Memphis and the Making of Justice Fortas

Abstract

Memphis and the Making of Justice Fortas TIMOTHY S. HUEBNER Ifeel that my roots are here... and where a plant’s roots are determine its characteristics. Justice Abe Fortas Speaking at Southwestern atMemphis, 19661 Abe Fortas, who served on the Supreme Court from 1965 through 1969, is often portrayed as a consummate Washington insider. Beginning in the early 1930s and for his entire career, Fortas lived and worked in the nation’s capital. As a New Deal lawyer, he held positions in the Agricultural Adjust­ ment Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Interior Department. Afterward, he helped build the D.C. law firm of Arnold, Fortas & Porter, advising top corporate clients and taking on high-profile loyalty cases during the Mc­ Carthy Era. Along the way, he assisted Texas Congressman Lyndon Johnson in winning a disputed U.S. Senate election, thus cementing a lifelong friendship with a future President that culminated in an appointment to the Supreme Court. After his controversial nomination to be Chief Justice and his resignation from the Court, he continued to practice law until his 1982 death at his residence in Georgetown. But long before he became known as a wealthy Washington power broker, Fortas grew up in an immigrant Jewish family of modest means in Memphis, Tennessee. Justice Fortas was a creature of Washington, to be sure, but he was also in many ways a product of his hometown.2 Growing Up in Memphis The city into which Fortas was bom still bore resemblance to a rough river town. Located on a bluff in the southwest comer of Tennessee, Memphis lay just across the Mississippi River from Arkansas and just north of the Mississippi state line. It had grown up as an outpost for lawless flatboatmen in the early nineteenth century—a place for brawlers, gamblers, and desperados of every sort—and later, as steamboats began to MEMPHIS AND ABE FORTAS 315 ply the river, it emerged as a bustling center for slave traders and cotton planters. Occu­ pied by Union forces but spared physical destruction during the Civil War, Memphis in the 1870s endured repeated epidemics of Yellow Fever, which led to death, desertion, and de-population on a massive scale. But the last two decades of the century brought an economic and demographic resurgence, as new residents, black and white, flooded into the city from surrounding rural areas. Cotton, hardwood, and, ofcourse, river transportation dominated the economy, and the opening ofa railroad bridge across the Mississippi River in 1895, the third-longest bridge in the world at the time, transformed the city into a regional hub for trade. By the turn of the century, Memphis topped 100,000 residents, making it the second-largest city in the states ofthe Old Confederacy. Heavily Protestant and racially divided, the city was also known for its ethnic and cultural diversity, as significant numbers of Irish, Italians, and Jews called the city home. Despite its rapid growth and rebirth, high rates of murder and crime still dragged down the city’s reputation.3 Abe Fortas’s parents arrived in Memphis from England in 1905. Woolf Fortas and his wife Ray, as they were listed in the census, were originally from Russia and Lithuania, respectively, and they came to Memphis to join Woolfs older brother Joseph, who, after having immigrated decades before, managed a furniture factory in the Bluff City.4 Although Joseph and his family rented a home in the “Pinch” district of Memphis, a predominantly Irish and Jewish neighbor­ hood on the north end, Woolfand Ray bought a home on McLemore Avenue on the south side of town. The Fortases, who later appeared in the census as “William” and “Rachel,” had three children at the time of their arrival—Mary, Nellie, and Meyer. A fourth, Esta, came along in 1907. The youngest—listed in the Shelby County Birth Records as “Abaram” but elsewhere always as “Abe”—was bom on June 19, 1910.5 William Fortas initially worked as a carpenter and cabinetmaker in the Fortas furniture factory, but for reasons that are unknown, in 1919 he parted ways with his older brother to start a business of his own. Success seemed to elude him...