[inaudible conversations] . >> good evening everyone. thank you for joining us tonigh tonight. i am pleased to welcome you to this evening's event and presenting the new book invisible the organization which supports programs like history literature philosophy and other disciplines and for the people of massachusetts we

are pleased to have c-span book tv and when asking questions please know you will be recorded and wait for the overhead microphone. we will conclude with time for questions and then a book signing at this table and we have copies of invisible for sale. the future - - the feature title is 20 percent off that is how we say things for buying books here at harvard book store and supporting the author series and ensuring the future of the independent bookstore. thank you. a quick reminder turn off your cell phones before the talk i pleased to introduce tonight speaker professor of law at yale university where he has

taught for over 30 years serving as a law clerk for thurgood marshall, eight honorary degrees and delivered w e-b to boys lecture at harvard. the author of 15 books of nonfiction which include the confirmation and the emperor of ocean park spending 11 weeks on "the new york times" bestseller list. tonight he is here to present his new book invisible the forgotten story of the black woman lawyer who took down the most powerful mobster remarking it is brimming with intellect and grit and "new york times" best-selling author walter isaacson praises it as a moving story with enormous residence for our own time. we are so pleased to have the author here with us tonight please join me to welcome stephen carter. [applause]

. >> thank you for that kind introduction. also the harvard bookstore for inviting me. the last time i was supposed to be here i canceled because there was an illness in the family and i could not make it. they said don't worry we will reschedule. now i'm here three years later. [laughter] it is a real pleasure most of you know, me better for my fiction but this was a book rolling around inside my head for a long time in a sense talking backward so with a historical moment, take yourself back to new york of the 1930s there was a big war in which harlem was wiped out

or subjugated to a coalition of white ethnic gangs. harlem mattered because it was the most lucrative territory in the country for organized crime because the numbers game was played by more people of harlem also between ten and 20000 so it was a big deal. but the mob had taken over the numbers game and now there is a cry from reformers and newspapers it was time to get serious about the mob and investigate. the problem was the district attorney at the time was in the pocket of the mob and had no intention of doing any kind of investigation.

so there was a runaway grand jury with a special prosecutor sent to investigate organized crime and dodge eventually gave in and the special prosecutor was appointed was thomas dewey who man for president and then came to public attention one of the conditions he hires his own staff know me with any connection to the government in new york would work for him and 20 young lawyers were hired 21 lawyers they were labeled the 20 against the underworld it was 19 white males and one black woman. and she is the subject of the book, invisible. her name was eunice carter and she was my grandmother so you

have to imagine being black woman lawyer in the thirties at a time when the bar was deeply segregated there were very few women lawyers and very few black women lawyers in the country but especially on the staff of the special prosecutor. it was a big deal moving from coast-to-coast and to see this and newspapers talking about the hiring of his staff like man bites dog who is this black woman? he acquires the 20 lawyers whose job was to investigate organized crime.

he said he wasn't interested in a conviction for tax evasion or prostitution he wanted for real crime. like a loan shark or murder or corruption or various things because dewey had political ambitions he was looking as a crusader so all those areas to look into there was a long row of assistance in those 19 white men the furthest from dewey was the black woman in her office this one works loan sharks this one worked on corruption this one was drug smuggling so the black woman at the end of the hallway she

was working prostitution. because what do we discovered come to my office and tell me what crimes are bothering you. drugs are sold. and there was some of that that mostly there was the concern about brothels and streetwalkers you may remember that term. so do we had a problem he had to take them seriously but he had no intention of a prosecution case. so it was for the black women on the staff he made clear this is not something that would ever be tried because he didn't think that's how to take down organized crime in new york. now. one of the things that happened historically, the few

female prosecutors in the united states almost all of them were assigned to the women's quartz and they were seen as a graveyard that once you got there you never got out but eunice was not a woman's court prosecutor she was assigned to work prostitution and a different person may have complained or figured that her career was over but she took it seriously because alone among the investigators in dewey's office knowing that it was a bunch of individual entrepreneurs basically her theory was they take a cut of

every other illegal activity in the city but this pays nothing to the mob. long story short spending a lot of time in the office you can find in the records the prostitution that nobody else would touch so then finally put together a pretty good case that the mob controlled the prostitution in new york and around this time doug scholz was murdered and eventually luciano you want - - you became the most powerful leader in the nation's history and became the target. and the problem that dewey had he could not connect luciano to any crimes. but eunice spent a lot of time on the record talking to women

who believe she could connect luciano to the prostitution. so finally he allowed her to organize february 1st, police officers nobody had worked together before they were sent to raid 80 brothels simultaneously and the idea was to arrest all of the women. why? because the job of the fixer was the fixer gets her out of jail so she doesn't turn states evidence nobody knew the fixers were all gone so now there were a few hundred odd women they bring in a judge who came into the building there gave a high

bail they could not make to hold them as material witnesses and then they waited for them to turn. and as a footnote nowadays you arrest the people lower down give them a reduced sentence but a lot of serious lawyers do not think that was ethical to we - - offer a reduced sentence if you do the crime you do the time you should not have a special way out of that and that is looked at as inherently unreliable. in dewey was the guy to be picked as a special prosecutor he thought it was terrible that he was giving reduced sentence for information but

eunice did most of the work so in the end, luciano was brought up on prostitution, he fled to hot springs arkansas actually he was tracked down and was arrested after he offered bribes and then that was the only crime he was convicted of it all because of the work done by this black woman alone in her cubicle at the end of the hall. but now this is the period that it was, do we hires this black woman she develops the case against luciano and gets the women to turn against him and uses the information to convict him at trial but then to try the case do we and three white male assistance try the case she did have

responsibilities at trial but not that particular one so if you really want - - years later becoming the district of attorney of new york he decides to go after jimmy heinz a tammany hall leader the most powerful in the state of new york. and the same thing largely she did her research and got people to turn whenever they tried a case eunice ended up doing the trial work. i'm not saying he was not grateful to her he would always think her publicly and when he becomes a da he would give the largest bureau of the das office that she was in charge of 71 white male lawyers so she did have a career as a prosecutor and a successful one. so now put her aside for one minute for a related story and then we will go to

conclusions. so the parents were big black activist who believe education is important but eunice became a very prominent republican this is at the time most black people voted republican it was more about the civil rights in the thirties and forties and the devon loan - - democratic party emphatically was not. and to be involved with political campaigns as dewey ran for president he cited eunice as evidence that he was not prejudice because he worked with this woman she worked with him and head of the biggest bureau and so on. but she was a conservative and a traditionalist.

but others who had degree from harvard and add why you and a scholar with a wonderful dissertation about the literary circle, multilingual but he was also a communist i don't mean he was accused of that but as a high-ranking member, soviet intelligence, a serious committed communist the fbi filed over 700 pages in comparison is like twice as long as mlk's fbi file. so the two of them has one conservative traditional republican and a communist who wants to burn the whole thing

down. i mention that because after after her brother died but then thought he was hurting her career because she really wanted to be a judge people from that office so for example, they went on to other careers like secretary of state and attorney general was one of the 20 against the underworld. a very distinguished federal judge was one of the 20 against the underworld. the highest court of new york was one of the 20 about six or seven of them became judges and that is what she wanted but she never got to be a judge she had a hope but she

never achieve that and she always believed it was because of her brother in 1951 he went to prison for refusing to name names and if you know, my work i am big on the tolerance of dissent to shut people out of jobs coming from my great uncles experience. he was an academic but he couldn't get work at the time he worked in factories that he finally left the country and never returned he went to ghana and zambia he would not be surprised to learn he was in china but that never came back. my grandmother blamed him for that and in 1951 his sister

who was a prosecutor practicing as a trial lawyer he never went to her for advice. he never asked her to help him in any way. and my father said after he got out of prison they never spoke again and 20 years later he died - - ten days apart from each other at the end of their lives they corresponded a little bit. but they never actually reconciled but i want to focus to think about the values of the time. the stories about people breaking through barriers , they were very high and these are the stories we need

to be telling. what my grandmother was for me, a very scary woman who would correctly want - - quickly. she thought her grandchildren had very bad manners. i knew nothing about her life i learned about it and then the things that i saw as scary were part of the fortitude that had carried her through to succeed by the forties the most famous black woman in america. there were not a lot but nevertheless should be profiled in life and liberty magazine but the second largest magazine in the country it was on television even then it was young she was

very well known in part because of the luciano trial that is as as prominent as a "politico" as an activist in the party as well. also a lot of this work i did not do alone. my daughter left her law practice actually to become a principal researcher on the book digging through archives and interviews so the book reflects her work as much as mine. i hoped she could be here tonight but she was not able to. so the two last points to talk about there is something else about eunice. in addition to working as a lawyer she was talking in the

1930s about what we now call sexual harassment at the time nobody thought that was importance she talks about in his speech in 1937 for example, and then who would use their positions of power to force women into intimate relationships. and she said in the speech that burning - - birmingham oil was too rich for men of that sort. this was at a time when civil rights did not want to talk about it not necessarily their supporters but they saw this as a distraction. that if they try to free women

than they would never get to the heart of their cause. so tore the end of their career she gives a speech in greece she did a lot of international traveling later in life and she talked frankly about countries where women cannot be full citizens including the united states and as a dictatorship and the way that after a while it's called the dictator within warning you not to do certain things so she was way ahead of her time on that issue as well. the other thing i want to mention is eunice had an extraordinary family. both parents were big and

important activist her father's name was william working for the ymca that was a big organization with chapters all over the world most famously he had lunch at buckingham palace giving speeches in tokyo. he was a very conservative ma man, but a big activist as well. and went very closely hand-in-hand with rachel one - - racial justice. but her mother was known as addie among other things was one of only three black women who went to europe during world war i with the black troops all of these hundreds of white women who went now

that we would think of the uso so they would have a place to unwind but for those three black women but talk about the treatment of black soldiers during world war i but i also want to mention and her particular job at the naacp was to go to the south that was so dominant the black community was subdued and she would travel these towns by herself and give these rousing speeches to get people feeling they could do something in the face of the kkk intimidation she was well aware of the dangers but nevertheless

believed in the work and travel in what we know quite unafraid she did leave the naacp to become a field secretary the they began to feel mistreated as the only woman who did this field work at the time so it was gender as well as race. so she is a gray and accomplished woman because at the time she started out she was pushed aside that now someone who was largely forgotten to find a compilation of american history but a lot of history isn't quite right and so i discuss that in the book as well. and in 2008 a republican novel that only years later was

meant to celebrate her generation called the palace council that to tell her story and in the process of coming to realize this woman who wants terrified me is somebody that i really loved. thank you very much i will be happy to take your questions. [applause] there is a microphone there. . >> that is a lot of material. but many historians believe do we later was comfy cozy and lucky luciano was let go from

jail and went to italy. is there any information about that? . >> i don't think dewey ever became comfortable. but he was snookered into letting him go. the intelligence pressured him when he became governor of new york to parole luciano because there was no alleged the connection using those mob protections and supposedly to make contact to help make the us landing in sicily easier. that's probably not true most say that is largely invented but they say he was very resistant to luciano but he

was released a few years after the war but i should add that luciano unfortunately has become a romantic figure to a bunch of writers even novelist who feel he was framed we haven't looked at that evidence that the evidence that my grandmother put together is pretty clear so we can differ over that wisdom but if it's appropriate if that's what he was convicted of but that was the only crime he was ever convicted of. >> you alluded to your grandmother's treatment. >> yes. her brother came to harvard

1921 to get a masters degree in literature. he went to howard as an undergraduate while he was at harvard he was informed by the graduate school dean because he went to howard it was a one year masters program now it was two years. i first thought this must be special to all the black students but it's only howard students. for those that went to amherst or harvard so he was quite upset he resisted and fought it. he couldn't afford it and did not have the money. so now compared obviously to

his income at the time. he had trouble scrounging up the money for another year he had several ways but he could never get around it.