By Harvey Schwartz
Curator, ILWU Oral History Collection

The ILWU lost a great friend and champion when former labor and civil rights attorney and ILWU legal counselor Norman Leonard died recently. Leonard, who twice successfully defended Harry Bridges before the U.S. Supreme Court, practiced law in San Francisco from 1938 until his retirement in 1986, except for four years in the Navy during World War II. Throughout his long and distinguished career Leonard represented the ILWU tirelessly and with consummate skill. He was 92 when he passed away March 7.

In 1986 ILWU International President Jimmy Herman authored an introduction to a rich oral history Leonard completed with interviewer Estolv Ward of the Regional Oral History Office at the Bancroft Library of the University of California, Berkeley.

"For nearly half a century Norman’s working life has been devoted exclusively to the defense of working class people, organizations and causes," Herman wrote. "The very existence of the ILWU today, the fact that we survived all the attacks to which we have been subjected, in no small measure is a reflection of his ability and dedication."

Longshore Coast Appeals Officer Rudy Rubio, who served as ILWU International Vice-President from 1977 to 1988, remembers Leonard as a man with a brilliant legal mind. For most of Rubio’s vice-presidency Leonard was the attorney for the International.

"We all thought he’d have become a federal judge if he hadn’t fought for progressive causes and defended Harry and the ILWU all those years," Rubio reflected.

For all his prodigious legal talent Leonard was an unpretentious, gracious person. Rubio described him as "a plain, down-to-earth guy who got on great with union officers and rank-and-file members alike. He communicated in every-day language and never played the intimidating lawyer. Norman made you feel comfortable whether you were out for a relaxed dinner or in his office discussing complex legal issues."

Rubio commented glowingly about how Leonard functioned as the International’s lawyer. "Often Norman would sit in with the International officers during decision-making sessions," Rubio explained. "He would be there to give legal advice and to keep us out of trouble. Norman always found a way to cover what we wanted that was actually within the law. He had a great capacity for this."

Cleophas Williams, a four-term Local 10 president between 1967 and 1978 and the first African American elected to that post, recalled Leonard best as Local 10’s attorney.

"He labored through all our legal problems with us," Williams said. "When we were forced to make certain decisions for the good of the union that could be challenged under the law, Norman always carried the ball for us."

"In Local 10 we followed Harry’s philosophy, which was to do what you had to do and then let the lawyers figure it out if there were legal repercussions," Williams explained. "When there were, Norman always did all he could to get us out of any jam we might be in. He also used to attend our union meetings, listen patiently to our questions and then clarify things for us in straightforward terms. The bottom line is, Norman was a good man who hung in there all the way. He never, ever turned his back on us."

While Leonard argued several cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, he actually did not perform in the courtroom very often himself. During his lengthy career most people thought of him as a consummate legal strategist rather than a courthouse showman. Among his peers, who could seriously understand his work, he was especially well respected for his superior research and writing skills.

Bill Carder was Leonard’s last law partner. He emphasized that there were several high-profile cases in which well-known people like Bridges got their trial convictions overturned on appeal because of Leonard’s briefs.

"Through it all, Norman was truly unassuming," Carder recalled. "He didn’t care about grabbing the courtroom spotlight. All he wanted was what was right for his clients."

When Carder joined Leonard’s law firm in 1980, he was already a seasoned attorney with much experience representing the United Farm Workers. Still, he characterized practicing law with Leonard as "a great opportunity to learn from a guy with such a long perspective." Carder was especially impressed because "Leonard usually did not waste many words with judges and other lawyers. But when he did speak, those people really paid attention."

Norman Leonard was born in the Bronx, New York, on Feb. 27, 1914. His parents, Sam and Ana Leonard, were Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. Norman’s father worked as a tailor in New York City’s garment industry, which was notorious for its sweatshop conditions in the years around World War I. A prolonged strike caused Sam to seek work in Los Angeles, and the family relocated there in 1929. The next year Norman finished high school and began classes at UCLA.

Leonard was interested in social issues from the start. Influenced by his family background and by the economic tragedy of the Great Depression, he majored in political science and joined one of UCLA’s most progressive student clubs. He graduated in 1934 and returned to New York to earn a master’s degree in international relations a year later at Columbia University. Leonard then attended Columbia’s law school. There he met his future wife, Marjorie Friedman, who was one of only five women in his law school class.

In 1938 Leonard graduated from law school. That year he and Marjorie, now married, left for San Francisco, where Leonard joined the law firm of Gladstein, Grossman and Margolis. The firm had a high public profile by 1938 for its defense of Harry Bridges and the ILWU. Over the years the legal group has undergone several name changes. Today, two decades after Norman Leonard’s retirement, it is known as Leonard Carder.

The year Leonard started with Gladstein, Grossman and Margolis he was asked to defend Bridges in a free-speech case. Bridges had been found in contempt of court and fined for criticizing a Southern California judge. Leonard appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court during the ensuing legal appeal, which was decided in Bridges’ favor.

In the early 1940s, while World War II was on, Leonard served overseas as a Navy lawyer. He returned to San Francisco when the war ended in 1945 and resumed civilian legal practice. One of the many high points of his long career came in 1953 when he defended Bridges again before the nation’s highest court.

This time Leonard wrote the successful Supreme Court brief in a widely-followed case that had been front page news for three years. In 1950, with the red scare of the McCarthy period in full swing, the Australian-born Bridges was convicted of perjury for having sworn at his 1945 naturalization proceeding that he had never been a member of the Communist Party. ILWU International Vice President J. R. (Bob) Robertson and Coast Committeeman Henry Schmidt had stood witness for Bridges, so they were convicted of conspiring with him to commit perjury.

As the famous "BRS"case—for Bridges, Robertson and Schmidt—became a national cause celebre, it attracted scores of volunteers from inside and outside the ILWU. Many worked for months raising funds and informing the public about what amounted to a witch hunt. Finally, in 1953, the Supreme Court decreed, as Leonard had argued, that Bridges had been indicted illegally because the statute of limitations on the charges against him had expired. Bridges, Robertson and Schmidt were free. While the victory owed much to the movement and the publicity for the truth it generated, it also came, of course, largely through the superior legal work of Norman Leonard.

Two years later Bridges came under another legal attack, this one a civil suit heard before Judge Irving Goodman in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. The federal prosecutor in the case asked for the ILWU president’s denaturalization so he could be deported. Leonard crafted the defense strategy again, and again he was successful.

The defense in the Goodman hearing demonstrated that the government’s evidence amounted to hearsay, innuendo and sometimes plain fabrication. In his oral history Leonard told Estolv Ward, "As a consequence, Judge Goodman ordered the proceedings dismissed and at that point the government gave up. They didn’t file an appeal and the case finally ended after more than 20 years of hounding Bridges."

Subsequent to the Bridges legal battles Leonard represented and advised the ILWU many times, but perhaps never more importantly than in the 1960s, when the landmark Mechanization and Modernization Agreements (M & M) allowed for the initially peaceful coming of containerization to the West Coast waterfront. Bill Ward, an ILWU Coast Committeeman between 1963 and 1983, remembers how Leonard "put together some great briefs that spelled out the language we needed when the M & M agreements were coming in." In later years Leonard also provided legal counsel as the union wrestled with the many problems raised by the container revolution.

Throughout his career Leonard also accepted numerous civil rights and related cases. Often he did pro bono work. During the McCarthy period of the 1950s he defended many people besides Bridges who were accused of Communism. Some were subjected to trials, while others sought counsel when they were barred from waterfront jobs by the Coast Guard’s infamous anti-activist "screening" program or were forced to testify before the inquisitional House Un-American Activities Committee.

In the 1960s Leonard helped conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War who faced legal difficulties, and represented people arrested for picketing against whites-only hiring at San Francisco’s Sheraton Palace Hotel. When student protesters were arrested at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s and 1970s, Leonard was there for them too.

"Norman sure was a class act as an attorney," Ward said. "He always did the best he could for everyone, including our membership. He really deserves our respect."

Leonard is survived by his wife Marjorie, his son Eric, a professor at Colorado College, another son, Stephen, an environmental lawyer in Boston, his brother, Dr. Alvin Leonard of Berkeley, four grandchildren and countless grateful ILWU members and their families.