.

After showing their high school yearbook to the audience, Justice Sotomayor asked Ted Shaw if he ever thought they would get to where they are in their careers. He replied, “Sonia, who would have ever imagined they would let the inmates run the asylum?”

Justice Sotomayor also spoke of growing up in public housing and going to a Catholic high school. She told a story of her brother being ridiculed by the basketball team for wearing ratty sneakers because her mother couldn’t afford new shoes. Being poor in public housing was a world, Justice Sotomayor said, that very few of her classmates understood. She told Shaw she hid her family’s economic status.

Shaw asked Sotomayor where the idea of wanting to become a judge came from. She said, in a child-like manner, that it came from watching Perry Mason. She talked of her growing sense, during the civil rights movement, of how the law shapes human relations and advances equality.

It was the civil rights movement that made Shaw want to be a lawyer as well. However, that was when their paths split. Sotomayor become a prosecutor, while Shaw practiced as a civil rights attorney. But those two paths, Sotomayor pointed out, were not mutually exclusive. She was on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund and thought that the policy work she was doing could advance civil rights as well. 

In perhaps the most somber part of the conversation, Sotomayor and Shaw talked about how America was losing class mobility, and in fact going backwards. They were two poor kids who had made it to the Ivy League. Many poor children growing up today will not have the opportunities they had, and sadly, that will make inequality even more widespread. The two agreed that growing inequality is the most challenging issue of the 21^st century. Sotomayor said that as wealth difference grows, she suspects we will have many of the same problems other countries have and the unrest many other countries have.

They took different paths to where they are. But they are two poor kids from the public housing projects who became civil rights heroes.

The video of the entire conversation is available to watch here.

Equality and Liberty