Shirley Adelson Siegel

March 23, 2006; May 19, 2006; October 12, 2006;

October 17, 2006; February 27, 2006

Recommended Citation

Transcript of Interview with Shirley Adelson Siegel (Mar. 23, 2006; May 19, 2006; Oct. 12, 2006; Oct. 17, 2006; Feb. 27, 2006), https://abawtp.law.stanford.edu/exhibits/show/shirley-adelson-siegel.

Attribution The American Bar Association is the copyright owner or licensee for this collection. Citations, quotations, and use of materials in this collection made under fair use must acknowledge their source as the American Bar Association.

Terms of Use This oral history is part of the American Bar Association Women Trailblazers in the Law Project, a project initiated by the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession and sponsored by the ABA Senior Lawyers Division. This is a collaborative research project between the American Bar Association and the American Bar Foundation. Reprinted with permission from the American Bar Association. All rights reserved.

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ORAL HISTORY OF SHIRLEY A. SIEGEL

FIRST INTERVIEW

March 23, 2006

This is the first interview of the oral history of Shirley A. Siegel which is being taken on

behalf of Women Trailblazers in the Law, a Project of the American Bar Association

Commission on Women in the Profession. It is being conducted by Joan F. Krey on March 23,

2006.

SIDE A

Ms. Krey: Interviewing Shirley Adelson Siegel for the ABA Women Pioneer's project. We

are going to start with [inaudible] and I'd like you to speak of course as slowly as

you can, but we are going to have a conversation. You will be able to look at the

transcripts, correct anything you would like, add anything, delete anything, and

we're just trying to really explore all of your memories. So, what are the things

that you remember first about where you were born and some of the early times of

your life?

Ms. Siegel: I remember the stories that have been told in my family over the years about my

early years more than I remember them myself. I was born in the Bronx. I don't

remember the Bronx at all. When I was a year old, the family moved to Trenton,

New Jersey. We were there until I was five years old. I don't remember Trenton

at all. I remember only the stories about Trenton, and, of course, there are family

snapshots, so I can see what the house looked like and what I looked like on the

porch. A very central fact of my life took place at the age of five. Which I know

by so much telling about it and that is, when I was having my fifth birthday it was

the day that the family moved from Trenton back to New York City.

Ms. Krey: Now what year was that in?

Ms. Siegel: I was born July 3, 1918. This was exactly five years later. And I sat next to a

stranger on the Pennsylvania railroad on that two hour trip. When I got back to

the city with the family, what they talked about the rest of that day was that I had

spoken to this stranger for the whole two hours, and they said, she is such a

chatterbox she should be a lawyer. Well, I then entered kindergarten and the

teacher asked us what we wanted to be. This was in public school, which I

attended through high school. I said that day in kindergarten that I wanted to be a

lawyer, without knowing any lawyers and having absolutely no idea what this was

all about. That response created a little sensation in the class. I may have been

known throughout elementary school as the girl who wanted to be a lawyer. So

this was a very odd way to choose a career.

Ms. Krey: Tell me, tell us something about your parents, what they did, your grandparents

and your siblings.

Ms. Siegel: I came of an immigrant family. My parents were both born in Europe. They were

born in Czarist Russia, in the part that is now known as Lithuania. My father

came over when he was nine years old, in or about 1883, and my mother came

over later in 1905, when she was 22 years old. They married in 1909 in the

United States. My parents came from the same vicinity. My mother knew my

father's family in Europe, and they knew her family. They were leaving Europe,

of course, for opportunities in this country. As Jews, they didn't have a lot of

- 2 -

opportunity in Czarist Russia. My mother's brothers had preceded her to

America.

She was brought up in a rural area. Her father had an occupation which was

common at that time for Jews. He was the overseer for a large feudal estate

belonging to Polish nobility consisting of farmland, mill, forest, lakes, peasants'

homes and so on. He and his family lived comfortably on this estate, in a very

beautiful area. My mother and her sister were tutored at home. I heard stories

about reading Russian literature while they were sitting by the lake, not being

made to be really good for anything much.

Ms. Krey: But they were, they sound as though they were educated.

Ms. Siegel: They were educated at home. My mother then wanted to go to the university, but

that would mean living in Vilna, and her father wouldn't hear of it. Her mother

had died when she was thirteen. Now she had a stepmother, a nice woman, but

she never got used to having lost her mother. She was sort of in charge of the

younger siblings. She had a younger brother (who later preceded her to America)

and a younger sister, and then finally the stepmother had a daughter. My mother

from age thirteen was taking some mature responsibilities at home, but it was an

idle life, and she was restless. So, when her brothers sent her money for a dowry

so that she could marry well, she took the money and bought tickets to come to

America. She took along her younger sister.

Ms. Krey: She sounds very brave.

Ms. Siegel: She was a very brave woman. She was also a very intelligent woman. I think that

it was the smartest thing for her to do.

- 3 -

Ms. Krey: So what year would that have been, when she came?

Ms. Siegel: 1905, during the Russo-Japanese war.

Ms. Krey: And her brothers were living in New York City?

Ms. Siegel: Her brothers were living in New York City. They then got together and took an

apartment for the three brothers and two sisters. My mother and her sister were at

first received at the home of David Zagor, an uncle, a brother of her father, who

was established in New York City. He himself had several children and he just

took in these two waifs, who came with their goose down mattresses and their

second-class passage, when they turned up. He put them up for some weeks until

the siblings got together and established their apartment.

Ms. Krey: How old were they?

Ms. Siegel: My mother was 22 and I guess that Sarah was 20.

Ms. Krey: And was this -- where in New York City?

Ms. Siegel: The lower east side, Hester Street, which my mother thought was dreadful.

Ms. Krey: Yes, because she came from a farm, I mean a beautiful estate.

Ms. Siegel: Yes, yes and traveling to America, she went through Warsaw, she saw great cities.

And Vilna was a fine city, too. It's now known as Vilnius.

Ms. Krey: Yes. Where did she debark from?

Ms. Siegel: I think they went through Germany.

Ms. Krey: So this is 1905.

Ms. Siegel: She married in 1909.

Ms. Krey: And explain again how she met your father.

- 4 -

Ms. Siegel: Well my father's family came from the same vicinity. In fact, the village that he

came from, this hamlet had a name, VsokiDvor. His family had lived there for

many many years~ They had gone to Moscow and got an· incorporation for this

little Jewish hamlet in the 1 ih century. Finally, by World War I, everything more

or less collapsed. And my mother told me that from her hills in Talkeva (now

known as Tolkiszkese), she could see the red roofs ofVsokiDvor. V-s-o-k-i-D-v­

o-r. It's now know in Lithuanian as Aukstadvaris. It exists, it's now a completely

different place, not a Jewish hamlet.

Ms. Krey: And that's where your father was.

Ms. Siegel: That's where his family was from and that's where my mother's family went on

Jewish holidays, because there was a little synagogue there. My father's family

was the dominant family in VsokiDvor. My mother said it didn't have more than

four streets, at most, but it was a pretty village.

Ms. Krey: What was your mother's name.

Ms. Siegel: Her name was Rose Zagor, Z-a-g-o-r. My father's name in Europe was

Abramowicz but in New York they changed it to Adelson; that's my middle

name, you know.

Ms. Krey: So, that was your beginning, but what is so interesting, we are back in 1905, your

mother is there and now she is here and where does she meet your father's

family--?

Ms. Siegel: Well, they are also in the lower east side of Manhattan, and my grandfather, my

father's father, had known my mother's mother. See, my father's father was a

rabbi, and my mother's mother was the daughter of a rabbi. In fact, that's how

- 5 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms.Siegel:

my mother's father had met her, because she was the daughter of the man who

was his teacher. And since the families were acquainted, of course, having been

going to VsokiDvor my mother certainly knew the Abramowicz family.

My grandfather was here a few years ahead of the family. He came first

and then the others came.

And what was he doing?

The story is that my grandfather graduated at sixteen, which was remarkable, from

a special rabbinical seminary near Vilna, and that also has a name, Volozhin, V-o-

1-o-z-h-i-n. It's very well known.

Ms. Krey: Is this your mother's father or your father ....

Ms. Siegel: No, this is my father's father. My mother's grandfather, her mother's father, was

a rabbi in another vicinity in Lithuania, then part of Czarist Russia. He was a

Chasanavitch, descended from a chief rabbi in Seipzig in about the 15th century;

the victim of a ritual murder. My father's father when he came here, really just

wanted to study, he wanted to read the Talmud all the time. But he had to support

a family, so his cousin, Louis Adelson, helped him out: Louis had married a

woman by the name of Adelson, changed his name from Abramowicz to Adelson

and told my grandfather he'd better Americanize himself and take that name too,

which he did. His cousin then helped him get a little business, doing insurance,

but he never did much. The family was extremely poor. My father suffered from

rickets because of malnutrition when he was growing up. And my grandmother

was just overwhelmed by the poverty. If they had stayed in Europe and things

hadn't changed, it might have worked out. Her merchant family would have

- 6 -

supported this young rabbi, who was the son of a rabbi; that tradition would have

gone on. But their world was changing. My father as the eldest son was destined

to be a rabbi an_d was educated only in Hebrew schools in Europe and also when

he came to New York; he never went to a secular school. When he was in his

teens, there was an opportunity for him to apprentice at a synagogue in New

Orleans. That's the story that I've heard. None of this is documented history.

Ms. Krey: That's great.

Ms. Siegel: And he rebelled. He was 1n America, and he just wanted to go out there and make

money, so he embarked on being a businessman and broke with his father. He

never was a consistently successful businessman, but he always tried, he had

entrepreneurial instincts. When my mother married him, he was doing well in

some branch of the garment industry. They were engaged for a long time. They

met in 1905 and married in 1909. They went to Niagara Falls ... By that time, she

was twenty-six.

Ms. Krey: Twenty-six. __ in those days I am sure a little bit older.

Ms. Siegel: It was a little older. Well, she had been picky in Europe. A lot of the good men

had gone to America. And she had wanted to work in Vilna and attend the

University where she had friends, but her father vetoed that idea. She was just

supposed to get herself a husband in Europe, and she didn't find one so she came

to America and found this one.

Ms. Krey: Your father had been in America since when about?

Ms. Siegel: 1883.

Ms. Krey: Oh, so he had-really spent most of his childhood here.

- 7 -

Ms. Siegel: But he didn't go through the American public schools. He studied in what they

called a Cheder. He was studying on the lower east side, where there was a large

orthodox Jewish community. He was raised in an orthodox home where he was to

grow up to be a proper orthodox rabbi. And he was considered a very good

student in this, his father was proud of him. My father was very well read, self­

taught, in history both ancient and modem, which he read in English. If only he

had received proper guidance, had a mentor.

Ms. Krey: Okay. Would you just tell us now were you the first born.

Ms. Siegel: No, they were two ahead ofme. There were two girls. I was the third girl, and

that's the whole family. Three girls. The first one was eight years older than I,

and the next one five and half years older.

Ms. Krey: Where were they being schooled?

Ms. Siegel: Well, once we were in Trenton, they were in the Trenton public schools.

Ms. Krey: And when did you move to Trenton?

Ms. Siegel: When I was one year old.

Ms. Krey: Did you have a house there or apartment?

Ms. Siegel: A house. As I said, I don't remember the house, but I know it from the pictures.

The house with the porch. Not too far from the Delaware river, where, as my

sister told me only a few months ago, just before she died, she used to go fishing

with my father when she was a little girl. I didn't recall that my father ever went

fishing -- she told me, at the age of ninety-three, "Father went fishing with me."

Ms. Krey: With you?

Ms. Siegel: No, with her.

- 8 -

Ms. Krey: And she is the middle one?

Ms. Siegel: She was the middle one. We children had a very happy childhood in Trenton. All

three of us did, with our disparate ages.

Ms. Krey: Why did your father move there?

Ms. Siegel: I think because he was having problems with the union in New York and he

figured if he'd go down to Trenton, it would be non-union and everything would

be great. So he went down; at first things were great, but then that fell apart. He

had to come back and try again in New York. They had lived in one place in

Trenton for four years, just four years.

Ms. Krey: Did he have friends there? Did he have any relatives in Trenton, do you know?

Ms. Siegel: There were relatives of my mother there, in fact, her father's sister and her family

and her own sister Sarah and her family. One of the Trenton cousins was

attending Princeton.

Ms. Krey: So, could you explain again about the train trip, in context?

Ms. Siegel: The family returned to New York on the Pennsylvania railroad, a two-hour trip,

and somehow I sat next to a stranger, since my two sisters, I guess sat together.

Ms. Krey: And you were moving now back to New York? Was this your first time on the

train, that you know of?

Ms. Siegel: I had probably been taken by train down to Trenton, because my father never

Ms. Krey:

drove a car. We never had a car. So, the story is, that I spoke to this stranger all

the way and when the family arrived in New York, it was the talk of the family.

Do you think it was because you hadn't talked a lot before.

. - 9 -

Ms. Siegel: I don't know what it was. I think possibly the idea that they had left me with a

tranger and I was not fazed by this. I don't know what it was, because although

my father had been disappointed that I wasn't a boy, as soon as he got to know me

he spoiled me and I am sure I probably talked a lot. The story is that my father

always was saying, don't bother the baby.

Ms. Krey: And how did you know he was hoping for a boy.

Ms. Siegel: Oh, that's family lore. In fact, he was so disappointed when I was born that his

uncle, his mother's brother, who was well off, and my father at that time was not

doing so well, the uncle said he would adopt me. He had only sons, no daughter.

Well, my father then said if this child was good enough for Jake Alberts, she was

good enough for him. So here I am, five years old on the train and. The

important thing is, the family's reaction made such an impression on me that

when I went to kindergarten I announced I was going to be a lawyer. Of course,

the reaction of the kindergarten also impressed me, so as I was impressing them

they were impressing me. The other little girls wanted to be nurses and teachers.

Ms. Krey: So we're in 1923, approximately.

Ms. Siegel: I went through public school in the Inwood section in Upper Manhattan.

Ms. Krey: That was a nice section.

Ms. Siegel: It was hardly built up. When I go back now, which I rarely do, I see that it is solid

with apartment houses, but at that time there still were areas where they hadn't

even broken down the rock to build foundations.

Ms. Krey: So that was a little more trees and rural.

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes, very much so.

- 10 -

Ms. Krey: Did your mother like that?

Ms. Siegel: I think my mother was a city person, and Trenton as a small town did not appeal

to her. Inwood was the city. And we stayed there until I was in my last year of

high school, at which time my father had a business failure which gave him a

heart attack and we were about to be evicted, so we moved down to an apartment

near Columbia University, West 115th Street.

Ms. Krey: Let's go back a little bit. Tell me about your two sisters. Just the early part when

you went to kindergarten, what did they want to be, that kind of thing. What do

you think that their reactions were.

Ms. Siegel: I don't think anybody in the family, except me, was so dopy as to have a career

staked out at that early age.

Ms. Krey: Did your sisters make fun of you?

Ms. Siegel: No, not at all.

Ms. Krey: Did your mother?

Ms. Siegel: Not one bit, no, nobody did. My mother was used to the idea of women in

professional careers. Where she had lived in Europe, it was close by the grand

house of the Polish nobility, and the daughter in that family was a biologist who

had studied at the university and so on, so my mother was very restless. She saw

that women studied and had professional careers.

Ms. Krey: She saw a role model.

Ms. Siegel: Oh sure. And then there was something else very important in inculcating the

idea that perhaps I should be a lawyer. My father's sister Frances had a best

friend who was a lawyer at one time she was a domestic relations court judge in

- 11 -

Ms. Krey:

New York City. Now, so far as I can tell, she was not a friend of my parents. I

don't know whether they ever met her, maybe they met her at my aunt's home,

but they knew about her. Her name was Jeanette Brill, and as I recently learned,

at one point she was an Assistant State Attorney General. It is through this

connection -- it is too complicated to explain -- that it finally dawned on me how

my parents happened to say I should be a lawyer. Whom did they know who was

a lawyer? Obviously my aunt's best friend. My mother certainly thought that

women belong in the professions. She always regretted that she did not have any

training for anything. When she came to New York, it was a land of opportunity,

but there were no opportunities for her because she thought she couldn't do

anything. She had learned how to sew and so, when she and her siblings were

setting up housekeeping, she got a little job sewing in a factory. But that was a

horrible experience and she did not continue with it. She was a very fine

seamstress and made the clothes of her older daughters and that kind of thing, but

she didn't know how to make a decent living out of it or didn't want to.

She was living with three brothers until one by one they married. I think

she was the last of the group to marry. I know she was intent on getting her

younger sister married well; she felt responsible for her. They gave her a fine

wedding, as well as they could. But the brothers were really supporting the

household.

Did she keep house for the brothers then in other words until she married?

- 12 -

Ms. Siegel: Her sister had a facility for cooking. My mother had never cooked. They had had

a maid and cook at home in Europe, so I think that she kept house with her, but

the cooking was done by her sister.

Ms. Krey: So now your mother is married, has children, and she's supportive of your sisters.

I am curious about what she wanted them to be or how that all worked out.

Ms. Siegel: My oldest sister was considered a prodigy, a brilliant girl with many talents.

When she studied the piano, the piano teacher thought she should be a concert

pianist. Anything she touched she did well. She spoke so beautifully that the

Trenton education department had her go from class to class to say a few words,

so that the kids could hear a young person speaking in decent English with good

syntax. I have a loving cup of hers, a silver loving cup, that she won doing an

article at age 10 on why I love America or a similar subject for the American

Legion. I mean, she was a hit in Trenton.

Ms. Krey: And what was her first name.

Ms. Siegel: Dorothy. When she came to New York she went to Hunter High School, and did

brilliantly. Academically, she was at the top. Then she came to Barnard College

and decided, as the family was financially insecure, that she ought to major in the

classics, because then she would be able to get a job teaching Latin or Greek.

And so she majored in the classics and she walked off with all of the classics

prizes at Columbia University. But she couldn't get a job in that field, because

they weren't available. So, while working part-time for her masters degree, she

took a job .as an English teacher in the New York City public school system. She

found that high school teaching wasn't suited to her, and so she then began taking

- 13 -

jobs as a writer. Meanwhile, she.started to work on a PhD. on the philosophy of

aesthetics. And the family never affected what she did in any way; she chose her

own path. She always worked hard for the family. When I went to law school,

although I had a loan from the law school to cover my tuition, I needed living

expenses out of town, and my sister helped me without any question. She was

already doing this for other relatives, out of the money that she made during the

few years that she was a high school teacher.

Ms. Krey: So she went to Barnard and she must have gotten along there also.

Ms. Siegel: Of course she did, she may have got scholarships. In fact I had scholarships, at

first, at Barnard, and then, I think, in the last year, they changed it to a loan.

Ms. Krey: That must have been a big achievement for someone from this family to go to

Barnard, for her to go to college.

Ms. Siegel: Well, you know, it's funny, it didn't seem like an achievement. They thought of

themselves, while poor, as being people of worth. It's the rabbinical background

and all that. So the fact that they had not succeeded in America, weren't rich,

didn't affect their own sense of identity. It was really like impoverished gentility.

Ms. Krey: Right. So they took it, as a matter of course, that a girl would go to Barnard, that

their daughter would go to Barnard.

Ms. Siegel: Right,. I think so. And after all, my father's two nephews went to Columbia, so

they were all creeping out.

Ms. Krey: And were they predecessor to her, so she was following in their footsteps by

going to Barnard?

- 14 -

Ms. Siegel: I think the oldest grandchild was already at Columbia. That's true, she was

number two.

Ms. Krey: So, obviously you knew about that and saw that as a model too ....

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes.

Ms. Krey: What about your middle sister, what's her name?

Ms. Siegel: Bernice.

Ms. Krey: And so what did Bernice do in her younger days?

Ms. Siegel: Bernice. I'd like to say what Bernice did in her whole life because she ended up

with a very good life. Being in the shadow of Dorothy, that was really very hard.

She was around Dorothy a lot ... both of them read early and well, and Dorothy's

taste influenced her ... but she always felt that Dorothy was the special one, and

so she wouldn't even consider applying to Barnard. She felt that it wasn't for her,

so she went to Hunter.

Ms. Krey: And had she gone to Hunter High School, also?

Ms. Siegel: No, she hadn't. She went to George Washington High School, a public high

school, which is where I went. She was always a very good student, but suffered

from· a sense that she was not in Dorothy's class. Partly for the fact that Dorothy

was such a good reader Bernice then became such a reader, she became a good

writer also, and Bernice finally ended up on the editorial board of Life Magazine.

And she worked for a masters and never completed it, just as Dorothy never

completed her PhD. In fact, one of the publishing houses offered Dorothy an

advance to do a book on Marcel Proust, but then World War II broke out and she

- 15 -

couldn't get overseas to do the interviewing that she wanted to do, and so she just

did other things.

Ms. Krey: So did they ever marry.

Ms. Siegel: Bernice married well to a distinguished academic. Dorothy married, but it wasn't

a successful marriage and she divorced. There was a lot of pressure on women to

marry, self-imposed pressure.

Ms. Krey: Were your sisters, and, of course, obviously you were achieving a lot, but in that

time period, were you different from the other girls that you played with, that

were on the block? Was it not unusual for girls to achieve so much? To go to

Barnard? For example, and to go to Hunter, cause this 1920s and early 30s, yes.

Were you unusual. They'd say "oh, look at those Adelson girls" or was it. ...

Ms. Siegel: I think the Adelson girls were considered unusual. Well, just think of the locale,

Ms. Krey:

of Inwood, in New York, at that time, northern Manhattan. It was lower or

working class neighborhood. We had nice friends.

Were they mostly Jewish?

Ms. Siegel: · No, they weren't. They were all kinds of things, they were Armenian, Irish,

Greek, and so on, I am thinking of the people that we knew well, like the girl who

walked with me to school.

Ms. Krey: Did your parents move there on purpose to not be in a Jewish community or did

they just didn't know?

Ms. Siegel: No, they were looking for a place where the rent was low, and where the children

would have a nice open air place. And, at that time, there were certainly a lot of

trees.

- 16 -

Ms. Krey: So they were focused on that and not the culture or religious issues.

Ms. Siegel: No. And they were able to take a bus across to the Bronx where my father's

parents still lived. Every Sunday morning he would get on that bus and visit them

and sometimes I went with him. My grandmother was a very good cook, and she

made sweets: Inwood did have at lease one synagogue although it was not a

particularly Jewish neighborhood.

Ms. Krey: But, did you have Jewish children in your class.

Ms. Siegel: I don't recall many Jewish children in my classes ..

Ms. Krey: The teachers sound like they were supportive of your story that you tell about

being a lawyer, they weren't going who does she think she is.

Ms. Siegel: Oh no, no. In fact, I did very well in school. When I came home with good

marks the first year, my father said, oh, just because your name is Adelson and

begins with A like Abu Ben Adam, you're at the head of the list. He teased me,

but I did very well in my studies. I then went on to junior high school, where I

was the valedictorian and I was valedictorian also at George Washington High

School. I did very well, academically.

Ms. Krey: And it sounds like your parents were proud of you.

Ms. Siegel: I am sure they were.

Ms. Krey: Because sometimes parents of girls will say, perhaps, what does she need an

education for, or, you know, she's just going to get married. It sounds like there

wasn't any of that. Was there any of that attitude?

Ms. Siegel: No, I think that my father might have had some of that in him. You know, it's

time for them to go to work.

- 17 -

Ms. Krey: Oh, it's time to go to work. That's different.

Ms. Siegel: But my mother would not support that. She wanted us to be educated and also

marry.

Ms. Krey: What kind of activities did you do in school? Did you do athletics? Clubs? Any

particular thing? Now we are talking through high school.

Ms. Siegel: Oh, I did clubs. I did not do athletics, beyond the required gym, and swimming,

which was always humiliating, because our family had little money for resorts in

the summer time, we didn't much go to the beach and I had not learned to swim.

They had a pool at George Washington High School, and you had to take.

swimming. I was a bit laggard, because I had no real opportunities for sports and

the family were not athletic. Well we didn't go away in the summer.

Ms. Krey: What did you do?

Ms. Siegel: I just stayed home. My sisters called me a street kid, since I played in the street

so much of the time -- hop scotch, jumped rope. My oldest sister Dorothy, as

soon as she was, I guess, sixteen, got some sort of a summer job. My sisters both

had summer jobs. I think my sister Dorothy got a job selling tickets at the motion

picture theatre down in Chinatown one summer, through a connection of an uncle

of ours. Bernice worked in Macy's on Saturdays.

Ms. Krey: Was work something that you looked forward to doing? Did you like school

better?

Ms. Siegel: I loved school, but I never thought I would not work.

Ms. Krey: What made you feel that work was good for a woman? Your mother wasn't

working, was she?

- 18 -

Ms. Siegel: No, she didn't work. She did housework. I don't think I ever had a question that

I would not work. And I think that my sisters felt they were going to work. It

was just work at what.

Ms. Krey: Was it the economics of the time that, you're in an immigrant environment, that

everybody worked.

Ms. Siegel: That may be it. I don't know. The possibility of not working, the fact that my

mother didn't work. Well, after all, she was an immigrant woman who had never

gone to a school.

Ms. Krey: Do you feel sorry for her.

Ms. Siegel: I was very very attached to her, and thought she was wonderful. In fact people

who met her thought she was smart. I think they were surprised that a woman

who hadn't been formally schooled could have that poise and that natural

elegance.

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Did she talk to you about her hopes for you or that she would like you to work.

No. I don't recall our discussing it.

Your sisters?

No, we didn't discuss it. We just were busy getting through our schooling.

So they obviously thought school was most important.

Oh of course, and then graduate school, too; both of my sisters were embarked on

graduate school.

Now, your girlfriends, the friends that you were friendly with in elementary

school and high school, which can be a very influential time, were they also very

studious and interested in studies.

- 19 -

Ms. Siegel: High school friends, not my friends in elementary school.

SIDEB

M~. Siegel: I was active in club activities, but I didn't really know these girls outside of

school. At high school, I did know several girls who then went on to Barnard

College with me.

Ms. Krey: Okay. And what about the influence of boys?

Ms. Siegel: Well, I never went to a party with boys or went out with boys, until I was in

college.

Ms. Krey: And the boys in the class were they neutral, discouraging, encouraging?

Ms. Siegel: I had good relations with boys in high school, good students who were in a sense

competing with me. So, when I came out first as valedictorian, there was a

salutatorian who was male; he competed with me, but we were friends. There was

no social activity, but, in school, I had many friends, boys as well as girls. I was

active in the Foreign Policy Association club, that kind of thing. I was in the

Arista, the honor society for George Washington High School, which had 5,000

students all together; in the honor society I don't know how many there were. So

I did have friends in high school.

Ms. Krey: Were the teachers supportive of your achievements in high school or did they

favor the boys in any way?

Ms. Siegel: I didn't see that boys were being favored at all. I had a history teacher, I think

maybe favored me unduly.

Ms. Krey: A woman or a man?

- 20 -

Ms. Siegel: A woman. And I remember, this fellow who was the second highest when we

graduated was also in my Latin class. I think the Latin teacher liked me.

Ms. Krey: Man or woman?

Ms. Siegel: Man. So you see gender wasn't an issue. Not for me. No, it didn't hurt me at all.

Ms. Krey: What about anybody else in your family, encouragement or discouragement of

your goals to go to college and work and even become a lawyer. You know,

looking now to your parents, siblings or cousins or whoever?

Ms. Siegel: I think they were proud of me. The cousins were all on the same track. They

were also going to go to college. On both sides of the family. My mother's

nieces and nephews and my father's niece and nephews were all heading for

college.

Ms. Krey: Were there any all girls organizations that you were part of at all?

Ms. Siegel: I was a Girl Scout.

Ms. Krey: Did you enjoy that?

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes, I did enjoy that.

Ms. Krey: Was that something that was sponsored at school or did you have to seek it out?

Ms. Siegel: I think they held their meetings at the synagogue.

Ms. Krey: Did you go camping with them?

Ms. Siegel: No. I never did anything really outdoorsy or athletic.

Ms. Krey: Did your Girl Scout troop itself go camping and then you did not?

Ms. Siegel: I don't reclal that my troop went camping. I think that our world was so poor, in

those days. I couldn't even afford a uniform. I didn't have a Girl Scout uniform.

Ms. Krey: Did the other girls?

- 21 -

Ms. Siegel: There were some girls that had a uniform, but I was not unusual in not having one.

Ms. Krey:

And obviously it was because it would have meant an outlay of money. For

what? For a Girl Scout uniform? When you're trying to feed the family.

Was there any sexual harassment at all? I mean we didn't call it that then, but was

there any kind of sex discrimination or disparate treatment that you can think of?

Up to college we're talking about.

Ms. Siegel: Never.

Ms. Krey: Never. All right. So, if you were thinking back, who were your role models

before college?

Ms. Siegel: My sister Dorothy. Dorothy was brilliant, lovely, and she excelled at Barnard and

had excelled at Hunter and everywhere. When she was sent to Temple Emanuel,

she walked off with all the prizes. This was the affluent Jewish community, so we

have, at home, a beautiful edition of Shakespeare that was a present from the

women's organization. We also have a set of Graetz' multivolume History of the

Jews with a frontispiece stating, in recognition of Dorothy Adelson, etc. I mean

whether it was Hunter or it was the Temple Emanuel religious school .... This is

the kind of sister I had, she was truly a role model.

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Was there anybody else, that mentored you or anything like that?

No.

And, the lawyer issue which is ...

Pardon me I also did babysitting. I did babysitting. I liked that.

You liked that. The lawyer issue continued in the family, that you were going to

be a lawyer, and at this point before going to college had you met any lawyers?

- 22 -

Ms. Siegel: No.

Ms. Krey: No. But you remember your father's sister's friend was a lawyer?

Ms. Siegel: I never met her, and I don't recall that I knew about her at that time. That my

parents' saying she should be a lawyer may be traced to that friendship is

something that dawned on me many decades later, only very recently. Because I

really kind of wondered for years, "how come?" And when it dawned on me

recently, I was very excited, because I thought I'd finally unlocked a mystery.

Ms; Krey: You also said that when you were at school you would repeat this to people, but

you did not know what lawyer actually was.

Ms. Siegel: Right. I didn't know any lawyers. I'd never been in a courthouse. I studied

government and vaguely connected that with being a lawyer. My cousin, the first

born of all the Adelson grandchildren, went to law school, but I had really never

discussed anything with him about law or being a lawyer; I don't know, maybe I

wasn't quite as stupid as I say. I really don't remember.

Ms. Krey: What about advantages or benefits of being female or disadvantages?

Ms. Siegel: Is this a comment on life in general or how I felt?

Ms. Krey: In childhood. How you felt in childhood.

Ms. Siegel: I was very happy, and I enjoyed having sisters and didn't feel that I missed any

brothers. So being female was all right with me. It never occurred to me that

being female might be a problem in my plan for a career in law.

Ms. Krey: Yes. What year then did you -- you were valedictorian -- and what year did you

graduate?

Ms. Siegel: 1933. From high school.

- 23 -

Ms Krey: Had the depression made any effect yet on your family?

Ms. Siegel: My father was beginning to pull out it, somehow. When things were going so

well in the '20s, he was having a very hard time. And when others were jumping

out of windows and the economy was going to pot, he began to pull it together.

So, during the depression, things were, if anything, more tolerable, even though

we still were living on a shoestring. Everybody else was also suffering now. It

seemed, in fact, not as bad for us. The threat of eviction came when I was about

thirteen years old, I was in high school, at that time, and my fath~r really couldn't

meet the rent. It was as simple as that.

Ms. Krey: And then what happened?

Ms. Siegel: You know how it is, you can't meet the rent, you go and move somewhere else.

We just took another apartment somewhere else.

Ms. Krey: But you were able to continue at the same school?

Ms. Siegel: Yes. Well, it was a high school.

Ms. Krey: But from the same area?

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes, it was still the West Side, Manhattan. I had just one more year. Well, I

graduated at fourteen. I wasn't quite fifteen. I was fifteen in July. I graduated in

June when I was still fourteen.

Ms. Krey: How does that happen?

Ms. Siegel: In the New York public schools if you were a bright student they would push you

through.

Ms. Krey: You would just skip a grade?

- 24-

Ms. Siegel: You'd skip, but I did all the skipping in elementary school. When I came to the

high school, I did it in four years. In effect, I did eight years of elementary school

in five years, from a combination of skipping and junior high school.

Ms. Krey: So when did you start George Washington high school?

Ms. Siegel: I entered George Washington High School for the sophomore year, the second

year. At that time, if you went to junior high school, you did three years in two.

So, it included the first year of high school.

Ms. Krey: I see. So say you were eleven or twelve_ when you started high school. Is that

possible?

Ms. Siegel: I must have been, because I have told you exactly what my age was when I

finished, and after junior high school, I went to high school for three years, and

that was it. So, when I came to Barnard, I was young, too. Barnard at just fifteen.

Ms. Krey: Were there a lot of others of that age ...

Ms. Siegel: It was not unheard of.

Ms. Krey: Mostly girls? Or boys and girls, that would be so young?

Ms. Siegel: It could happen to both.

Ms. Krey: Had your sisters also skipped?

Ms. Siegel: Dorothy didn't skip, because, first after all, she was in Trenton schools, where

they didn't do this.

Ms. Krey;

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Was skipping something that made your nervous or proud or it just was normal?

It was normal. Because it wasn't unique. But there weren't many.

Made you feel special at that point ____ _

I don't recall that feeling.

- 25 -

Ms. Krey: Was it a strain that so many of the other kids were so much older?

Ms. Siegel: It should have been. I was insensitive to that. The fact is that I wasn't more

mature than my years. So when I tell you that I had no social life in high school, I

wasn't dating, I was not anywhere.

Ms. Krey: It sounds age appropriate. And your sister, your older sister was seventeen or

eighteen when she graduated?

Ms. Siegel: I don't really know but she hadn't done all that skipping, because she had Trenton

and then she had Hunter High School. It was different.

Ms. Krey: And Bernice?

Ms. Siegel: Bernice did some skipping. I think I may have been a year on her.

Ms. Krey: You mentioned about the summers that you didn't go away. And it sounded like

you wished you had gone away.

Ms. Siegel: I don't believe that I complained about it. It was after all understood it was a

matter of not being able to afford it.

Ms. Krey: Were there any public culture influences on you like movies or women politicians

or ...

Ms. Siegel: I'm not aware of that. We went to the movies sometimes.

Ms. Krey: What did you read when you were young?

Ms. Siegel: I don't know whether I remember this from just having told it or whether I really

remember it. But Dorothy took me to the library when I was about a first grader.

Wanted me to get a library card and wanted me to get out books. And she thought

I should get out books about fairies. And I wanted to get out books about little

animals having a life. It wasn't her kind of literature. She was disappointed.

- 26 -

Ms. Krey: About fairies. What kind of books were they?

Ms. Siegel: I don't know. She was showing me books, that I wasn't -- I wanted to have Brer

Rabbit and that kind of thing. Brer Rabbit and Brer Wolf.

Ms. Krey: How about when you were in high school?

Ms. Siegel: By the time I was in high school, I read Thomas Mann, Dickars. I was a fairly

serious student. I was also taking piano lessons during my high school years.

Ms. Krey: What courses were you taking?

Ms. Siegel: I don't know how much option there was in the courses I took, but most important

to me was the history course. That's where I had a very good rapport with the

teacher Mrs. Gottesman. The woman teacher I told you about earlier. And then,

as I've said, I went to meetings of the Foreign Policy Association. And I was

serious about all that.

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Those were high scho<?l meetings, foreign policy or?

Yes. They had a student unit. I found that very interesting, and I just lapped it up.

Now, going on to Barnard.

Did you have to take exams or how did you pick Barnard?

Dorothy and my mother must have decided that I should go to Barnard. They had

wanted Bernice to apply to Barnard and she had kicked. Wouldn't even try. And

I didn't kick. To me it was perfectly normal to go to Barnard. In the first place, it

was right down the street. We were then living, well, we had moved from 115th

Street which was practically on the campus and we were now at 110th near

Broadway, also near the campus. And Barnard was a college I knew about from

Dorothy, I didn't apply anywhere else.

- 27 -

Ms. Krey: She could live at home and go to classes during the day I take it?

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes. She never lived in a dormitory, and I didn't either.

Ms. Krey: Were most of the girls in dormitories in those days?

Ms. Siegel: No, those were depression years and besides Barnard didn't have enough

dormitory space if all the girls were going to live in. Later in the era when girls

wanted to live in dormitories, Barnard had to build them. In my day, I think the

dorm was really for the out of town girls. And Barnard did want to recruit out of

New York City very much. Barnard was very anxious to be a national school, so

if you came from Oklahoma, it was believed you didn't have to be quite as

academically gifted in order to be admitted. And of course that helped fill the

dorm, too.

Ms. Krey: Was there any restrictions on being Jewish?

Ms. Siegel: A quota. I think our quota was 15%.

Ms. Krey: And you were aware of it at the time?

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes. I was aware of it.

Ms. Krey: Did George Washington High School say to you, well there's a quota for our

school, or did it work that way, they would recommend a few Jewish girls and

that would be part of the quota?

Ms. Siegel: I don't know whether the high school did any recommending. I don't recall that

there was a placement person at the high school. I think you were on your own.

After all, what percent of that high school population was going to go to college.

Ms. Krey: What percent would.

Ms. Siegel: Nothing like today. I don't know.

- 28 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Okay. But small, I take it you're saying.

I think so.

And when Bernice went to Hunter, that was all girls and she commuted, I guess,

by subway.

Ms. Siegel: Of course. Where did we live at that time? It may be that she had a commute

from Inwood.

Ms. Krey: But Barnard was considered better.

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes. Hunter wasn't bad. She had some excellent faculty and made some good

friends at Hunter.

- 29 -

Ms. Krey:

ORAL HISTORY OF SHIRLEY SIEGEL

SECOND INTERVIEW

5/19/06

ABA Women's Pioneers Project. And I'm interviewing Shirley Adelson Siegel.

We left off when you were getting ready to go to Barnard. What year was that

and why did you choose Barnard?

Ms. Siegel: It was in 1933 and Barnard was a logical choice, these were still the depression

years; my family didn't have the money to send me away. That wasn't even

considered. And my sister had been to Barnard. She had done well and it was

really an optimum experience for her. So there were no alternatives that we even

considered. Barnard accepted me and gave me a scholarship and then I continued

there for four happy years.

Ms. Krey: Did most of the students have scholarships?

Ms. Siegel: No, I think the scholarships were not as common as they are today. There was not

that much financial aid. Barnard knew my family's circumstances from

Dorothy's having gone in ahead of me. I don't recall there was any wrangle about

it. I do recall that I was a little peeved when the last year they converted part of-it

to a loan. I guess the college was having financial difficulties. I remember that.

Ms. Krey: So you said to me that perhaps the fact that it was an all girls college encouraged

you to think about achievements versus marriage and staying home?

Ms. Siegel: Well I was still quite young, and I wasn't even dating when I entered college. So

I would not be thinking of marriage. I was just turned 15 and I was also shy,

socially. I was one of three daughters. There were no sons at home, and I threw

Ms. Krey:

myself into my work with great enthusiasm. My sister Dorothy had made herself

a very good record in the classics. In Latin and Greek. I was headed towards a

law career, and I was going to major in Government.

Now at this stage had you yet met any lawyers? Did you know anything more

about the legal field?

Ms. Siegel: No, I did not.

Ms. Krey: So did you have to tell an advisor that you wanted to be pre-law or was that

something that you kept to yourself?

Ms. Siegel: If anybody wanted to know, I was frank about it, and they had a pre-law society at

Barnard and I joined. And, at some point in the course of my college career, the

possibility of doing three years at Barnard, entering Columbia Law School and

getting the BA degree after one year of law school opened up, and some others

did take the option. I wasn't interested in doing that. I was still so young, and I

wasn't interested in saving any more years, of which I had done a lot in my

younger life.

Ms. Krey: So there's a pre-law society?

Ms. Siegel: Yes, but I don't recall whether it was already there when I entered. And it was

never a large group. It was maybe a half dozen members.

Ms. Krey: Was there a sense -- it was the depression -- Was there a sense that law might be

needed for social change? Was that ever on your mind as to why the other girls

wanted to do it?

Ms. Siegel: I don't know why the other girls wanted to do it. None ofmy closest friends were

considering a law career. They were headed off in other directions -- more

- 2 -

literary. Or my friends in the Government major were thinking of getting into

some sort of a public job. Of course, this was the New Deal days. And I too felt

vaguely about that. But what came along in my experience, which was very, very

significant for me, was that, I think in my junior year, this must have been about

1936, the Federal Government had developed a New Deal program known as the

NY A Program (National Yotith Administration), where you could earn 50 cents

an hour, up to 20 hours a week and nonprofit organizations could apply to have

interns put up with them. A newly formed organization called the New York

Legislative Service, which had been set up by the Citizen's Union and the

National Municipal League, applied for NYA workers. I was fortunate to land in

that agency. It made an enormous change in my life. The head of the agency,

Elizabeth Scott, put each one of us in charge of a different subject area on which

we would become knowledgeable, in preparation for the legislative session, so

that the subscribers, during the legislative session which began in January, could

be kept informed of the progress of the bills important to them. What important

programs were coming in, what was their status and so on. And I was interested

in the public programs generally, but I had not focused on housing. At the NY

Legislative Service I was made the one responsible for the field of housing, which

meant that I immediately could introduce myself to people in New York City who

were active in this field. That's how I met Charles Abrams, who was then

Counsel to Langdon Post, who was head of the New York City Housing Authority.

And I met Ira Robbins, who was very active as a housing lawyer and who

introduced me to basic constitutional issues affecting housing. The State was

- 3 -

readying for a state constitutional convention in 1938. Ultimately, that

convention adopted the first article of the State Constitution devoted solely to

housing. And I learned about all of this because I had to school myself

intensively in this field. I became a very enthusiastic supporter of housing

programs, and I then modified my career objectives accordingly. I was going to

be a lawyer, but I was going to pursue my interests in slum clearance, public

housing, and housing related subjects, such as planning. I would use my legal

education as a solid base for doing effective work in the field, because, as a

lawyer, I would be able to write legislation and pursue those constitutional issues

that Ira Robbins was trying to teach me about.

Ms. Krey: Tell me more about who was Ira Robbins.

Ms. Siegel: Ira Robbins, R-0-B-B-I-N-S. He was a practicing lawyer. But he was very

interested in what was going to happen at this Constitutional Convention. I can't

remember what was his affiliation. He was one of the persons who were pursuing

different approaches to housing issues, that's why I had to look him up. I

developed contacts with many wonderful people through this NY A job. These

friendships continued over decades.

Ms. Krey: How many hours a week would you do ... ?

Ms. Siegel: . 20 hours a week.

Ms. Krey: Did you get course credit?

Ms. Siegel: No, not that I recall.

Ms. Krey: So did you go somewhere else to do the work, or did they give it to you?

- 4 -

Ms. Siegel: They had an office in the West 30s I think. Unless I had an outside appointment

for field research, I went to their office. I would spend a few hours there at a time,

I would make calls, and I would also write up summaries of bills. We had to

write portions of the bulletin that related to our subject for distribution to

subscribers.

Ms. Krey: Who was running the office?

Ms. Siegel:. Elizabeth Scott. It was a non-profit organization. It still exists. An invaluable

organization. That was formed about 1936 when I started there. Good

government type of organization to facilitate a familiarity with state bills and open

the whole legislative process for the benefit of citizens and organizations that

were interested in public issues. Now there was already a service that was

available, and it continues to be available, which is something that corporations

could afford, The Legislative Index, but it didn't do this kind of hand holding

service that the New York Legislative Service provided.

Ms. Krey: So you did that 20 hours a week and --

Ms. Siegel: Well I had other interests at college too -- Within the field of government, I was

interested in Foreign Affairs because of problems brewing in Europe. We were

heading towards World War. And I became the President of the International

Relations Club. In that capacity, when the so-called Model Leagues of Nations

were held that involved all the colleges within a region, we were, I guess, the

mid-Atlantic region, I was the chief of the Barnard Delegation. None of this was

for course credit. And there was one particular conference where Barnard a was

sensation; we represented Great Britain and we walked off with all the honors.

- 5 -

And of course, as I was the Chief of the Delegation, it was quite a memorable

experience for me.

Ms. Krey: Where would the proceedings take place.

Ms. Siegel: On different campuses.

Ms. Krey: As a competition?

Ms. Siegel: Yes. I think that the one where we represented Great Britain was at Syracuse

University. Of course, the Barnard Group was all women. There were all men's

colleges who also participated in this, and, in fact, all of the colleges of any

standing whatsoever were coming to these Model Leagues of Nations. It was

very provocative, it was very exciting. It was an opportunity to participate in

European events. As if we were the diplomats sitting at the table. I also was

President of the Menorah Society of Jewish students. M - E - N -0 - R -A - H.

As Chair, I arranged a series of meetings. Lionel Trilling was a speaker at one

meeting -- once a month there would be a speaker. And once or twice a year there

was a dance in which the corresponding organization at Columbia College

participated.

Ms. Krey: So when did you apply to law school while you were in college?

Ms. Siegel: The only law schools that I seriously thought about were Columbia and Yale.

Harvard was not yet admitting women. And I didn't -- I did not consider NYU. I

don't think that I was conscious of it. Of course, Columbia was right there, and I

don't know why I thought of Yale. Maybe because I had a cousin who was

applying at Yale. I'm not sure. Anyway, one of my professors in Government

was Raymond Moley, M - 0 - L - E - Y, who was then very close to President

- 6 -

Roosevelt and the New Deal. His name was in the newspapers, but he was still

head of the Government Department at Barnard and was teaching. That was my

major. And Raymond Maley, as the end of the college years approached,

assuming that I would be admitted to Columbia Law School -- said that if I would,

while I attended Columbia Law School, work for him one afternoon a week to

assist him in his office, he would pay my tuition. And of course I would live at

home. So that was very tempting. And --

Ms. Krey: You must have impressed him?

Ms. Siegel: Well, alright. I was a very enthusiastic student. And a hard worker.

Ms. Siegel: And I was Phi Beta Kappa. And now I must tell you about the Student

International Fellowship. For some years, there was a tradition at Barnard, before

World War II, that the students, during the year, would drop money into a bucket

at Jake in the main lobby at Barnard Hall. I think "Jake" stood for Jacob Riis, a

benefactor. So, all year long, the students just dropped in their money by nickels

and dimes to add up to something that would send a Barnard girl abroad for a year.

For at that time few European fellowships were available. Fulbrights didn't exist,

and to get a fellowship that would take you abroad was something quite special.

A committee consisting of representatives of the Dean, and the Student Council,

and I think the faculty would nominate three or four girls in the Senior Class

whose names would be put before the student body for election. All four classes

voted on who should be the student fellow for the following year. The nominees

campaigned through interviews printed in the Barnard Bulletin. And each one of

the four nominated in my year said what she would like to do if elected. I had

- 7 -

Ms. Krey:

made a commitment in my mind to pursue my interest in housing, and so I said

that if I were to win, I would go to the London School of Economics ("LSE") and

study housing and planning in Great Britain because we were just, in this country,

beginning to take little steps to do something about our housing problems, and

Europe was way ahead of us. I would study at LSE because I had been reading

books by Harold Laski a member of that faculty as part ofmy Government major.

Well, I won handily. That meant that I wasn't going to law school the next year.

It meant that I was going to London.

Well, tell, just a few minutes about that -- that's not just getting on a plane, I

assume. I assume that was a big thing?

Ms. Siegel: It was a very big thing because my family could not have afforde~ my going. I

Ms. Krey:

couldn't have gone to Europe. It was out of the question. So having the

opportunity to go to Europe was extraordinary. And I appreciated it. I worked

very hard, and I had a wonderful, wonderful year.

Did you apply or did the school take care of ____ ?

Ms. Siegel: Dean Gildersleeve wrote a letter to the London School of Economics. Yes. Her

letter was all it took.

Ms. Krey: And then somebody had to take care of getting you on a boat and getting you

enrolled. How did that all [inaudible] happen?

Ms. Siegel: Well, the money that was raised by the students was all on deposit in a special

account in the bank on Broadway near the college. It was made available to me,

totalling about $1100. And it was enough money to pay for my crossing by boat,

there and back, and to pay tuition and all my living expenses.

- 8 -

Ms. Siegel: That was then the value of the dollar. The money paid for a year and a day

because when the school year was over in the end of June, I stayed over the

summer in order to study housing in Sweden.

Ms. Krey: Your family came to see you off?

Ms. Siegel: No so much my family as my Barnard friends.

Ms. Krey: How did your family feel about you going ____ ?

Ms. Siegel: Well, that is very interesting. My sister Bernice said to me years later that she

could never get over the fact that our mother was willing to let me go. I was the

baby of the family and we were quite protected. I was now 18 going on 19.

Ms. Krey: Had to get a passport?

Ms. Siegel: I did whatever I had to do. I don't remember that anyone did it for me. Well,

after all I had been educated at a first class institution. I should be able to handle

it. I handled it. I went on a boat. Oh. I myself had no concern about going over

alone. Knowing nobody in Europe. Not a single person there, and it didn't faze

me at all.

Ms. Krey: But also, really your college years you had this opportunity with the New York

Legislative Services, this must have given you confidence. You went down to

30th Street, you worked with adults -- it would build a lot of confidence.

Ms. Siegel: It must have. Once I got to London, I got sort of scared. I was cold, and if I came

late, I didn't get dinner at the place where I signed up. I mean, I had to find my

own accommodations, I went to a place in --

Ms. Krey: So you got off the boat -- just for those first few days, that's an interesting story.

- 9 -

Ms. Siegel: Well, I just made my way to the University after I went to the college. I needed

housing. They recommended places in that area, the Bloomsbury area. I secured

a place on Torrington Square. One of those nice old squares with multiple

dwellings all around which were actually -- I don't know what they had been

originally -- but they were like little rabbit warrens.

Ms. Krey: They call them bed sits.

Ms. Siegel: Something like that. It was only one small room. One room, common baths, not

substandard really, just European. You went down to the lobby for your meals. I

never expected I was going to do any of my own cooking. I didn't know how to

cook. And it was cold and a tittle lonely, I think, until the year really got

underway. The room in Torrington Square wasn't heated. And then you had to

heat your hot water for your bath. I studied with gloves and a coat on, in the

school library. Well, all the other students were doing it, but they were mostly

English. There were people also who were from the Dominions.

Ms. Siegel: And from India. Particularly, there was a certain affinity among the Canadians,

Australians, South Africans, Americans -- we were a group apart. We were

different from the English students.

Ms. Krey: Talk about the courses you were taking. Did you go to school everyday? Was the

system different? In other words, what was your week like?

Ms. Siegel: Because I was going for only one year, I would not be eligible for a degree.

There was a two-year minimum requirement for a Masters Degree. What I got at

the end of the year was a formal certificate from the London School of Economics,

which said that I had been in attendance at the following classes. It was a list of

- 10 -

16. I worked very hard; I went to a lot of classes. I didn't do a lot of work for all

of these, but I attended them religiously. I went to school every day. The fall

season I didn't have to travel far. But around the first of the year, after the

Christmas holiday, I moved out of Bloomsbury. Partly to keep warm. I moved

into lodgings I found again through the University. On a nice street, Abingdon

Villas, in a house that was owned by an Englishwoman who took in several young

people as boarders. I was the only guest for whom English was my first language;

Mrs. Jones had sought an English speaking student and rewarded me with a nice

room, although small, at a rent I could afford. We had meals at her dining room

table with her family. That's how I lived for the rest of the year. It was very

pleasant, very warm, very comfortable. Then, of course, I had to travel by

subway to class. The tube. I had to figure my time more carefully. Meanwhile,

in the course of the year, I had become very much involved in studies of housing

and planning in England which were developed in conjunction with my classes.

For example, I had a class with a Professor Herman Mannheim, a refugee scholar

from Germany, who was a criminologist, for whom, I did a study on juvenile

delinquency and housing.

Ms. Krey: In what sense?

Ms. Siegel: How better housing would cut down on juvenile delinquency was the general

theme. For this study I got in touch with local governments all over England. I

was always doing surveys. I don't recall for whose class I did a survey of the

local authorities throughout England and Wales on the subject of differential

renting, which I found fascinating -- the fact that the rents in these public housing

- 11 -

estates depended on how much money the tenant had. If really poor he didn't pay

any rent at all.

Ms. Krey: Because compared to the United States, just explain why you were--·

Ms. Siegel: I was not aware of our having any program like that in this country. I was not

intimately familiar with the public housing program in this country when I went

abroad, but in any case it was brand new, dating only from the New Deal. And it

was quickly taken over by the war housing program. So it was a short-lived

public housing program as such and there was practically no experience here in

managing such units. In New York I had learned of the interest here in the

Housing Management Plan developed by an English woman, Octavia Hill, and

considered a model at the very new public housing projects in New York such as

First Houses. I had met the manager of First Houses. I recall now that having

been introduced to her and other public housing managers through the New York

Legislative Service, I was asked if I would volunteer to be secretary for a

committee of housing managers who wanted to explore housing management

policies. And so I took the minutes and learned a lot through doing so. I recently

deposited my set of minutes of this group, which was a committee of what was

then called the Welfare Council and is now called the Community Service Society,

with the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives of the City University of New York,

housed in LaGuardia Community College. [END OF SIDE A]

Ms. Siegel: While in England I attended several housing conferences in different parts of the

country. As a student who was interested in these things. I bothered people with

- 12 -

questionnaires and questions and got up a lot of little card files. Acting like a

good college student.

Ms. Krey: Did you write back?

Ms. Siegel: I particularly wrote back to Barnard. Because I was the Barnard International

Fellow for that year, the Barnard Bulletin frequently carried a letter from Shirley

Adelson. I also wrote letters to Dean Gildersleeve, who politely acknowledged

them. I gave them my views on what it was like to be a student in London, what

living was like there, because in those days people didn't travel so much. And

how their university system was different from ours here, and I told them about

my various trips and my contacts in housing and what I was doing. And how

during school vacation, five weeks at Christmas and five weeks in the Spring, I

immediately left England and went to the continent. I may also have stated in

these letters that it was cheaper to live on the continent even after paying your

fare than to stay in England. I wrote how in Paris and the low countries with

letters of introduction from England I saw housing estates and I took elaborate

notes.

Ms. Krey: So besides you writing to Barnard, did you also write to Mr. Abrams and Mr.

Robbins or did you wait until you get back?

Ms. Siegel: I don't recall. However, towards the end of the LSE year, at some point Harold

Buttenheim, who was an important figure in New York City in housing, got in

touch with me. I don't recall whether I had met him before I went to London, I

probably did. But he was aware of me in any event because my sister Bernice

happened to work for his publishing house. And she had mentioned to him that I

- 13 -

was interested in housing and was going to London. And so, as my year in

London was coming to an end, I heard from Mr. Buttenheim, who offered me a

job. Harold Buttenheim, B-U-T-T-E-N-H-E-1-M. He had just founded the

Citizens Housing Council ofNew York. That was founded in 1937. Its name is

now the Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Harold Buttenheim was the

President and brought into it other leading figures, a few of whom I knew. And

he wrote and offered me a job and as he was a person in a key position in the

housing community, my career would be assured. He said he would like me to

come back after I finished my year in London and work for him.

Then another thing that was going on was that in the course of my meeting

people in housing in England, I met some wonderful women. I always thought of

them as the women of the generation whose men had been killed in World War I.

These women were very active in the public life of the community. I'd like to

include here the name of such a woman who was so important to me. Elizabeth

Denby. D-E-N-B-Y. She had just put out a book called "Europe Rehoused," in

which she discussed the housing programs in Europe, and I had the opportunity to

meet her through these meetings that I attended. I may have met her at the

Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, where I was well acquainted

(which offered me job if I'd stay in London).

Elizabeth Denby persuaded me that I was really missing out on the best

housing policies if I did not go to the Scandinavian countries. And so she

arranged it. She said rather than go home in June could I extend my stay. And I

did have enough money. I'd been living so frugally. She offered to be in touch

- 14 -

with the American Embassy in Stockholm and have me interned to a big Swedish

housing society in Stockholm, in the summer before I returned to New York. So I

accepted her offer and I did that. I was with them for a month. But I must tell

you now about Harold Laski, because that's very important. Harold Laski's name

may be known to you, but it was very much known in my time. He was a great

leader of the Labor party. I had read a number of his books when I was in

Barnard. Well, I was formally assigned to a faculty member as a regular student

at LSE and that person was Eileen Power, P - 0 - W - E - R, who was an

economic historian. I didn't really work with her. I think that she probably kept

an eye on me. But I took classes with Harold Laski. Most of his classes were

held in a football field, I mean a very big auditorium, and everybody came and

listened with rapt attention. He spoke brilliantly and all in one long sentence.

Fantastic. But he did have a seminar or small class which attracted people like me,

from South Africa and America and so forth. And so he got to know me, and he ·

knew my interest in housing. It turned out that his wife was a member of the

Fulham F U L H A M Borough Council. London County was then made up of

boroughs. Because of that contact, I could go into the Borough of Fulham and do

whatever looking around I wanted to do about housing. That was a great

opportunity, because I then was able to go out with the building inspectors, get

inside of slum housing, as well as see the new housing estates. I attended their

slum clearance hearings and got a feel for the programs followed in acquiring

land for public housing. And I got to know Harold Laski better through this, too.

When Harold Laski asked me at the end of the school year what I was going to do

- 15 -

next, I was approaching the Summer in Sweden and I had the offer from Harold

Buttenheim, which I may have just turned down, and I was in a turmoil as to my

future. I had the Raymond Moley job offer and I also had just received a letter

from Columbia Law School offering me a scholarship. I happen to have, in my

notes which I reviewed for this session, a scribbled letter that I wrote home in

June, in which I revealed my quandary. I was pretty young and I had no real

mentor. I was very confused about what to do. I was hesitating about law school.

I had these housing opportunities that anybody would give his eye teeth for who

wanted to get ahead in housing, to be taken as an assistant to Harold Buttenheim.

And have Elizabeth Denby, who was a published author and an important woman,

so interested in me that she would initiate this set-up with the American Embassy

in Stockholm. I had such contacts also in housing in New York. So I was really a

little scared as to what I was doing with law, and I wasn't sure, after all, why I

was going to law school, except that I now had this idea that it would help my

housing career. But are all of these housing opportunities still going to be there,

or after three years, will they all have been filled up with other people ___ _

you know. Is this the moment for me.

Ms. Krey: Sure, I understand that.

Ms. Siegel: Well, Harold Laski, as important as he was, always had time for students.

Extraordinary, extraordinary man. And I had no introduction to him, I was just an

American student who was interested in housing. When he asked about my plans,

I mumbled something like, I guessed I was going to law school at Columbia

University. I blurted out the whole story of my distress - the housing

- 16 -

opportunities and my indecision about law school. And he proceeded to take hold

of me. It's as ifhe got hold of my shoulders and shook me. He influenced me to

go to law school, and he said I should go to Yale, that it would be a mistake for

me to return to the same campus. He was very definite. So at that one meeting

with him, everything got resolved.

Ms. Krey: What were his reasons?

Ms. Siegel: I'm not sure of his reasons. I know that he spoke with conviction. He had been

watching me all year. It seemed to me he was particularly interested in American

students. Periodically, he came back to America. He had American friends, like

Felix Frankfurter. Well there were other Americans at LSE at the time. David

Petegorsky was there, no he was Canadian, he wasn't American. Who else was

there from the States? I'm not sure I knew any. It was rumored that David

Rockefeller was there.

Ms. Krey: Were you one of the only women?

Ms. Siegel: There were a lot of women at LSE. A lot of women were there studying to be

social workers. Its full name, I think is London School of Economics and Social

Sciences. It got to be known as LSE. Laski really screwed my head on tight. He

gave me direction and it was solid. Law and Yale. For him this was a perfect

road for me to take. And he persuaded me of it. And I said, "But it's too late to

apply." I mean it was the end of June. Well, I had gone up to Yale for an

interview at one time, but I hadn't pursued it. Not when I got the offer from

Moley. I hadn't known how I would ever have paid for Yale, anyway. So, right

then and there, he called in his secretary. And he dictated a letter to the registrar

- 17 -

at Yale Law School. I got a copy of that letter years later. He didn't give it to me.

I got it from one of the Professors at Yale with whom I was friendly, McDougal.

When President Ford became President, reference was made in the press to notes

that were taken at the time that he first came to Yale law school. He was a

classmate of mine. Yes. And so I said to Professor McDougal at that time, I said

if you were able to dig into the files and find all this information about President

Ford at the time that he was admitted to our class, maybe you could find the letter

from Laski that got me into Yale Law School, in effect. Well, he got me a copy

of the letter that Laski had written to Arlene Hadley the Registrar, in which he

said that it was all his fault that there was a delay and enclosed his check for $50.

Because I had said to him, "Professor Laski, there is a $50 application fee and I

don't know ifl have $50." Of course I paid him back later on.

Ms. Krey: So he wrote the letter and now you were going?

Ms. Siegel: He settled it. I was going to spend the summer in Sweden and then enter Yale

and ...

Ms. Krey: I take it they gave you a scholarship?

Ms. Siegel: Yale gave me a loan to cover tuition. In later years, they changed it to a loan and

a gift. And my sister Dorothy, eight years older than I. This wonderful sister who

had preceded me at Barnard.

Ms. Siegel: She supported me. She then had a job as a teacher, earning a good salary in the

New York City public school system. She was supporting a couple of cousins

with college costs, so now she supported me too. Until I found work, because by

the end of the first year I had a job. I then worked all the time I was in law school.

- 18 -

Ms. Krey: Please we have to talk about Yale. So now you enter and how many women in

the class. Tell us how you lived. Tell us what your courses were, anything.

Ms. Siegel: I was the only women in the class. Professor McDougal told me that he was the

person who had screened everybody for admission to my class. He told me at one

point that they had admitted three women, but that two didn't tum up. I turned up.

Ms. Krey: What was his first name?

Ms. Siegel: Myres. M YR E S. Myres S. McDougal. I never can remember if it is Mac or

Mc.

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

And how big were the classes [cross talk]?

The class had 125. The classes are now larger.

Yes, I know. So what was it like to be there? [ over talking]

Well I will tell you something, I will tell you something funny. I came to my first

class and nobody would sit next to me. Empty seat to the right, empty seat to the

left. That's the way the year started. After I was in school for a week, I became

ill. I ended up in the New Haven Hospital and was diagnosed as having a very

serious illness. The head of the hospital who was also head of the School of

Medicine at Yale, Dr. Blake, said that it was leukemia. And the registrar Arlene

Hadley put a notice on the bulletin board that they were calling for blood donors.

Well these fellows who didn't know me, who hadn't sat next to me in class

because it was only after a week of school when I became ill. A number of them

came over to the hospital to give their blood. It was a nice generation.

Very nice. Was this 1939? What year?

- 19 -

Ms. Siegel: This was the fall of '38. Well, it turned out that' it was a misdiagnosis. I'm here.

But still I was in the hospital for a month. It was pretty bad. They had to give me

many blood transfusions. I recall that there was a little article written about me

for a Yale Medical Journal to describe the illness.

Ms. Krey: Why was this?

Ms. Siegel: I suppose because it was thought to be leukemia and it turned out to be something

else with similar symptoms. I had lost all the platelets in my blood. When they

decided that I was well enough to leave the hospital after a month, the doctors

recommended to my parents that I take off the rest of the year and go to sunny

Florida or something like that. I was absolutely against that. If I'm well enough

to go back to class, I want to go back. That first week I had been so thrilled by

law school instruction. I took to it like a duck. I absolutely would not consider

not going back. And so I went back to school and I had to report to the hospital

every day, for awhile for a blood check. It was Thanksgiving before I was finally

declared out of the woods. At that time my family came up to my digs in New

Haven and everybody celebrated because I had recovered. At about that same

time Harold Laski was in America, and he was at Yale. And I got a message from

the Dean's office that Professor Laski would like to see me. And so I went to see

him, and he wanted to know how I liked law school. I was so enthusiastic I

couldn't find the words, I was so excited. He talked to me as ifl were his kid as

he had before, in London. He said don't gush.

Ms. Krey: Don't gush?

- 20 -

Ms. Siegel: Don't gush, calm down. I was telling him how I liked law school. I liked it so

well. And then for that semester, my mother came to live with me in New Haven

because I really was not strong, and in that weakened condition would find

independent living particularly difficult. I had been living in home like situations

in England and in Sweden also. And so my mother came up for the rest of that

first semester to see that I get fed and that I'd sleep. I didn't do anything except

study and go to the hospital for a daily checkup. It was that kind of a semester. I

got all A's. I came out so well, I was in one of the first five. I was number five.

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

And considering you'd missed a month at school. Were you taking property.

What kind of classes were you taking?

Well, I took property, civil procedure, torts, contracts and constitutional law.

Did they use Socratic method in the classes, did they call on you?

They didn't call on me much.

Did they call on students.

To some extent. They didn't use a Socratic method the way they did notoriously

at Harvard. It was a smaller school.

Ms. Krey: [over talking] Professors that you have that people might be interested in?

Ms. Siegel: Oh well, I had Harry Shulman for torts. SHULMAN. Brilliant teacher. He

seemed to be another friend of Felix Frankfurter. I had Arthur Corbin for

contracts, you know, Corbin on Contracts. I'll tell you something about Arthur

Corbin. I had no further classes with him. Just the first year. When we got to the

third year and it was time to go down to New York to look for a job, because

recruiters didn't come to the campus then, so there was a general exodus during

- 21 -

the Christmas season for New York. And the School gave us a list of firms to

visit. Arthur Corbin stopped me in the hall and he said that he thought that I

could probably use a little help. He gave me a list of firms to whom he had

written, about a half dozen firms. And names of the individuals to see there.

Each one of these may have been a former student of his who had become partner.

At one of the firms that I went to in this job hunting, Chadbourne Hunt, the fellow

who interviewed me -- he wasn't the one addressed in the letter, a young partner,

Carlos Israels, said, "Have you seen a letter that Professor Corbin wrote about

you?" And I said that I had not seen it. He said would I like a copy. I said, "I'd

love to have a copy." And I can now tell you, that the letter says that she is a

woman and a Jew. I didn't wear a sign saying that I was a Jew, but my name was

Adelson and I was a New Yorker. I don't know how they tell, they know. And I

came up through the public schools. So Professor Corbin wrote that she is one of

our best and you will be rewarded for anything you can do for her and so forth

and so on. It's a beautiful letter, which I have. Now, whom else did I have? I

had Fleming James, Fred Rodell. I had George Dession for criminal law, in a

later year.

Ms. Krey: That sounds like a woman?

Ms. Siegel: No, it isn't. George Dession, DES S ION. I had Underhill Moore and Wesley

Sturges for things like banking. I had Edwin Borchand for constitutional law. I

had James W. Moore of Moore's Federal Practice and Moore's Collier on

Bankruptcy. And then what happened was that.a couple of these people offered

me a job while school was going on.

- 22 -

Ms. Krey: As a research assistant?

Ms. Siegel: Yes, now most of the kids in law school in those days came with enough money

from their families. A very few of us worked. And I think the fact that I was not

a well-to-do person got fo be known very quickly.

Ms. Krey: [OVER TALKING]. You know, if you think about being the only woman in the

class they'd be curious.

Ms. Siegel: So they were very curious. Eugene Rostow was then.

Ms. Krey: He was Dean?

Ms. Siegel: He became a Dean later. At that point, he was a young faculty person. But he

was interested in economics, and, of course, I had come from the London School

of Economics. And so he asked if I could work with him. But I had already

signed up with J. W. Moore. I assisted J. W. Moore from then on from sometime

in my first year, right through the rest of three years. I assisted him on the volume

on Corporate Reorganization and earned my keep. And he also had me write

articles with him, where he gave me credit. We were Moore and Adelson. A

series of articles in the Virginia Law Review on the U.S. Supreme Court, 1938

term. Long articles. I did all the research, and a lot of the writing. And then, of

course, I was on the editorial board of the Yale Law Journal.

Ms. Krey: Were you perhaps one of the first women -- the first time a woman had been on

the board?

Ms. Siegel: I doubt it.

Ms. Krey: So you don't remember any particulars?

- 23 -

Ms. Siegel: No, I'm not sure. But, you know, they had been taking women students ever

since about 1920.

Ms. Krey: Oh, I see. So in other classes, as you went on, were you always the only woman

or would they have women from different years?

Ms. Siegel: I think I was always the only woman in the class. Classes ahead of me and behind

Ms. Krey:

me had women. One class had four girls, and as I said, there were three admitted

my year. I never found out who were the other two. Irene till, who was married to

Professor Walton Hamilton, and who as I recall was an economist was a special

student and may have been one or more classes with me.

Did anybody ever say, "Oh you're taking a man's place and why are you going to

law school?

Ms. Siegel: Never. My experience at law school was that the members of the faculty were

extremely supportive. Couldn't have been more supportive and couldn't have

encouraged me more. Knew that I wanted to do housing. Loved to see me do it.

Professor McDougal was interested in housing before I came along. For the first

time, he gave a seminar on housing, because he knew I would attend it. This was

my second year in law school. I recall that my friends Morris Lasker (later a

federal judge) and Norman Williams also signed up. What I did for the seminar

was a paper on constitutional law: the use of the police power to demolish

substandard housing and not have to compensate the owners. This paper was

based on my European experience and also, of course, on research I did for this

seminar. And at my suggestion, Charles Abrams already the author of

"Revolution in Land," was invited to come and speak to the seminar. He said to

- 24 -

me many years later that this seminar had made such an impression on him that it

was responsible for his starting to teach - part time - which continued throughout

his life and was very important to him. I kept Ira Robbins informed about the

seminar but he didn't come up.

- 25 -

TAPE3

ORAL HISTORY OF SHIRLEY ADELSON SIEGEL

ABA INTERVIEW

October 12, 2006

This is the Joan Krey, interview with Shirley Adelson Siegel. Today is October 12,

2006. This is tape 3. We are going to be picking up with Ms. Siegel's time at Yale Law school,

1938-1941.

Ms. Siegel: There are some things I would like to say about my relationship to my

classmates. They were always friendly, in fact there were occasions when

another student would approach me to join with him on a paper or project, I

specifically recall Walter Rosen and Harold Segall' s doing so, and I felt free

to approach Boris Bittker to work on a project with me. He subsequently

became a very good law professor but then he was just another classmate.

And Potter Stewart and I worked together on tax matters for Professor

Wallace's seminar. Professor Wallace had his students team up to work on

the federal tax questions he assigned, and so Potter and I teamed up. Well,

not long after graduation, we were at war. My classmates were scattered all

over the globe. I took it upon myself to send out double postcards to all of my

classmates. This was in 1942-43. I got addresses from the school and the

cards were forwarded to their APO addresses, simply asked for news, where

they were and what they were doing, that I could include in a newsletter. I

did this several times during the War. This was so exciting for me and I think

for them too.

- 1 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

This time period, you graduated in '41?

Yes. Pearl Harbor was in December '41. Four of my classmates died during

the War.

Remind us how many women were in your class.

I was the only woman in my class.

Were there women behind you. I mean the classes behind you?

Oh yes, there were.

So at the school at any one time there were how many?

Seven or eight. And we had a women's lounge which had been designed for a

really large class of women. We were rattling around in it, and after my time

it was converted into the faculty dining room, I believe.

Why was that so large.

I guess it was anticipated that there were going to be women students. Well, I

would like to continue, about my classmates. In 1972, ( of course I am

jumping but I want to finish the Yale law school items) in 1972 I was elected

to the board of the alumni association of the law school and I was told that I'd

received the most votes of all of the at large candidates. I don't know if that

has any significance; I have kept that note in my file. And I did have

wonderful individual contacts after the school years. Many years later a

classmate of mine, Harold Segall was giving a course at Yale School of

Management and invited me to join him, which I did for two or three years.

He would teach law for people entering business and I taught law for people

entering government, because at that point I had had much experience in

- 2 -

Ms. Krey:

government. I had a great time doing that course. And I guess I should tell

you about my encounters with Potter Stewart, Byron White and President

Ford. These are each little stories. Potter Stewart, in 1962 I went down to

argue my first United States Supreme Court case and on the evening before

the argument the phone rang, I got on, hello Shirley this is Potter. I hadn't

seen him since 1941 or been in touch with him. Well, he said I see that you

are in town and I just want to chat. I said now wait a minute, I said this isn't

Potter this is Jason. No, he said it's Potter. I said, I know, Jason, I'll be

seeing you tomorrow. I said I'm working now. I'm trying to practice my

argument for tomorrow morning and I really don't have time to chat. I'll see

you tomorrow. He said, oh no, its Potter. And I said, quit kidding. And I

hung up. The following day in Court while I was seated at the counsel table

listening to the argument to which I'd be responding shortly, a page came

down from above with a little note, which of course, I've treasured. It says,

Shirley it was I, Potter. So that's a funny episode isn't it. And it circulated ~t

the City Bar Association here in New York because I had mentioned it to Edit

Spivack as a juicy episode that l could tell her about confidentially.

Subsequently, at an American Bar Association conference at which Justice

Stewart was present. Edith went up to him and said, is that story that Shirley

tells true? And he said yes. So of course, then the matter became public.

And I was somewhat embarrassed.

[INAUDIBLE?] Did you see Potter Stewart at anytime after?

- 3 -

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

No, his little note had said. Why don't you stop in to see me. I never did.

Well, I once saw him when he came to speak at the New York City Bar

Association. I saw him very briefly, not a real encounter. Then I'll tell you

about Byron White. This was about twenty years later. I had just resigned as

a Solicitor General in New York State.

What year~~~~?

'82. This was in '82. I got a message from one of the lawyers in the New

York Attorney General's office who had recently appeared before the United

States Supreme Court that when she was asked a particular question by the

Court, she responded by saying "Our former Solicitor General Shirley

Adelson Siegel thought that ... ," which of course is an incredible way to

address the Courts, and that thereupon, a note was sent by Justice Byron

White to his clerk, while the argument was proceeding, saying "Call Albany

and find out what has happened to Shirley Adelson Siegel." Whereupon, I

wrote to him and thanked him very much for his solicitude. I had known him

slightly at law school. He was a year after me. I thanked him and he

responded, why don't you stop in to see me. It just happened that I was going

to be in Washington and so I stopped in. He was extremely cordial. He

introduced me to the chief judge, who was very relaxed at his desk in an old

sweater and he insisted on taking me around and showing me all the

paraphernalia at the Court. And we chatted about how the states were being

represented before the Court, which was then a problem. And, he too, said oh

do come in and we can have lunch right in my office. But, as you see, I'm

- 4 -

very poor at that. I never followed it up. And, finally I just want to put in this

tidbit about President Ford. He was also a classmate. I didn't know him at

school, really. But when I became associated with a law firm in California in

1948, I sent notices to all my classmates. To my amazement, even classmates

whom I didn't remember responded with their best wishes. And this included

Gerald Ford, who wrote his good wishes and also that he had just been elected

to Congress, and, how well he'd run, but, he added, this is a pretty solid

Republican district. Years later, when he was President and I was on the

Board of the Alumni Association of the Law School, he was invited to come

up to the law school to speak. And, as he went around shaking hands, he

came to me. He pointed at me and said, "oh the girl in the class" and of

course the Yale photographers were following him around so I have a picture

memorializing this encounter. That was the extent of my acquaintanceship

with him. But since he was the United States President, I think it merits being

included in this oral history. So now I've said all the nice things. And I'd

like to continue talking about relationships with my classmates by reporting

two encounters that were ambiguous but that I took bitterly in retrospect. I

was on the Law Journal Board, and in my second year, it was the time to

choose the officers of the Board for the following year. The fellow who was

from the class ahead of me who was the Chair of the Board, Langden Van

Norden, spoke to me one day and said, "How would you like to go for a

walk?," which was very unexpected. I had never spoken with him before this.

So, we just walked a little bit across the campus and came back and that was

- 5 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

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Ms. Siegel:

it. Well, my reaction to this was that it was very odd and I was sort of

amused. He had been doing all the conversing and it was all about Kinder,

Kuche, and Kirche.

Which means?

Children, cooking and church.

Was he trying to tell you women's place is not in law school but children and

home and church?

Yes, and that did not occur to me until the 1970s. And this was 1940. When

I began to look back at my life. I saw that he was telling me he would not

make me an officer for the next year and that I was disqualified because of

my gender. Actually I don't know ifhe were speaking for himself or for all

the officers.

So that actually is what happened?

I was not an officer. I didn't miss being an officer of the Board. My life

seemed full enough. I was working every afternoon for Professor Moore as

well as keeping up with school work and the ____ . I was potentially

active too on behalf of President Roosevelt campaign. But when I reflected

on the significance of this I did become bitter.

So, it's a very good story, it just shows how later on we look back at things

with a different value system.

Yes, and I have one other story about my relations with my classmates, which

also left me somewhat bitter, although I am getting over this one. And this is

in the context of extremely friendly relations with them overall. We had

- 6 -

Ms.Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

reunions of the class every five years. At one point, and I don't recall exactly

when this was, whether we were out ten years or fifteen years or what. I got a

phone call from a classmate who was on the arrangements committee for the

reunion. And he said, Shirley we have a good chance to have our reunion

Banquet at Mory's. And, you know the fellows would really like it. There's

only one hitch and that is they don't admit any women at Mory's so we just

wondered how you'd feel about it. And I said, that's okay, I don't mind.

Many years later, in 1971, we were having a reunion. I came late with my

husband. The minute I entered the room, something was different. My

classmates were coming up to me with remarks like wow, now we are going

to be seeing Shirley on the Supreme Court. Oh, wow, oh boy, you know.

And I didn't like this. I really didn't like it at all.

In 1971 they were more cognizant of woman's rights issues.

Tremendously. There was talk about putting a woman on the Supreme Court.

And it was all over the newspapers.

And you didn't like it, did you not like it because now they were looking at

you as a woman instead of a fellow law student?

Well, possibly that. And also, I didn't like it because I found it embarrassing.

I was the last person on the program to be called on. I was given no prior

notice that I would be called. After dinner, the fellow who was chairing the

meeting said and now, in effect here is the treat. With all this talk he said

about putting a woman on the Court, and about women being in the law

- 7 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

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profession, he said we had our woman. And I want to introduce you friends

to our woman. We had one, you know.

It was like the class pet?

Yes. I had never been treated like that during school where I was one of the

boys.

Was it so much that you were one of the boys or one of the students?

One of the students.

One of the boys sometimes implies they swear around you --

No they didn't. They didn't and I didn't participate in sports. I didn't go to

sports games.

You were a law student like anybody else?

Yes.

And now you were being singled out?

Oh yes, oh yes. By now, of course, I was a little high. There had been a party.

And I was called and I had to stand up and say something. So, I spoke very

briefly and very quietly and I said that now there are wonderful young women

coming to the law. I said I have met these women and they are admirable and

I really would be ashamed if they were to know that when at one time in the

past, when asked by my class whether I would mind if they had their reunion

at a restaurant that didn't accept women, I had said I wouldn't mind, although

the fact is that I was very disappointed. And I sat down. The meeting was

then adjourned without comment. Everyone filed out of the room. They were

just slinking out of the room.

- 8 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

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Because they didn't want to be reminded of what they had done.

Right. However, that was '71 and in '72 I was elected to the Board of the

Alumni Association. No doubt also by the votes of these classmates.

So now you are at the period where you are leaving law school in 1941.

When did you first start looking for jobs right after law school?

Oh, late Fall, 1940. And, of course, most of the looking was during the

Christmas break. As I think I mentioned earlier the school had given us in the

Fall of' 40 a list of law firms in Manhattan and encouraged us to stop.

[END OF SIDE A]

Ms. Siegel: .----- in at any one of these firms for an interview. And so I was

job hunting when I'd go back home on the weekend. And I made up my own

list. This paper that I'm looking at, which is dated January 9, 1941, lists

"Firms I've been to where prospect is hopeless." And I list 23 names. Then

"Letter asking for appointment not even acknowledged," one name. Then

"Wrote for appointment but couldn't get it," another name. Next, "Where I

was told no interviewing at present," eight firms. Wrote on top of the right

hand column, "This side of the sheet is brighter." Then, "keeping my name,"

eight firms. "Prospect is excellent," Proskauer Rose & Paskus. "Prospect is

pretty good," Office of Cahill, U.S. Attorney. Then, "Nothing doing at the

Corporation Counsel's office. But I am going to pull strings to meet Mr.

Tretter, head of their legal division at the New York City Housing Authority."

And then, "I'm still planning to get an introduction to Rex Tugwell

somehow." I never did get that introduction. These were notes to myself.

- 9 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Who is Rex Tugwell?

He was an important member of the Roosevelt Administration.

So on the list was; the top says prospect is hopeless, is that because, did they

ever say because we don't hire women?

I don't remember.

Should we put that list in as part of the interview? You could think about it.

Now I'd like to continue talking about my job hunting. I mentioned earlier

that there was a letter from Professor. Arthur L. Corbin, a giant in the field of

contract law. He stopped me in the hall in that Spring of '41 and said, how

are you doing. I think word was getting around that I hadn't yet got a job; it

was a small school. He then told me to go to see the firms on a list that he

gave me with about a half dozen names. He said that he had written personal

letters to them, they would certainly grant me an interview, and that he had

re~ommended that they consider me seriously. So, one of these firms which I

identified in the earlier part of this interview as White and Case but now I

look at my notes better to see that it was R.C. Hunt at Chadbourne Hunt. I

don't recall the names of the other firms on his list. The fellow who

interviewed me for Mr. Hunt offered me a copy of Professor Corbin's letter.

It's very strong. It reads: "Here is a girl for whom I hope you can do

something ..... She is one of our best in industry, in mental power and in

personality. Anyone who employs her in legal work will have reason to be

thankful to us ... she needs help to get a starting job," first, because she is a

girl, and secondly, because she is Jewish. There is no reason for the slightest

- 10 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

hesitation on either ground . . . . However far you go, she will make good.

Anything you can do for her will be a special favor to me. With kind regards,

Arthur L. Corbin. She has not seen this."

Who is she, when you said she has not ....

I am the she. Right. Now I want to tell you that he was not the only faculty

member who completely on his own initiative and without my approaching

him felt that he had to reach out for me. Professor McDougal was very

concerned, so he wrote me this little note in January. "Boris Bittker tells me

you still do not have a job. Hence I am taking the liberty of writing an old

friend and classmate of mine who is now a partner in Root, Clark". Root,

Clark finally sent me a letter: "I am sorry ... our own diminished quotes plus

the very large number of applications," etc. "Incidentally, our own Yale men

spoke very highly of your capacity." Then I had unexpected help from

Professor Underhill Moore, with whom I had studied bills and notes.

Professor Moore did not contact me directly but obviously he had contacted

on my behalf Julius Henry Cohen, who was the counsel of the Port of New

York Authority. Mr. Cohen, in forwarding me to someone in the public

sector who he felt was a good person for me to see, quoted Professor

____ Moore as having written to him: "She is one of the four or five

best students in the School. In addition ... , she has been helping Professor

J. W. Moore ... , and as his assistant, has had rather unusual experience for a

law school student," and Mr. Cohen went on to say that his assistant had

interviewed me and had made a very favorable report and that one of my

- 11 -

classmates, "young Arthur Stem, also tells me in what high esteem she is held

by her classmates. I understand she is eager to get into public work in

preference to going into private practice. I should like to help her if I can.

Accordingly I am sending her to you .... " I mean these letters show how

faculty members spontaneously rose to lend a hand to this peculiar student, a

Jewish girl who was not getting anywhere in her job hunting although she had

done very well at the School. I also found some disposition to be of help to

me although not so far as to make me a job offer, on the part of some of the

attorneys I met in the course of my going the rounds. Louis Weiss at Cohen,

Cole Weiss and Wharton (now called Paul Weiss) didn't make any place for

me in his firm but he was left worrying about it and so he tried to work

something out. He wrote me: "It is possible that I have been helpful in

connection with Mr. Cahill' s office. He is unaware of the source of the push,

but there will be a push within the next few days." Mr. Cahill was the U.S.

attorney. Meanwhile, a George Nebolsine, a partner of Wright Gordon

Zachry and Parlin, had written me on December 3. Dear Ms. Adelson, "I took

the liberty of getting in touch with Mr. John T. Cahill", and he suggested that

you stop in to see him."

Mr. Nabolsine's letter is of interest independently of the Cahill matter: "With

reference to your request that we consider your application for a position with

this firm, I have discussed this matter with my partners and the concensus was

that, considering your special aptitudes, we could not offer you the scope and

opportunity that you should aim to get. I think that it is only fair to add that in

- 12 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

financial practice, which constitutes a considerable part of our firm's work,

you as a woman would be under a handicap, which I see no reason for you to

feel in many other branches of legal practice."

This is the sorry history of my job hunting while still at School. On the other

hand, I heard from Proskauer, Rose & Paskus: "Dear Miss. Adelson: We

have practically reached the point where we are prepared to break down a

precedent of many years standing, and I would be pleased to see you again."

Was any of this, they hadn't yet lost anybody to the War, right, then there

were no men ....

Well, no this is January '41 ... So it didn't happen for another year, that they

started having to worry about the men's leaving.?

That's right. I have been told by friends of mine who did have jobs during the

War, I mean women friends, that they were let go when the War was over.

Well that's the story of all of the women who worked, wasn't it, Rosie the

Riveter?

Yes, the same thing. Well, I went with the Proskauer firm, I was the first

~oman there. I was introduced around and Judge Proskauer said to me, "You

will be the rose in Proskauer Rose and Paskus." How do you like that? Very

sweet.

It's quite an achievement. It's always hard to be a groundbreaker. Any other

women in any other firms in Wall Street at that time?

Well, there were certainly very few. One incident that I recall was the day

that I went to court with Judge Proskauer in the early l 940~ when he was

- 13 -

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arguing in the Appellate Division First Department where he had been a

member of the Court at one time. It was a stockholders' suit. And I was the

associate holding all the papers and sitting on the bench while he was arguing.

I was so intrigued by the fact that the person who was holding all the papers

for his opponent was Soia Mentchikoff, but she and I barely glanced at one

another and didn't talk.

So she was with a New York firm?

Yes. Normally I didn't see many, but there were some women who were

older than I who were well established. I have a letter here from Mary H.

Donlon. At seventy-two Wall Street.

February 24, 1941: Dear Miss Adelson I am indeed delighted to learn that

you have secured an opportunity to practice law."

Yes, I did have contact with a few women who were practicing law who were

older than I, who were further down the road and they were very gracious. I

don't recall that I knew then any of my generation except for the ones that I

knew from Yale. There were a couple of girls from the class ahead of me

who had jobs in New York- one at Simpson Thacher and one at Milbank

Tweed.

Was it true what they said that the women who were practicing on Wall Street

mostly did blue sky work, work that was behind the scenes in securities.

People in my generation always heard that?

I don't recall that. I think women who had jobs often did trusts and estates.

And what kinds of things were you doing the first year?

- 14 -

Ms. Siegel:

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Ms. Siegel:

Well, at Proskauer's they had a nice policy of giving you a very diverse

experience. And so those first few years I did a little of everything. I assisted

in litigation, I worked on certiorari proceedings to review tax assessments. I

did a lot of tax work with Wilbur Friedman, who was a young partner there.

Didn't he become a commissioner?

He became head of the New York County Bar Association and I don't recall

if he were commissioner at one time or not. I'm looking back many years. I

did some estates work. I did a bit of everything and then I got into labor law

as soon as the War got under way and there was a War Labor Board. This

was a specialized kind of practice. I was the assistant to Burton Zorn.

I continued to get invitations even after I had my job at Proskauer' s to go

down to Washington, once the War was on. There was a lot happening down

there. Here is a letter that suggests I come down to the Office of Petroleum

Coordinator to help draft legislation.

And that was at the Department of Interior?

Department of Interior --

Was this somebody you knew at Yale?

Yes. Here is another Yale connection. Myres McDougal then in the Foreign

Economic Administration at the Department of State: "There is no one whom

I should prefer more to have on my staff." That kind of thing. So, there were

these opportunities. However, the Proskauer's experience was really

excellent. Now I want to tell you, because this is very important, all the

things that I was doing pro bono while I was at Proskauer' s.

- 15 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

How long were you there?

I'll have to tell it to you later in context because it won't seem to make sense.

I was there, I left and I came back a few years later.

Shortly after I arrived at Proskauer' s, in the early part of' 42, an associate who

had been volunteering with the American Civil Liberties Union, Jim Field,

was· drafted and I said to him. I so envy your work you were doing with

ACLU. I wonder whether you could recommend me for the hole that you are

leaving when you go? And, he said, okay, and before I knew it I was working

with the Lawyers Panel of the ACLU. The Lawyers Panel of the ACLU was

a special, very top level small group chaired by Whitney North Seymour, who

had been President of the American Bar Association. The members included

Arthur Garfield Hayes, who has the General Counsel of ACLU, Osmond

Fraenkel and Roger Bladwin. Baldwin worked full time for ACLU and he

had assisting him at the office. Clifford Forster, who was a Yale law school

graduate, ahead of my time. Lawyers Panel met monthly and these meetings

were a highlight of my life. I was the only woman in the group, I was also the

youngest. The next youngest was Ben Herzberg who was at the Cook Nathan

firm. When assignments were made there was no one on whom to dump

them but me and Ben Herzberg. By the following year, I was the so-called

secretary of the Lawyers Panel. And I want to give you just a little idea of the

kind of matters that we were involved in. The President had signed an

Executive Order in March 1942 enabling the military to set up zones in the

country where they could make all the rules. If they had to evacuate enemy

- 16 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

aliens, they could do it. They had very broad authority from the President.

And the first thing that came down the pipe at the ACLU was the East Coast

Order issued by a military Commander. Here in May I sent Clifford a

two-page legal memorandum, single-spaced on the law that I considered

applicable on that. As you can see, I have notes from Clifford to me and

notes from me to Clifford going all down the page. All was on this issue of

what turned out to be the matter of internment of Japanese Americans. That

was the big case. We began to get reports from the West Coast and

specifically Seattle, where they had several cases that were sprouting up and

we in the Lawyers Panel were kibitzing (if I may use that word on an ABA

interview) on these West Coast cases. The lawyers out there were handling

them, but we were writing them memos on them.

This is about the Japanese internment?

Yes. And, of course, as you know the cases we were working on ultimately

went to the U.S. Supreme Court and the position of the ACLU lost. Another

area in which I became involved at ACLU had to do with mailing privileges.

I see here a three point brief I wrote in January 1943 entitled In the Matter of

Revocation of the Second Class Mailing Privileges of the Militant, a

Trotskyist publication. We were also circulating drafts of rules that could be

adopted by the Post Office Department on excluding obscene or seditious

matter; thus I have a note from Clifford dated October 5, 1942, reading" "If

you could let me have this within a week ... " and Ben Herzberg was also

commenting on the rules, which occupied our attention for several years;

- 17 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

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finally in 1945 ACLU had a bill introduced on this in Congress. We were

really having the time of our life. And during all this time I'm doing a full

time job at the Proskauer office. One catch is that I was living at home, so I

wasn't having to take care of my own food, housing and all that kind of thing.

Did the Proskauers know you were doing this work?

Oh yes, they didn't disapprove. They were encouraging even in those days as

they are today.

That's wonderful.

And I was spending almost the same amount of time on housing, which I' 11

come to in a minute. This is May 17, 1983: Dear Shirley from Clifford. The

Board and the officers of the Union (that is, the American Civil Liberties

Union) have requested me to write you and thank you for the splendid

memorandum you've given us on the constitutionality of legislation

prohibiting the disbursement of federal funds to specific individuals. I also

wish to add my thanks to this, particularly in view of the fact that you had to

work on Sunday to do it. "And then a handwritten note on the bottom of the

letter from a secretary Sarah Hirsch, "May I add my commendation! .I hope

this will be a strong refutation to those cocky male attorneys who speak

contemptuously of 'female lawyers.'"

And this was Clifford Forster?

Right. And a little later on July 28, 1943 I sent him a list of six U.S. Supreme

Court cases.on women's rights.in connection with Dorothy Kenyon's planned

lawsuit over the dismissal of married teachers in Boston. The letter is signed

- 18 -

Ms. Krey:

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Secretary of Lawyer's Panel indicating that at least by then I was the

Secretary. Well, there was practically nobody there. Everyone, except me

and Hertzberg, who was above me in seniority, everyone was a figure of

national importance. It is my recollection that there weren't more than seven

or eight people at a meeting. At a monthly meeting. It was an incredible

opportunity for me. Then I have, I'll just do a few more quickly here to finish

· with civil rights.

So Boston was dismissing women teachers when they got married, that was

the issue?

Right. And Dorothy Kenyon was one of these older women lawyers to whom

I referred earlier who had fine careers. Then here's a draft of an amicus brief

in 1944, regarding martial law in Hawaii on which I had worked. But now, I

come to an amicus brief I remember very well, where the ACLU was

successful, involving the Railway Labor Act and the way that the "Negro"

firemen on the southern railroads were being squeezed out by a combination

of the union and the railroads. This was the celebrated case of Turnstall and

Steele vs. Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, where I wrote the ACLU

brief in the U.S. Supreme Court. My name appeared above that of Arthur

Garfield Hayes.

Did you get to sit in the Court in 1944?

I did not. I couldn't. All these things were being done on nights and

weekends because I never cut short my Proskauer activity. That had its own

life.

- 19 -

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Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

In those days at Proskauer, did you have to bill hours?

Yes. Seven hours a day.

The last thing I'm going to mention in connection with ACLU was also a very

big matter.

[END OF TAPE SIDE BJ

- 20-

TAPE4

Ms. Siegel:

ORAL INTERVIEW OF SHIRLEY ADELSON SIEGEL BY JOAN KREY FOR THE ABA

October 17, 2006

When we stopped the last interview, I was reporting on my pro bono activities

for the ACLU while I was employed by the Proskauer Law Firm, and I almost

finished the report except for one piece. When I was recalling my

relationship at school with my classmates I may have mentioned that, in the

spring of my third year ( 1941 ), I did a paper with Boris Bittker on democracy

and trade unions. This was done for Carlos Israel, who had interviewed me at

Professor Corbin's request, as mentioned earlier. I didn't know at the time,

but learned a couple of years later that in 1941, the same time that Carlos

Israel gave me this job, the ACLU appointed a distinguished Committee on

Civil Rights and Labor Relations chaired by Professor Edward C. Lindeman

and consisting of people of various professions. For the following two years,

they held extensive public hearings and in 1943, issued a report with their

findings and recommendations. At the same time, I was the Secretary of the

ACLU Lawyer's Panel, and as this final report was shaping up, I was given

the assignment to do legal research for it. ACLU made me in effect the chair

of what they called the labor panel, for which I gathered in two or three of my

friends, lawyers that I knew from Yale such as Norman Williams. We met

frequently to work on this project, which went on for the next couple of years.

We had occasional meetings with the Lindeman Committee. Finally, a bill

was drafted, which was in part our draft based on policy decisions made by

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

the Committee. We were very deep in this rather comprehensive review of

the civil rights and lack of them being enjoyed by members of labor unions.

There was some interest in this subject in Congress and bills were introduced

which the ACLU did not like. But ACLU finally put its bill together by 1947.

At fir.st, Roger Baldwin was complaining to us he couldn't get any sponsors

for it. The ACLU ideas were not sufficiently acceptable, but then he did get a

sponsor and the bill was introduced. An article that appeared in Dissent in the

Winter 1999 issue acknowledged that the basic provisions and principles of

the Landrum- Griffin Act were first proposed by the American Civil Liberties

Union. That is what Roger was telling us at the time, he told us that this law

coming out of Congress is basically the result of our work. So, that was the

last major issue on which I worked for the Lawyers Panel.

Let's remind ourselves what year we were around?

I was working on this through about 1945. I think it was 1959 when the law

was finally adopted. And in '45 also, I was invited and of course I accepted,

to be a member of the Board of the New York City Civil Liberties

Committee, which was an affiliate of the ACLU. So now, I was being

acknowledged as a grown up, you might say.

So you were on the Board, and you're an associate at Proskauer?

Associate at Proskauer's. Although this work that I was doing with ACLU

was very significant for me, at the same time I was active on the outside in

other matters, too. That really was a wonderful job that I had at Proskauer' s

that I had time to do all of this. I was an associate of the Legal Aid Society. I

- 2 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

worked on the wartime gasoline rationing board. I served as a special deputy

attorney general during elections, and so on.

Were you now working for one partner at Proskauer? You would say to

them, to him, I want to do this, I want to do this. How did it work?

I wasn't working for any one partner. I worked for a number of them

because, as I said, it was a policy of the firm to give you diverse experience in

those early years. And I don't recall that it was necessary to ask permission to

engage in these activities. Often these activities were at lunch time. There

wasn't any one person to ask. It was not a large firm. It was not like today's

firm. I don't know how many they had. It they had twenty or twenty-five,

that may have been it. And so I knew everybody.

And were there are other associates your age?

There were other associates about my age. It was a time when you had to be

around there for about a dozen years before you were invited to be a partner.

Now I want to tell you also about my housing activities while I was still at

Proskauer. Of course, as soon as I hit New York City, I joined the Citizen's

Housing Council of which Harold Buttenheim, his name is familiar to you,

was the president. I started putting in time there too on a pro bono basis and,

sometimes very heavily. First, I was just working on the monthly newsletter,

CHC Housing News. They made me an associate editor. Then, early on,

somebody had to do a legal memorandum in opposition to a proposed

amendment of the Zoning Regulations, and so I did that. It was just like

another firm assignment.

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Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

The Housing News, who would that go to? What was the audience?

This was a membership corporation. The Citizen's Housing Council had on

the Board representatives of the Real Estate Board, trade unions and other

civic organizations. To promote housing and particularly there was a keen

interest then in defending public housing. Well by 1943, the Citizens

Housing Council and I at my level, became deeply engaged with the subject

of Stuyvesant Town. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company had gone up to

Albany and had their lawyers amend the newly adopted redevelopment

companies law in the state legislature, to custom make it for its specific needs,

because it had in mind acquiring a large parcel and constructing a massive

residential development, with which I'm sure you're familiar.

Yes.

It happens to be in the news now. The plans for Stuyvesant Town were

pushed very quickly. through the city Planning Commission and the Board of

Estimate, which was then the governing body of New York City, after public

hearings in both cases. Citizens Housing Council was strongly in opposition

to the plan of the project because from a planning point of view it was

considered absolutely unacceptable.

Too large?

It was mammoth without having any schools or other community facilities. It

was not a livable environment. That was the main objection of the Citizens

Housing Council. And so they were determined to do what they could to

prevent this development. And it happened that a property owner that was in

- 4 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

the path of proposed condemnation for the plan had gone to court to challenge

it. The Citizens Housing Council moved in on this case, as an amicus, to

present their objections. This was the case of Murray v. LaGuardic!. Their

objections were that the Redevelopment Companies Law as amended by Met

Life violated the new housing article of the State Constitution adopted at the

1938 Constitutional Convention because it provided enormous public

benefits, the power of condemnation, extensive tax benefits, the closing of

streets, and so forth for the benefit of a corporation which was basically a

private company, not regulated by law, as contemplated. Now, I'll tell you

about the legal team that worked on the succession of lawsuits. A team

developed very quickly working for the Citizens Housing Council, all pro

bono. Henry Epstein, the recent Solicitor General, who later was to become a

New York Supreme Court judge, who argued for us in court. He reviewed the

documents that I drafted. Another lawyer was Edward Weinfeld, who

subsequently became a federal judge.

Famous Judge Weinfeld, and a federal judge.

Judge Weinfeld had been a delegate to the 1938 Convention and he's the one

who pressed this point about violating the intent of the housing article. He

meant his intent. Following the convention. He was appointed by governor

Lehman to be the first housing commissioner of New York State. At this

time, he was in solo law practice. This was the beginning of a long friendship

between Weinfeld and me. He, of course, knew Epstein from Albany. Our

amicus brief was filed on behalf of Citizens Housing Council and United

- 5 -

Neighborhood Houses. The case of Murray v. LaGuardia lost below and also

on appeal. The Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the Appellate

Division So a new lawsuit was started. Pratt against La Guardia. Eliott Pratt

was a client of Charles Abrams. I've mentioned Abrams before. He was

involved in the Stuyvesant Town controversy but not part of our legal team

although a lawyer; he had in his early days worked for Arthur Garfield Hays.

When Pratt v. La Guardia was filed, a new issue had arisen that was to

dominate the Stuyvesant Town controversy, sparked by the interviews that

were being conducted with Frederick Ecker, who was head of Metropolitan

Life. Ecker conceded that there would not be any Negroes admitted to the

project. He said, whites and blacks won't mix and they're not going to mix

for another hundred years. He confirmed this opinion and plan also to Harold

Buttenheim, so we were able to get a lot of affidavits on this issue. The

complaint proceeded on equal protection issues. And also we objected that

they had failed to observe various provisions of the Administrative Code and

the Charter in the way they were proceeding before the planning commission

and the Board of Estimate. But Judge Shientag wrote a strong opinion

dismissing our case. He held that our proceeding was premature, saying that

you couldn't talk about who is going to be admitted to the project until the

project was built and opened. This project wasn't yet built. And so, we then

had a lot of discussion around the Housing Council as to whether we ought to

take an appeal. I still have the letter I wrote to Harold Buttenheim in which I

urged him to appeal. We did go to the Appellate Division, and lost. The

- 6 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal was denied. Meanwhile, at the City

· Council there was movement on a local law that would make it unlawful to

discriminate on the basis of race in a redevelopment project which was

assisted by public benefits. And that passed quickly and unanimously I had

worked on that bill and that's why I'm mentioning it. That all happened in

1944.

So it devolved into a discrimination issue rather than a city planning, good

planning issue?

Yes, because that part of our case went nowhere. We couldn't have objected

legally that it was not a good plan, we could only say that they didn't observe

this and that provision of the Administrative Code and we just weren't

persuasive. Meanwhile, the public interest in the matter of race

discrimination was so great that it really dominated the field. Oh yes, it was

very great.

What year?

It was '43, '44. So finally, to proceed with my Housing Council activities

during the same period while we're still at Proskauer's. On the state level,

again pro bono, I chaired a subcommittee on urban redevelopment for the

Citizens Housing Council -- Citizen's Union Joint Committee on Legislation.

We made a proposal for a state revolving fund for housing which I drafted for

the legislature. And on the federal level, in the summer of' 44, I worked

intensively with Eddie Weinfeld because Senator Taft was holding hearings

and was requesting proposals. The Taft Committee on Housing and Urban

- 7 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Redevelopment, was embarking on an intensive exploration of what should be

done after the War, assuming that the war would be won. The statute was not

actually adopted by Congress until 1949. But it was as early as '44 that we

were busily working up our recommendations and, of course, this was done

for the Citizens Housing Council.

So ·now we're going to move back to Proskauer?

Everything was going along very happily at Proskauer. They were happy

with me, I was happy with them. My life was very rewarding.

Were you living at home still?

I was living at home, which made all of this possible too. My mother took

care of everything. And my sisters were still home.

Your father was still there?

My father was alive. Anyway, starting in about March '43 and going on for

several months through June there was a lot of pressure on me from Myres

McDougal, who had been my professor at law school at Yale, and Charles

Ascher, whom I haven't mentioned before. A-s-c-h-e-r. Charles Ascher was

a lawyer who was known among housing lawyers for the work he had done

on an innovative housing development in Radbum, New Jersey. And he

taught housing law at Columbia for a period, and so on. Now Leon

Keyserling was general counsel of the National Housing Agency in

Washington, D.C. He had asked Myres McDougal and Charles Ascher if they

would recommend people for his agency. That he was looking for people to

work on plans for post-War community planning and rehabilitation. In other

- 8 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

words, exactly what Senator Taft's committee was working on. McDougal

wrote to me that it sounds just like the kind of thing both ofus have been

interested in for a long time. So I went down to Washington to meet Leon

Keyser ling. I was under a lot of pressure from both Ascher and McDougal,

who wrote to me and pushed me, and Keyserling offered me a position. We

had a little correspondence and wrangling about the money. At one point I

didn't respond to him right away and I got scolded by both McDougal &

Ascher. In fact, they spoke to one another about it. I couldn't make up my

mind about going down.

And what was the national housing agency?

National Housing Agency was an independent agency. It wasn't until years

later, when Bob Weaver was housing commissioner, that it became a cabinet

post. Up to then, it was just an independent agency that had been created by

Congress.

Under Roosevelt?

It dated from public housing under Roosevelt.

A depression measure?

I guess you might say that. In 193 7 the public housing program was getting

underway following important legal decisions which cleared the way to

federal action. There was an enormous amount of public housing in Europe

and the United States aimed to catch up. As soon as we got into the War, the

program became a program just to house war workers, and it had to revert to

public housing after the War. The National Housing Agency kept changing

- 9 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

its name, as it went beyond housing into redeve_lopment or urban renewal,

cleaning slums and bringing in private enterprise to make it a joint public

private venture. That's what happened when that '49 Act was finally

established. So, I mention this because I think it's a very important thing in

my life that I did not take the position.

You did not take the position but you went back and forth on it?

We went back and forth, in other words, I was troubled about it.

What were your reservations?

I honestly don't know. I find this mysterious as I look back on it. At the end

of his career maybe in the 1980s or so, Charles Ascher would have soirees on

Friday night in his home here in Manhattan to which I was invited. And he

sometimes introduced me as this young woman who had passed up the most

wonderful opportunity.

Did it become a fabulous position?

What happened was that the bureaucracy in Washington grew greatly,

particularly following the enactment of the '49 Act. Depending on the

politics and so on, there were many changes in the national housing program.

Some of the earlier programs became unpopular and new programs grew also

there were changes of administration. So I have no idea what would have

happened to me if I had gone down. I know that it would have radically

changed my life. I would have moved to Washington, where the men were.

New York didn't have many men around, they were either in the War or they

- 10 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

were in Washington. But I couldn't have had a better opportunity in housing,

which I had been always talking about, it's what I wanted to do.

So who did you talk to about it at the time as you were making up your mind?

I don't recall.

And when you turned it down, did McDougal forgive you?, Did he, obviously

Mr. Ascher continued to remember?

I don't know what McDougal thought. He continued to be very friendly for

the rest of his life.

Did you regret it in the five years say around that period, did you regret it?

I regretted it because of what happened later. What happened was that I still

had a bee in my bonnet about doing housing. I don't know what was involved

in my deciding not to go to Washington, but in 1945, the position of

Executive Director of the New York Citizen Housing Council was available

and offered to me. And, I decided to take that.

That was available at the same time?

No, because the Washington offer was in '43. This was two years later. I

found that my interests were very much tied up with the work I was doing

with the ACLU and with the Citizen Housing Council. And, therefore, this

offer to leave private practice and devote my time only to public service

looked attractive. The Citizen Housing Council Board was very

distinguished, all of them leaders, and it was a new organization. It seemed to

be a wonderful vehicle for doing whatever I would want to do in housing,

whatever that was. My friends at Proskauer, particularly Norman Goetz, the

- 11 -

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Goetz is the given name of Proskauer, Rose, Goetz & Mendelsohn, in

particular appeared very upset about my considering this offer. He said, I'd

be making a terrible mistake in my life. He hadn't known about the earlier

off er from Washington.

Mr. Goetz said I was making a terrible mistake, that I was clearly on a

partnership track, he said. But I could always come back. I have a letter from

him saying "I wish you everything you wish for yourself, the latch is always ·

off the door."

What was your impression of Washington at the time, 1943?

I had made some trips to Washington during this period because I had friends

down there. I didn't have as many in New York. I had been away from New

York for years while I had gone abroad and gone to Yale. And I hadn't kept

in touch with my Barnard friends in New York. I had several friends from

Yale who had taken jobs in Washington, classmates that were connected with

the war effort. And so, I had invitations from friends to come down and my

sister Bernice also went down with me once or twice. Of course, these were

quick visits when we went to t~e Phillips Gallery, saw a friend and came back

to New York. Seeing Mr. Keyserling was one of these trips. By the way, in

case you didn't know that name, he later became Vice Chair of the President's

Committee on Economic Advisers. He really had a lot of standing as an

economist and would have been a fantastic contact and sponsor. Which I

think was waiting there for me, so to .speak. Where it would have led

- 12 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

eventually I don't know. Maybe he would have fallen out of favor with the

next administration and I would have been out wondering what to do next.

Tell me about your interview?

I don't think that I decided immediately after I saw him. That's why Ascher

and Mac scolded me not to keep him waiting.

You obviously had those guys telling you to do it. Was there someone on the

other side telling you not too?

No. Because there weren't other people who knew about it. I don't know to

what extent I even discussed it with my family. I don't know that it would

have successful, but it's funny that I would have turned down an opportunity

that I had been talking about for years as being my life goal. Well, I took this

one at the Housing Council and that didn't work out. During those nine

months, I did get out a report on New York City's housing crisis. I pressed a

suggestion made by Charles Abrams to some banks that they acquire a lot of

slum property in the City and proceed to clear it, to which the banks

responded. And I picked that up and made a report out of it. We made page

one news with the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune both

on the housing crisis report and on the Abrams report. I got fantastic

publicity for this organization. I also ran an all day meeting on "breaking the

building blockade" and so on. I did all these things. However, I was having a

hard time with a woman who was a Vice Chair of the organization by the

name of Loula Lasker.

You wanted to add something?

- 13 -

Ms. Siegel: Thinking over what I had just been telling you about the Washington offer. I

might mention that McDougal, as soon as he saw I wasn't accepting the

Keyserling offer, suggested I come down to Washington and work with him

at the State Department. He had taken leave from teaching at the law school.

People were doing that during the War. And I didn't give that any

consideration at all. Also, about the matter of whether there were men in New

York. The men we met in New York were often Europeans. Some were

connected with governments in exile. That kind of thing. So that Bernice and

I had some interesting times. In fact, Bernice eventually married one of those

men. There isn't really more to say about the Citizens Housing Council. It

was a very disappointing experience. I guess I felt humiliated by the whole

thing. I had given up my opportunity at Proskauer's to do this. I was

certainly performing well at the Housing Council, as was shown by the

output. I had excellent relations with the other members of the Board a

number of whom acted distressed that I quit. But I did resign. Now what

would I do next. It just happened that I knew about a brand new organization

that was shaping up, known as the Commission on Law and Social Action of

the American Jewish Congress. What interested me about that, CLSA for

short is, that it was like today's public interest law firm. It was a couple of

decades ahead of its time. Didn't have to worry about its financial support.

Simply pursued litigation, legislative activity, whatever was needed in order

to promote civil rights and civil liberties. They were also interested in

church-state issues. They were just putting together a staff. It was run by two

- 14 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

men one of whom was Will Maslow, M-A-S-L-0-W, who had just been in

Washington on the staff ofFEPC, Federal Employment Practices Committee.

And the other one, an Italian by the name of Alexander Pekelis, P-E-K-E-L-I­

S, a brilliant fellow who had been editor of a legal periodical in Italy, but as

he was Jewish he had to flee at the time of the Hitler/Mussolini pact. He

came to New York. He entered Columbia Law School, became Editor-In­

Chief of the Law Journal. During the war I had met Pekelis through a young

associate of mine at the Proskauer firm who had been in Columbia Law

School with him. I was tempted to work with them and I just jumped into the

fray and I was there on day one.

So did you go right from the Housing Council to them or was there a time in

between?

No time in between. I quit CHC and I jumped into CLSA. And I was

assigned the field of employment and housing discrimination. We had a new

law in New York State resulting in a State Commission Against

Discrimination ("SCAD") whose name years later was changed to

Commission for Human Rights. And, of course, we at CLSA thought them

very timid and that they didn't even know the scope of their jurisdiction,

which left us plenty of work to do. I had been at CLSA only since January.

By February I was before SCAD with a matter in which we were presenting

ourselves as the complainant. This in itself raised the issue whether CLSA

could be a so-called person aggrieved under this new law. The so-called Ives

Quinn law. We pressed the issue successfully, and I then wrote an article

- 15 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

about it which was printed in the National Lawyers Guild Magazine. This

law was all brand new. So much we could do.

It was really very exciting to be working with something so new. I now had

the idea that if a person put an ad in the papers looking for a job saying that

they were Christian, that this violated the law. Well, this struck SCAD at first

as being a very oblique idea. Then a complaint came up from Queens from a

local Jamaica interracial council that the Gertz Department Store wasn't

hiring Negroes as store clerks. The NAACP were interested and we were also

interested and we began to work closely with the NAACP on a lot of matters.

The philosophy of our two organizations was very similar, to be aggressive

and use the law in order to overcome discrimination. And so, I knew

Constance Baker Motley from those days, we became friends for life, she was

then an associate of Thurgood Marshall.

So this office was in New York or Washington?

It was in New York. We were at 50th Street and NAACP was at Columbus

Circle. So far, I'm just talking about employment. There was a complaint

about discrimination against Jews in the Romance Languages Department of

City College and I was asked by my bosses to handle that; I then had

something like five volumes of testimony to summarize. All this and more

was going on. But, of course, now I no longer had a full time job at a law

firm. In housing, I was interested in promoting bills like the one that had just

passed in the New York City council about discrimination in the new

redevelopment projects and so I drafted bills that became laws ultimately for

- 16 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

the New York State and New Jersey legislatures. We had some affiliates in

New Jersey that promoted our bill. I did testify at hearings, that kind of thing.

[INAUDIBLE?] Say again what the name of the organization was?

This was the Commission on Law and Social Action of the American Jewish

Congress. It was a golden era for that kind of activity at the American Jewish

Congress. They had several commissions that were being very innovative and

really making quite a difference. And then, also I see that at CLSA I wrote a

memorandum that we sent to the New York City License Commissioner on

the powers that the Commissioner could use in aid of the State policy against

discrimination and this was again pressing for change, through pointing out

the outer bounds of jurisdiction. I also, prepared a local FEPC Ordinance for

New York, I guess we didn't have one yet. Now, on housing, I want to say

something about restrictive covenants. Interest at that time was mushrooming

in the matter of racial restrictive covenants, provisions that this property shall

never be owned or occupied by XYZ, which included Jews.

And blacks and it ran with the land?

Exactly. Affiliated membership organizations of the American Jewish

Congress around the country were becoming involved in local litigation on

this. It wasn't until 1948 that the U.S. Supreme Court in Shelley v. Kramer

finally ruled that the courts could not enforce these covenants, and that took

care of it. But, at the time in 1946 that I was at CLSA, the lawsuits were

beginning to percolate around the country. We even had one that was

percolating in New York, where I became active. I was doing research for

- 17 -

this litigation, including a 24-page memorandum that was then sent around to

the Congress affiliate and became the basis for a bulletin printed by the

Congress that explained race restrictive covenants, what were the legal

principles involved, and so on. But I want to bring you back to Stuyvesant,

because that's the most significant and the highlight of my talk to you about

CLSA. Well, at one point in the Spring of' 46, I sent a memorandum to

Maslow in which I let him know gently that civic organizations had been

alerted by the ACLU to the effect that Shirley Adelson at CLSA would be

handling a test case on Negro discrimination in Stuyvesant Town and they

should look to me to lead the cooperative effort. And I just wanted him to

know about this, that l now would be getting into this area. We, of course,

had learned in litigation that I worked on with the Citizens Housing Council

that it had been "premature" but now applications were being accepted for

apartments and so I was going to work on this and he said, sure, and so I got

busy. According to my records, I was in touch with the American Veterans

Committee local chapter to find possible plaintiffs. I interviewed these

prospects, black men who had applied for an apartment in Stuyvesant Town

and been turned down. I then picked out the ones that I thought were the

most promising for this test case. The lead one was Joseph Dorsey so that the

case became known as Dorsey vs. Stuyvesant Town. And I started to draft

papers, the case was getting underway, at which point I fell in love, got

married and went to California. Just like that. In September of 1946. Left

New York for California.

- 18 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

You have to tell us a little about it.

I dumped this litigation in the laps of CLSA, nobody there had any experience

with housing at all. None of them had ever been involved with Stuyvesant

Town. All I had done was find the plaintiffs, draft the outlines of the

complaint. As the civic community was looking to CLSA to lead this

cooperative effort, Will Maslow reached out, found people like Al Black at

the Etherial Culture Society who were interested in this problem and they got

together. The legal work was still handled by CLSA. Maslow had met

Charles Abrams through me. Abrams was no longer an active lawyer, was

more into teaching, writing books and newspapers columns all related to

housing. He did have some law work in his office. Maslow pulled him in to

work on the Dorsey case. He had assistance on this from lawyers at CLSA.

The case did not go well. Finally the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to take

the case and Will Maslow·was seeking supporting briefs on the petition for

certiorari. And I tried to get the County of Los Angeles to go along with a

petition that this matter be taken up by the Court. I felt without question,

there were very good constitutional issues because Stuyvesant Town had been

truly a case of so-called State action. The County of Los Angeles would not

oblige, I was frustrated. I finally found somebody else, the Community

Service Organization of Greater Los Angeles. Loren Miller, a black lawyer

whom I knew in Los Angeles who was admitted to the Supreme Court, agreed

to let me put his name on the brief; he never saw it but he said sure. We still

had no luck. The Dorsey case is a famous case of an important issue which

- 19 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

was passed up by the Supreme Court. It was a disaster, and I shall never

know if I would have been able to steer it to a better result.

So are you going to tell us about your quick move, about your move to

California? Mr. Siegel?

Mr. Siegel was a cinematographer. He started out just as a photographer, a

camera bug when he was young. He was enrolled in an engineering course in

college, but he really wanted to go to Hollywood and be a cinematographer in

the movies, and so he transferred to the University of Southern California,

stayed out there and then volunteered for World War II. Once when he was in

New York on leave he asked his aunt if she could suggest some young lady

that he might party with. She had met me in Martha's Vineyard. And so, she

suggested me. We went out once or twice while he was in town and had a

good time. Then he went back to the War_..: to the Pacific theater -- and I

never heard from him. When the War was over and he got back to California,

he phoned me and asked for a date to see me two days later or something like

that. So, he came to town and what can I say, I liked him.

What was his first name?

The name that was bestowed on him was Elwood, but everyone called him

Woody. So I married Woody and went to California. In September '46. We

got married within a few months.

Right. So you.didn't meet his family or anything?

Well, I had met his aunt. I liked her a lot.

- 20 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

How did you get to Martha's Vineyard from New York during the War, what

was that, did you just have a friend up there?

No friends, my family felt that we had to go on a holiday for two weeks in the

Summer.

In those days I would think it would be a big trip?

It was a big trip. But this was a big event. It was the only vacation of the

year. And I went to Martha's Vineyard, I think with my mother on that trip,

that was unusual.

But anyway, so now you met Woody and now you are married a few months

later in September and he was in Los Angeles --

He lived in Hollywood.

And it turned out that before he entered the Army, he had started out as a

filmmaker to do documentary film, commercial films, little films. And this is

what he wanted to do more of. That was his business. And we didn't have

any money. He borrowed money from his father. And I had a little savings

and I looked for a job. Somebody said to me all you have to do is walk into

Loeb & Loeb and say you had been at Proskauers and you can get a job. But

I had been spoiled. I had done work for CLSA and I had such freedom there

to do whatever I thought was important.

How long were you at CLSA?

Only eight months. But it had been eight months of a wonderful experience,

which I wouldn't have left except for the fact that I --

- 21 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel

[INAUDIBLE OVERTALKING] Any conflict at all about leaving CLSA, to

go to Hollywood?

There wasn't any conflict because I was just following Woody. I was in

love. I mean, he was going to Hollywood so I was going to Hollywood.

Okay. What did CLSA say when you wanted to leave early?

Well, I, it was all so quick. It really wasn't much that they could say. They

suddenly became the center of important activity on housing.

On the Dorsey case?

And whatever else I had going on housing. I had pending bills in New York

and New Jersey to amend the Redevelopment Companies laws to provide

these non-discrimination provisions, and so on. And there were other things

gomg on.

Were you the only woman lawyer at CLSA?

For a time Pauli Murray was there, too. There were only a handful of people

at CLSA.

So now you go to Hollywood. I see on that brief that you showed me that

you had passed the California Bar?

When I got there I took the Bar exam right away. And then I was contacted

with an offer to become Executive Director of a newly formed Los Angeles

Citizens Housing Council. And how this happened is that one of the Board

members of the New York Citizens Housing Council who had learned that I

was going to Los Angeles -- I wasn't in touch with them, but they knew

what was happening. In some ways, New York is a little town. And so,

- 22 -

..

Howard Myers who was Editor of The Architectural Forum wrote to the head

of the Los Angeles Housing Authority, Howard Holtzendorff, that I was

coming out there and I was a person they should know about. At the same

time an Assistant to Howard Holtzendorff who was Frank Wilkinson, who

was his PR man and community contact, attended a meeting of the National

Housing Conference of which Eddie Weinfeld was then President. And

spoke to Weinfeld and said what about this person Shirley Adelson or Shirley

Siegel, whatever I was called. And, of course, Weinfeld gave me an

enormous buildup. Holtzendorff with the veterans coming back was in a

mode to expand his housing program. He wanted to develop a community

support group for his activity.

- 23 -

TAPES

ORAL HISTORY OF SHIRLEY ADELSON SIEGEL

ABA INTERVIEW

October 17, 2006

· This is tape #5. Today is October 17, 2006. ABA interview with Shirley Adelson Siegel

by Joan Krey.

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Right Reverend Monsignor Thomas J. O'Dwyer, head of the Catholic

charities for probably all of Southern California, found five thousand dollars

. somehow to invest in organizing a Los Angeles Citizens Housing Council.

That was all they had. They offered me a job, set me up in a one room office

with one secretary, and I was to go to work. Here is a picture of me presiding

over a meeting where there seem to be thousands in the hall. Helen Gahagen

Douglas, a Congresswoman, was the main speaker and I of course also spoke.

In those days I became very much of a public speaker at these large gathering

as if I were priming to be a politician, which I wasn't, but we had a very

energetic time. Mademoiselle magazine gave me an award as Woman of the

Year (1947) for community leadership. So I worked hard on this for a couple

ofyears, then the money ran out.

So we are about 1946 to ...

To '48. The money ran out and Woody wasn't earning much money. He was

occasionally making a film and was busy otherwise with photography. I was

very happy in the marriage, there was no problem with that. Meanwhile as

we had an acute housing shortage and the state legislature was not doing a

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

thing about it, it was decided that we had to have an initiative. That's how

they do things out there, by initiative and referendum. And so we actually

mounted a statewide housing initiative. By that time I had contacts in

Northern California too. I was on the Board of the California Housing

Association and was in touch with them. Between the North and the South

we put in a lot of energy, raised a little money, and hired somebody to run the

campaign. By then I was not being paid, I guess. And the initiative lost

dismally. It had been opposed by a powerful real estate lobby.

Did you feel any differences in women's status or your status as a woman

lawyer between New York and California?

I think in California I felt everything was more open.

It's like the frontier?

Yes, it was a better atmosphere. It was not as rigid.

Not so much class structure?

Maybe more so in San Francisco. Certainly not in LA.

So you were more accepted as this lady lawyer?

Oh yes, and Helen Gahagen Douglas; was terrific and we had a strong League

of Women Voters in California.

But there we are in 1948 and the initiative has been rejected?

Right. And so it was time for me to look for a job. But first I want to tell you

what I wrote on the subject of organizing a citizen's housing council, because

1948 was the end of that experience for me. I had been invited by a publisher

to write this booklet about how you organize a citizen's housing council. I

- 2 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

now had very different kinds of experience in New York and in Los Angeles.

Thurgood Marshall wrote the preface, as you will see. I will bring out a copy.

Also I should mention, so that it doesn't get lost in this oral history, that

shortly before leaving New York, while I was at CLSA, I had been asked to

contribute to a symposium on housing in Law and Contemporary Problems, a

periodical at Duke University Law school. It is likely that my name had been

recommended by McDougal, he may have been asked to do it. From time to

time I did book reviews that he had been asked to write. This article was to

be called Real Property Law and Mass Housing Needs. I mention it

particularly because it became a kind of a classic. It was made required

reading in some housing courses. I wrote it while I was at CLSA and finished

it on the train out to California right after our wedding. Also I should mention

here or it will get lost that in 1948, an article of mine entitled "Supreme Court

Rules Out Race Restrictive Covenants" was published in the Women Lawyers

Journal, the official publication of the National Association of Women

Lawyers. Well, I should tell you now about my job hunt.

Yes.

It wasn't hard. I had a couple of contacts there. Particularly there was a

lawyer that I had known from Yale, Arthur Groman, who suggested the name

of Paul Ziffren. He said Paul Ziffren has joined what seems like a good little

firm, that he's a fellow from Chicago who is awfully bright, happens to be a

tax man I went to see Paul Ziffren, who spoke to his partners and I ended up

with Swartz Tannenbaum Ziffren arid Steinberg. A great little firm. Louis

- 3 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Swartz was the elder, nearing retirement, who had had a long career

representing people in the entertainment business. He was well respected.

David Tannenbaum was in his fifties and he was around that time the mayor

of Beverly Hills. He also had wonderful clients. He had been in the industry

himself, he had been involved with movie production but now he was back

practicing law. And Ziffren had a national clientele. He also was on the

National Committee of the Democratic Party. And Steinberg, I think he did

litigation, I didn't work with him. I worked a lot with Jacob Shearer, who

was a tax man and also did a lot of estates work. I did corporate work. I

ended up mostly doing appeals. The firm had glamorous clients. Well, I was

there for two years.

Were you the first woman?

Yes, of course I was the only woman. There were just nine people in that

firm altogether. We were housed in a round building, one story, concrete

building. It was on Wilshire Boulevard at a side street famous for shops.

Oh, Rodeo?

I think it was Rodeo Drive. We were in Beverly Hills. Woody and I lived in

Hollywood.

So were they impressed that you had gone to Yale? Did that help?

I doubt that it hurt. I think I was given a good recommendation by Art

Groman.

He was in your class?

- 4 -

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

No he was ahead of me, two years ahead. So I got the job and I did all kinds

of work there and I liked it a lot. The firm merged with another and became

Pacht Tannenbaum and Ross. I still was the only woman. I took the red car

to work.

What was the red car?

Well before the trolleys were removed from Los Angeles by certain interests,

they had these marvelous trolleys and the particular line I took was the red

car. The trolley's course even went through people's back yards just to keep

going in a straight line. When I was at the Housing Council, I took a red car

to downtown LA. Woody bought a jeep for his business, so we also owned a

jeep. I want to tell a little bit more about my life in Los Angeles because I

didn't just work at Swartz Tannenbaum, I also was in community activity, not

only continued in housing but also I became involved with the American

Jewish Committee, where several sitting judges as well as lawyers were active

members. First, about housing. For the next couple of years after the defeat

of the initiative we advocates were quiet while pondering what to do next.

Meanwhile, an issue very familiar to me from New York, namely, dealing

with discrimination in government aided housing programs on the basis of

race or ethnic origin, began to get public notice. I became involved in this,

and quite successfully, largely through my membership in the Los Angeles

County Conference on Community Relations, where I headed the Housing

Committee. Briefly, the matters which I particularly recall are two - the

preparation of a bill making it illegal to discriminate in the so-called

- 5 -

redevelopment projects, which receive public aid, and making it illegal to

discriminate in housing of the Los Angeles County Housing Authority. On

the first, I was able to contribute much from my experience with the New

York and New Jersey bills; the bill drafted by us was introduced in the

Los Angeles City Council. On the second, we were making progress with

help from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. I was amused years

later at a California function to be introduced as the woman who had

integrated the Los Angeles County housing, a bit of an overstatement. I was

also on the Board of the California Federation of Civic Unity. At the

American Jewish Committee, Los Angeles chapter, when they saw all the

background that I had from my New York City experiences, they asked if I

would suggest to them the kind of program that they could develop, and they

!hen set up a legal committee. They actually paid me to make an initial report

as to what I thought could be done. The legal committee met regularly and

did things, and I assisted them. I wasn't paid any more, I just worked with

them. We got into a lot of areas, released time programs, all kinds of things.

So that also was very fulfilling for me, I really enjoyed that. And I think

through the connections that I made there I was asked to arbitrate a dispute

between the Federation of Jewish Charities and their labor union. That was

fun, I had never done anything like that before. I was the public arbitrator. I

liked doing that. Very good being in Los Angeles, very, very good. But what

happened one day was that I became pregnant and Woody said he thought he

would do·better in New York and besides, he said, you are going to have a

- 6 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

baby and you should be near your mother. So we went back to New York.

As soon as we hit New York, we weren't there two minutes when he was

making contacts and creating good impressions. At that time, the New York

motion picture industry hadn't developed the way it did many years later.

And he turned up with the latest in cameras, cinematography, whatever.

There were a few companies in New York that were making films for

industry .... Woody got placed early with a firm that was making films for

Firestone Tire and Rubber for television, that kind of thing.

So now you are coming back? Are you just of a mixed mind, are you

unhappy, happy, neutral?

Well, I was quite happy. I had enjoyed Los Angeles, it had been quite an

experience for me. It's a totally different world from anything I had known.

Of course, I was looking forward to having the baby.

How old were you then?

I was thirty-two.

Well let's just do very quickly, ______ . When you were in

Los Angeles had the McCarthy hearings happened or was it later?

They were just starting up. Just about the time I left, a year or so later, there

was a public hearing about a proposed housing project on a site called Chavez

Ravine, which subsequently became a baseball field. At that time it was

slated to be for a public housing project. Frank Wilkinson was testifying,

they asked him ifhe were a member of the communist party, and he refused

to answer. He ended up in a federal prison. He is now a hero because he was

- 7 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

so relentlessly pursued by the FBI for the rest of his life. He died only this

past year. There is now a book on him called "First Amendment Felon" by

one Robert Sherill.

So now you are back in New York, are you showing then that you are

pregnant?

Oh yes. At first it was a question of where we were going to live in New

York and we found a little place to live in New Rochelle temporarily. It was

a terrible housing shortage in New York in 1950. We finally found a place

through the help of a friend of mine who knew somebody, an apartment,

coincidentally a block away from my parents. This was at one hundred tenth

street near Broadway. That's where I had lived when I went to Barnard. My

parents were still there, and now I was on the next block. This was the

funniest thing that cold possibly happen, but I was right there, and I had the

baby there. It was a boy. I went through The New York Times listing and I

hired somebody to take care of my child. Then I was restless, I'd come back

and found that in the four years I was away, there were enormous changes in

the communities in which I had previously been active in New York. Where I

had been virtually the sole person on the issue of housing discrimination, I

now found a New York state committee on discrimination in housing, which

soon after that became a national committee, that the contacts that Will

Maslow made with Al Black for the Stuyvesant Town litigation had

apparently led to his proposing Hortense Gabel to run this New York state

committee. I knew Hortie, she had gone to Hunter College with my sister

- 8 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Bernice. And I liked her, she was a good friend of mine all my life. Where I

had been there were holes left that were fully filled up, so that I felt

superfluous with all of my background and knowledge. Of course I was put

on things. I was made a member of the Housing Advisory Council to the

New York State Commission Against Discrimination, that kind of thing. But

I really was no longer needed in these areas. So that was a shock to absorb. I

no longer was the prime mover. They had Hortie, they had Bob Weaver, they

had Charles Abrams, they had others whom I hadn't known to be involved.

The train just keeps moving to Dallas. The trainjust keeps chucking down

that ------------

Sure it does. Well, the answer to that was my becoming very involved in the

course of the 1950's with housing issues for the Real Property Law

Committee of the New York City Bar Association~ But I don't want to get to

that yet. I didn't actually join the City Bar until later in the fifties. My first

move was to go back to work full time. I was restless at home with the baby

and near my mother. I wasn't used to this life, so somebody - I can't

remember who - said why don't you just walk down to the Proskauer office

and see what's going on. So I stopped in to say hello on Friday afternoon and

they said come in Monday morning. And to create an office for me they put a

young man who was in estates law out of his office, had him double up

somewhere else and they gave me his tiny office.

Very flattering though. You must have been happy about that. I don't mean

about the office, I mean that they accepted you since ...

- 9 -

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Siegel:

It was absolutely lovely because I had not been particularly in touch with

them. If I published an article that I thought would interest them, I would sent

a reprint and maybe get an acknowledgement. But I wasn't really in touch

· with them. So here I was back at work there and I was assigned primarily to

litigation this time. I assisted on moderately large cases. And then what

happened was a year and a half later, in 1952, I became pregnant again. In

May I went into the office of Walter Mendelsohn, the managing partner.

Mendelsohn, who had previously been extremely warm and had written me

that he was so glad I was back in law practice when I had sent him a notice

that I was with Swartz Tannenbaum, well, I said to him, I would like to take

off this summer. Of course taking off time was nothing when it was a

question of the boys going into the Korean war. I said that I was expecting a

baby. Actually my little girl was born August 1. I said I expect the baby this

summer, so I'd like to just take off this summer. He couldn't sit still, got up

from his seat, he became apoplectic, he walked up and down in the room, he

said this is awful. I said but Mr. Mendelsohn you know when I came back to

the firm you know that I had a baby. What's the difference, whoever is taking

care of one baby for me would now take care of two babies. He said, but how

do we know you'll stop at two babies. Apoplectic. What a reaction, what a

crazy reaction. So I just quietly took up my papers and walked out.

And I then did not confront him again. I finished my work, stayed another

few weeks, and during that period while I was sort of large in my belly, I

conducted a little corporate meeting and I don't think they liked the way I

- 10 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

looked but of course at that point I was just not talking to anybody about it. I

simply left.

And the last words with him were how do we know you are not going to do

this again?

Right. I had come in to request time out for the summer and was being turned

down.

And unpaid?

Of course, the assumption was that it would be unpaid.

Very strong of you not to cry and just be able to gather your papers and walk

out?

And then I thought I ought to treat this as if I am fired. And so I applied for

unemployment insurance. And then the clerk in the unemployment office told

me you can't get unemployment insurance if your baby is only a month old.

A person isn't fit to go back to work when the baby is only a month old. I

said I am perfectly able to go to work, but she didn't believe it.

What were their regulations, three months, six months?

Well, it was later. Meanwhile of course I was ....

But Proskauer did not think you had left?

Yes. They must have understood I had left. They must have been notified

about the unemployment insurance and not contested it. I just wasn't going to

go back there and that was it. Never go back there. However, I was seeking

work, so I spoke to Burt Zorn, who was one of the partners there. I asked

Burt if he had any ideas and he came up with a good one. He said that he

- 11 -

' would suggest me to Louis Loeb who was the general counsel for The New

York Times and the vice-chair of a commission on the courts newly

established by the State legislature. He thought that commission was a good

place for me. Here I was with a newborn, I guess he thought it wasn't good

for me to be working too strenuously, and it would be just a nice breather for

me where I could collect myself. So he recommended me and I went there.

Harrison Tweed, former President of New York City Bar Association, chaired

this commission, which was called the Temporary Commission on the Courts.

It had a small staff of about half a dozen lawyers. This was another

wonderful experience for me. They were to do a preliminary report to the

Legislature at the beginning of the next session. It was now around

September-October. I was assigned to work on the problem of handling

problems of the family and children in the court system. I had marvelous

colleagues there. They were all very good lawyers and good companions.

Meanwhile, when I had called a few Yale friends to see about work in

September, one of them was Seymour Lewis, known as Sy Lewis, who

worked at Judge Rosenman's firm. Well, around Christmas time I got a call

from the Rosenman firm that they are looking for somebody so I thought,

well, I don't know where this Commission is going to go after January. I

have done my report, I'll go down to the Rosenman office. They offered me a

job and assigned me to work on a major antitrust case, Schwartz against BMI,

which I found very interesting, and a new experience. I was very happy in

that firm. Judge Sam Rosenman himself was a great boss. I worked directly

- 12 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

with him occasionally. And while I was there at the Rosenman firm I began

to get into the Bar Association activities that became a very important part of

my life.

They were taking women then, right?

There weren't any other women at the Rosenman firm.

I mean at the association of the bar of the city of New York, now called the

City Bar. They just renamed it this year.

Yes, Betsy Plevan was responsible for that, I understand. Well, for me it was

the Association of the Bar of the City of New York and I was not one of the

first women.

But they just started opening membership to women in the fifties.

Right. And it was actually Ira Robbins, whom I mentioned to you at the very

first interview. Ira Robbins who called me up and said, why don't I become a

member of the city bar and apply to be on the Real Property Law Committee,

because the Committee is planning to take up housing matters and I think you

would like this. I hadn't been particularly in touch with him. But this was a

nice suggestion.

What was he at that time?

Various things, I think he was state commissioner of housing at one point, he

eventually was a member of the New York City Housing Authority. So

following Ira's suggestion I went over to the Association of the Bar, got

myself a membership and got onto the Committee. The work of that

committee and its successor, the housing committee, was a major professional

- 13 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

interest of mine for the next quarter century. I was the only woman on it for

quite a few years. The climax of this association was when I became chair of

the Committee on Housing and Urban Development in the 1970s. For that

three year period from about seventy-five to seventy-seven or eight, I ran the

best committee that I had ever served on. We did such good work in at least a

half a dozen areas, it was very gratifying. We did research, writing and

policymaking.

Okay, so now we are in the fifties, you are at Rosenman?

I am at the Rosenman firm. I stayed at Rosenman for seven years. I was

there from early fifth-three to late fifty-nine. And something very interesting

happened in the course of those years. Sometime around the mid-fifties, I

really don't know, I don't have any written record of this at all, I had a visit

from Jack Felt, his formal name was James Felt who at one time was head of

the New York Real Estate Board, not a lawyer. When he called me, he was or

had been the chair of the Urban Renewal Board, which was a governmental

body in Mayor Wagner's administration, a very important body. He said he

wanted to speak to be about the fact that New York city was about to embark

on a major project to rewrite the Zoning Ordinance of 1916. Over the years

there had been an accumulation of amendments and there was a sense that this

1916 ordinance, which was the first zoning in the country and a very

important step in its time, needed to be totally reexamined. And what he was

proposing to me was that I would be funded to set up my own law office and

then would be given a retainer to serve as the lawyer for this multiyear project

- 14 -

to devise a new zoning ordinance for the city of New York. I would be free to

take on other clients. This was an extraordinary opportunity for one who was .

after all only another associate at one of the city's law firms. Well, I was

stunned. I barely knew this man personally. Obviously I had a reputation that

he was going by. I had just published an article for a symposium at Duke

University on the relation of zoning to housing, perhaps he had seen that.

Well, I was taken aback, I only said I would think about it. I cannot know for

sure what I was thinking at the time, fifty years ago. I clearly recall that I

resisted this offer rather than welcomed it. I do not think I had ever

consciously entertained the ambition of having my own law office. That may

be neither here nor there, in view of the highly special circumstances of this

offer. It was even in line with my housing interests and the challenge it

presented of having a principal role in an overhaul of the City's zoning should

have been very attractive to me. What drove my reaction to Mr. Felt's

proposal may have been an instinctive sense that it threatened my good life:

congenial work at Rosenman's that rarely intruded into evenings or

weekends, leaving time for my young children and other family as well as for

a myriad of interesting writing and committee assignments. A project having

the scope of this one would surely make enormous demands on my time and

energy. At the suggestion of my friend Charles Abrams, whom I called while

considering this offer, I tested the somewhat less demanding alternative of

having the City retain the Rosenman firm, rather than me, on the

understanding that I would handle the project and be relieved of other work.

- 15 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Both Mr. Felt and Judge Rosenman went for this until the Judge cleared with

his client Robert Moses, who was anti-zoning. That was the end of the

matter, I thanked Mr. Felt and declined his offer.

I now regret that I dismissed the offer so summarily rather than fully 'explored

it. A lot of questions now come to my mind as to exactly how it would

function. If I knew more, maybe it would have been less threatening. On the

other hand, I went onto such an interesting and fulfilling career that nothing

was lost by my not taking on the zoning project. Well, I thought it was such

an interesting tidbit on Robert Moses that I recently wrote up something about

it for the archives in Queens. The LaGuardia and Wagner archives which are

interested in anything that has to do with housing. They have some of my

papers.

Okay, so they could not allow you to take this project on?

So it was left for me to handle or not. I was free to leave the Rosenman firm

and set up my own office. And I was not inclined to do that.

You had a lot of choices?

Well. What else happened to me in l 950's while at the Rosenman firm?

There were a lot of special projects, some were pro bono and some for hire.

Abrams had become involved. with the housing section of the United Nations,

for whom he was making trips to different parts of the world reporting on the

housing needs of Madagascar or whoever. When he undertook to do a report

for the United Nations on urban land policy, he had the United Nations hire

me to weave into the report a lot of material held by the United States State

- 16 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Department gathered by its consular offices. From being associated with that

report, I got to know people of the U .N. housing section pretty well. When

they decided to undertake a housing project just for U.N. employees, they

retained me to be their lawyer. For this I involved real estate lawyers at the

Rosenman office. Similarly from time to time I wrote on housing matters,

always while working full time at Rosenman's. The National Committee on

Discrimination in Housing had me prepare a detailed analysis of the FHA

programs. Ira Robbins had me research one or two questions. I co-authored

with a friend of mine, Beryl Harold Levy, a 55-page booklet entitled "Toward

City Conservation, a Memorandum for New Yorkers on Aspects of Urban

Renewal." This was done for a community group on Manhattan's West Side.

I corresponded with Loren Miller in California regarding briefs in active

housing discrimination litigation. I served on the board of the American

Jewish Committee New York Chapter. I did a 72-page monograph entitled

"The Law of Open Space, Legal Aspects of Acquiring or Otherwise

Preserving Open Space in the Tri-State New York Metropolitan Region" for

the Regional Plan Association. ·And as I mentioned earlier, I had a running

commitment with the City Bar Association Real Property Law Committee.

That's how the years passed in the 1950s.

Right, and you have two young children?

Right.

When did you finally leave Rosenman? '59?

- 17 -

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Yes. The reason that I left is very interesting. I'll give you that and then

we're going to end because I am tired.

Okay.

I'll just give you the story of my leaving. Charles Abrams was the head of the

New York State Commission for Human Rights at the time that Averill

Harriman was governor. At that time, Louis Leftkowitz was the Republican

Attorney General. Harriman was a Democratic Governor. When Leftkowitz

announced that he wanted to set up a civil rights bureau, the Harriman

administration was very suspicious of him. And Charlie Abrams was their

little pugilist. There was a little war going on between Abrams and

Leftkowitz, Abrams expressing the Harriman administration view that this

was some nasty plot to show up the State Commission and Leftkowitz

protesting that no, there was a role that the attorney general could play, even

getting up complaints to the State Commission to begin to energize them.

After this had gone on for a few months, Lefkowitz said to Abrams, we can

settle this, you tell me who should be the head of my Civil Rights Bureau.

I'm willing to appoint anybody you name. Abrams said, Shirley Siegel,

Leftkowitz said, fine, although I was a Democrat. I had barely taken note of

Louis Leftkowitz. He was the one the politicians put in to succeed Javitz

when Javitz went to the U.S. Senate. But this was, I mean, the opportunity to

organize a Civil Rights Bureau for an Attorney General who was on the

defensive, it would have to be good. This was not something to dismiss

lightly. So I went to Edward Weinfeld, who was then a federal judge. Eddie,

- 18 -

•

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

I said, you knew Leftkowitz when both of you were active in politics in the

Lower East Side, although in different parties. I said what can you tell me

about this development? He said, I think this is good for you and you should

take it. He said Leftkowitz is really sincere about this, he really thinks that he

ought to be doing something for Civil Rights, he wants to be that kind of an

attorney general. He would give you an opportunity to real work. I knew I

could trust what Eddie Weinfeld said to me. And, so I agreed to become the

New York assistant attorney general in charge of the Civil Rights Bureau.

The Rosenman firm were so delighted by this appointment that they had a big

farewell party for me in the Harmony Club. Ralph Colin's wife had a shop

with antiques.

Who's Ralph Colin?

He was a senior partner. Rosenman & Colin.

C-0-L-I-N?

Colin. And so they said Shirley you go down there and you pick out

something you would like as a present from the firm. I probably picked out

the least expensive item but I selected something I love, a pair of early

American paintings on velvet. They were handed around at the party for

everybody to sign on the back. The paintings are hanging in my dining room.

It was a wonderful send off.

- 19 -

• •

Tape 1

INTERVIEW OF SHIRLEY A. SIEGEL

BY JOAN KREY

Feb.27,2007

This is Joan Krey and the date is February 27, 2007. We are here for the oral history of Shirley

Adelson Siegel continuing and we are starting with the year 1959.

Ms. Siegel: In 1959, I was called on by the New York State Attorney General to organize a

Civil Rights Bureau, probably the first Attorney General's office in the country to

have one, although there soon followed one in California and in Massachusetts.

And then Pennsylyania came along. I have here a picture that shows how we

were all called down sometime around, I guess, around 1960 to the office of

Attorney General Bob Kennedy in Washington, where we met with his Civil

Rights staff.

Ms. Krey: And that's you?

Ms. Siegel: And there I am. The Attorney General of New York State, Louis Lefkowitz,

started out with big ideas, he was going to organize the first bureaus in the

country in civil rights, environmental law, consumer frauds, and so on. Some of

these activities had been carried on by the Attorneys General but he was going to

feature them, which he did very successfully. He was Attorney General for 21

years.

Ms. Krey: Was he appointed by the government or elected?

Ms. Siegel: Jack Javits had been the Attorney General and when he was elected to the U.S.

Senate, the State Legislature made the appointment to the vacancy.

Ms. Krey: And who was the Governor of New York?

Ms. Siegel: The Governor was Nelson Rockefeller. Lefkowitz and Rockefeller were very

close. Consequently, our Civil Rights Bureau had some influence on what was

happening in the Rockefeller Administration. For example, when we dealt with

real estate brokers who were "blockbusting," frightening people into giving up

their homes because a Negro had moved on the block, we worked with the

Secretary of state, who was in charge of licensing the brokers. I'm about to

di.scuss what we did with the Building Trades Unions apprenticeship programs.

There we had some influence on the State Administration through the Industrial

Commissioner, who had statutory responsibility with respect to apprenticeship ..

The Attorney General is separately elected and isn't necessarily the same political

party as the Governor Lefkowitz was a great supporter of his party and he wanted

to see them do the right thing.

Ms. Krey: Now the apprenticeship program - was the issue there race?

Ms. Siegel: Oh yes, racial discrimination. Actually the issue affected white boys too, because

there was a very well entrenched tradition in the building trades unions, as in

some other unions - not only in New York State, to provide opportunities to enter

the trade only to sons and nephews. These are great opportunities where, of

course, the pay is greater, and not necessarily for greater skill than you find

among the non-union men. Because blacks were so clearly excluded, it was a

very important area for our Bureau to take on. And it had not been taken on

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anywhere; we were to break new ground. As I look back on my life, certainly

there was nothing I ever did that was more significant than this.

As soon as I was in my office, I had a call from Herbert Hill at NAACP -

actually a white guy who was an economist, who had been raised in an Orthodox

Jewish home. He said Charles Abrams, whose name I've mentioned to you

before, had told him that I was a straight shooter and he could talk to me. I said,

"Well, this is great, because I am in need of ideas for where to begin as we have

problems of racial and religious discrimination from one end of the State to the

other." He said that he would like us to undertake a study of the apprenticeship

programs. It was notorious that there was this problem with the unions, but that

nobody had got a handle on it; the agencies thatexisted were ineffective. He said

he would like to have us take on the printing trades. I said, "Well, I like the idea

very much, but I want to do the building trades because I know a lot more about

them than about the printing trades due to my lifelong interest in housing." Well,

that put our Bureau in business. We had had no program and no complaints to

handle, so I started by calling in the officers of the building trades unions one by

one. I had some immediate success. As soon as the Attorney General called them

in, they promised they would take one. The plumbers' union was the first; we had

Plumbers Local 1 and 2 in the New Yorkmetropolitan area, where I had my

office Local 63 8 of the Steamfitters also came along. And others. These unions

had previously dealt, if at all, with bureaucrats in human rights agencies that

didn't frighten them; the Attorney General had more clout. I met resistance from

a union known as Local 28 of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 28 was then my test

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case. Here alone the President of the union came to see me accompanied by his

attorney. From day one we were sparring and I wasn't making progress, except

for gathering background information. And then something happened. I had

assigned my two investigators to examine the records of the union; they had not

been able to come up with anything. And then what happened was that a young

man who was just out of the Army, a very young black man, was simply walking

through the building where Local 28 had its office. He was knocking on every

door to ask for a job, wasn't thinking whether he would be acceptable to this

union because of his color, knew nothing about this, he was not a well-informed

young man. And the union thought I had sent him in to test th~m. That was my

break, because although I was prepared to propose a complaint to the State

Commission Against Discrimination based on pattern evidence alone, it certainly

made the case stronger and better ensured the Attorney General's personal support

if I could offer one living body who had been discriminated against.. This body

now just fell into my lap .. The union representatives volunteered to me that such

a young man had come by and gave me reasons why he did not qualify for the

apprenticeship program. My investigators then picked up the necessary

information on his name, and so forth. Meanwhile I was ready to go to the State

Commission because I had all the statistical information and other research I

needed in order to buttress a complaint . This was going to be a historic mission.

My complaint went to a public hearing before the State Commission,

which now had something to energize it. The hearing got a lot of coverage in the

press. The Commission's attorney proceeded by following my complaint

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paragraph-by-paragraph in the same order, right down the line. There followed

years of litigation to establish judicial support for the Commission's findings and

decrees. At one point the federal Department of Justice took on Local 28 of the

Sheet Metal Workers, leading ultimately to a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court

in 1986.

It was around this period of my complaint against Local 28 that the sit-ins

were taking place. There were growing protests by minority workers unable to

get construction jobs. There were riots in major cities in the Summer of 1983.

Thus the Civil Rights Bureau's work on the apprenticeship issue was highly

relevant to what was happening on the streets.

Now in response to our success in opening up the apprenticeship programs

in the building trades unions the minority community set up its own

apprenticeship council which put out a welcome mat to young African-Americans

who would want to aspire to these union jobs. They helped them to prepare and

to apply.

That was the most wonderful beginning for the Civil Rights Bureau.

Everything that we did from then on was equally exciting. I shall run through

some of it for you to give you an idea. First, though, about my staff. The

Attorney General, although he is to be credited for having made what was a merit

appointment in appointing me, the rest was political patronage. I was started out

with a couple of attorneys who - well, with all due respect, couldn't do much. One

of them told me she was a member of the Bar but had never practiced and that she

really couldn't do anything. She was a very nice person, and when we organized

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the Attorney General's Advisory Committee on Human Relations, she was in

charge of that. That, with the two investigators and one secretary, was my staff.

After a year or two of having had some successes, I was authorized to hire another

lawyer. So I recruited a Harvard graduate, both nice and able.

These are the kinds of things that we worked on. The two investigators

went to employment agencies, because we had heard of course that

discrimination by these agencies was rampant. And so they found that the

employment agencies were using ways of noting in their records who was not

white One used NFU - not for us.

And so our investigators saw this NFU all over, asked about it and found

out what it meant. Another agency used the number 8 as its code for non-white.

And still another used POK - persons of color. Our snooping put all the

employment agencies on edge.

The Attorney General was able under the State. Executive Law section

63(12) to enjoin "persistent illegal practices." And so we would file our papers

and they would consent to judgment and pay a penalty. If they were caught

doing this coding again, the penalty would be higher. In fact, they would even get

into trouble with the Licensing agency. And this was just one of the things we

were doing. No matter what we touched, we did good. No wonder this was such

an exciting period ofmy life. And I had always cared about these things and been

active in civil rights and civil liberties matters.

I had always known it was hard for Jews or other minorities to get

management jobs with the banks and insurance companies. So I started a survey.

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I always did surveys, as you may recall from my days at LSE. I went down to

the big banks and insurance companies in New York - Metropolitan Life, Chase

Bank and others - coming from the office of Louis Lefkowitz, who was a political

ally, I was able to gain entree to their records that they handed over to me,

showing at what college campuses they had been going for their recruiting and

whom they invited back for further interviewing at the home office, and of those

invited back, who got the jobs as management trainee. I found that they did not

invite the Jews or other minorities they had seen on campus unless they were

extraordinary, and if they did invite them back, did not engage them, This was so

clear on the face of the survey that it was an embarrassment to the companies.

We advertised these results. The American Jewish Committee and others picked

them lip and did the necessary follow-through.

Airline pilots. I must tell you about that. I wouldn't have anticipated that I

would get into the matter of airline pilots. There was a case from Colorado,

Colorado State Commission Against Discrimination versus Continental Airlines,

where a pilot claimed he had been a good pilot in the War and couldn't get a job

with Continental because of his color. The airline defended on the ground that the

Civil Aeronautics Board had preempted jurisdiction. Since this issue was

common to all our state commissions, New York took the lead and with

California, Massachusetts and others did an amicus brief We were granted an

opportunity to argue in the U.S. Supreme Court, and the case was successful. It

was the first time I argued in the U.S. Supreme Court. The airline pilot, Marlin

Green, whom I had never met, was sitting in the courtroom with his family

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watching the argument. He is now the subject of a book by one Flynt Whitlock

called "Color in the Sky" one chapter of which is devoted to the Supreme Court

argument, which Whitlock sent me to review. This was great fun.

Then Jackie Robinson, the baseball player, brought us a complaint about

blacks not being able to become members of the Professional Golfers'

Association. And so we finally broke that barrier, I think with help from

California. At· first they refused to change the bylaws.

We were also active on the ·waterfront, the so-called luxury piers in New

York where there was an all-white longshoremen's union. We had problems with

that one; it was a tough union. Our inquiry embarrassed them at the national

meeting of the union because the southern unions were black, and our local union

became ugly with us. This was finally resolved when this union merged with the

one on the next pier and became a mixed union.

In the course of the longshoremen investigation I met Martin Luther King

Jr .. I happened to represent Louis Lefkowitz at a meeting at The New York

Times which had asked a few people to be there to discuss their problem in the

State of Mississippi, which you may recall. While the big guys were discussing

this problem, King and I were kind of left out; they were not asking us our

opinion. So we got into a conversation with one another, and what I talked to him

about was the longshoremen and our Civil Rights Bureau. He sounded very

interested and was extremely gracious. I was so delighted with this encounter.

And then finally on employment discrimination: During my first years at

the Civil Rights Bureau there was nothing in the New York law against

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discrimination based on sex. The Business and Professional Women's Group of

New York State was having an annual meeting upstate in 1961 or '62 and I

prepared a letter which was sent to them by Attorney General Lefkowitz

suggesting that they add to their legislative program the matter of sex

discrimination in employment, on which he pledged his support. That was our

first venture into the area of sex discrimination in employment which later

became an important area of activity for this Bureau, after my time. We put a bill

in the Legislature on that. Louis Lefkowitz introduced it to legislative sponsors

and it passed in 1964. Things had begun to boil up, you know.

Ms. Krey: Yes, yes.

Ms. Siegel: A lot was happening in civil rights, but there was nothing going on that I was

aware of in Albany on sex discrimination until we made this contact with the

Business and Professional Women's group. I haven't investigated to find out if

there were other efforts being made on this issue by others at the same time. I

wasn't aware of these, if any.

Ms. Krey:

Ms Siegel:

At the time when the bill was introduced, did you get the flavor of some of the

reaction to it?

I think it was becoming politically acceptable. I remember that it felt exciting to

launch that communication to the women's group and to have an Attorney

General that would cooperate so well on this issue. He was extremely well

disposed to having women lawyers on his staff, too.

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Employment was our major area of operation. I now would like to say a

few words about housing. I have already mentioned our interest in real estate

brokers. I was familiar with what was happening in parts of Queens, for example.

The racial composition of neighborhoods was changing before our eyes, what

with active brokers scaring people into selling their homes as soon as a black

family appeared on the street, which they were told would depreciate the value of

their property, and then promoting sales to the blacks, until the neighborhood

became all-black. These practices didn't lead to integration; they exploited

people's fears and disrupted the community. I felt that brokers engaging in such

practices were violating the law - but what law. The New York statute provided

that brokers licensed by the State had to be "trustworthy." That term was so

lacking in adjudicated meaning that I decided to take the position that this

conduct, known as blockbusting, was untrustworthy. It was a noble attempt but

we lost in the courts, we couldn't get the judges, not personally familiar with this

phenomenon, to understand. us. The problem was that I had not prepared the kind

of record that was needed to deal with this cultural gap. Of course, I did not have

the resources to do any real work on this, nor the time.

In other areas I fared better. I took the position that if all the apartment

owners in a neighborhood had a tacit agreement not to rent to blacks, there was a

conspiracy actionable under the state anti-trust law. Burke Marshall, who later

became a law professor at Yale and who at this time was in Bob Kennedy's office,

where I met him, said he did not like my using the antitrust law that way, as

though I were prostituting the law. I used it with some success, however, when

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we sued a group of apartment house owners in Rye, New York, who had turned

down a black applicant for a rental apartment. Judge Geller, the judge in that

case, known as Kates v Lefkowitz, supported the theory of the case although he

did not believe we had sufficient evidence. Again, we lacked the resources to

build an adequate record. Butwe made new law.

Bronxville was another area of our housing activity. I had always known

as a New Yorker that Jews, not even Leonard Bernstein, could rent or buy in

Bronxville. This was religious discrimination, contrary to law and another

conspiracy case. This time I did my research. I called in the leading member of

the Lawrence family, who controlled Bronxville, a number of times. He

understood that I was bent on preparing a grand casethat would cover the

beginning and the history of their practices, what buildings were involved, who

was involved, the management company, and so on. I truly was ready to launch a

major complaint. At that juncture a political stop was put on me; I was given to

understand that this was the bailiwick of the lieutenant governor. What I did

therefore was to prepare complaints that I filed with the State Commission

Against Discrimination on this or that apartment house, e.g. Northgate

Apartments.. I was able to feed into these complaints the rich background

information I had picked up from Mr. Lawrence. Maybe I finally had some effect

on Bronxville after all.

I have a couple of other items I would like to take up on the Civil Rights

Bureau. I indicated earlier that New York joined with other states' Attorneys

General to do amicus briefs, and not just the one in which I had the opportunity to

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Ms. Krey:

argue in the U.S. Supreme Court as, for example, The Heart of Atlanta Motel

versus the United States, where we didn't get the opportunity to argue, but the

brief was challenging to write. It involved the power of Congress to legislate in

the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that a little motel in Atlanta could still be in interstate

commerce.

That's a very famous case. Also about the Continental Airlines case, which I want

to go back to, which also involved interstate commerce, do you want to talk a

little bit about that, what it was like to argue in the Supreme Court, and do you

remember being asked questions of particular interest?

Ms. Siegel: The argument in the Continental Airlines case was easy for me. I was so well

Ms. Krey:

prepared and the Court was I felt not unfriendly. Of course my classmate Potter

Stewart was· up there. . . That was the time of my private exchange with him. In

the argument I remember making the point that at common law the common

carriers had to take all travelers without discrimination.

You had to have been one of a small group of women who had ever argued in the

Supreme Court?

Ms. Siegel: I don't know how many women argued in the U.S. Supreme Court ahead ofme.

That was 1962. I never asked and I don't know. There is only one other thing I

want to mention concerning the Civil Rights Bureau. The U.S. Supreme Court in

the early 1960s rendered the deci~ion in Gideon against Wainwright that all

persons accused of crime are entitled to legal representation to defend themselves,

and so I became interested in what was happening in New York State. I did a

survey of what was being done in all of the sixty-two counties of the State to

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comply with this new law. It was a very various scene, great diversity. And then

we worked on what the law should be. With the cooperation of the County

Association the Attorney General sponsored a bill prepared by the Civil Rights

Bureau which he gave to Senator Anderson and Assemblyman Bartlett to carry.

This bill became Article 18(b) of the County Law, which is the famous "18(b )" in

New York. Now, fifty years later, 18(b) is inadequate and due to be supplanted

by a new measure to provide criminal defense.

I have given you some highlights of my busy days at the Civil Rights

Bureau. I would now like to get into another interesting subject and that is how I

happened to leave the Bureau after seven good years. . First, I need to tell you

about my outside activities while at the Bureau to give you some background.for

what follows.

I told you at a previous session that I wrote a monograph called The Law

of Open Space which was noted in the planning community nationwide. Because

of this publication I was asked to speak in Florida, Connecticut and elsewhere and

MIT asked me to give a seminar, which I did in the year 1961-1962 for two

semesters. I would go to Boston every Friday to teach this seminar, which I

enjoyed no end. I had good students and I really loved the course. That was my

first real taste of teaching and it was an excellent experience. But in order to do it

I had to take a day off from my job which was charged to my personal leave and

vacation time. The year that I did this teaching I had no vacation. When my

sister Dorothy learned about my losing my vacation time, she would not tolerate

it. She told me I couldn't do this anymore, and so although I was very pleased to

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be invited to renew the seminar the following year, I reluctantly had to tell them

No. And this is interesting also because it brings up again the important position

of Dorothy in my life.

I also was approached while I was at the Civil Rights Bureau to join the

board of the Industrial Areas Foundation of Saul Alinsky. This is a very

interesting organization headquartered in the Midwest that empowers grassroots

activity to resist so-called gentrification and take control of their communities. It

has been an important movement. Members of the Board were all quite

distinguished. I was suggested to them as a potential Board member by one of the

bank or insurance company presidents that I had met while doing that study on

executive recruitment. Alinsky stopped by to see me, then had me interviewed by

Gordon Clapp. I was invited to join but did not accept. I wasn't sure I could

afford either the time or the money to attend those meetings and was also

uncertain whether I was one hundred percent in accord with their philosophy. I

had known the organization in California and had some reservations about them.

In any event I was flattered to be asked to come on. To have Saul Alinsky

consider me for his Board has been a source of pride.

Ms, Krey: Now, didn't you have young children <;1.t home?

Mr. Siegel: Yes, I had children.

Ms. Krey: But you were obviously managing that?

Ms. Siegel: I managed because at the Attorney General's office, almost no one worked late

hours and I got my work done during the hours I was there. Also I had full time

sleep-in help at home and my parents lived close by, and saw the children almost

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daily while they were in lower school. My children were 7 and 9 years old when I

was sworn in as head of the Civil Rights Bureau in 1959 and stole the show at the

swearmg-m.

By the last year at the Civil Rights Bureau - 1966 - I was reflecting that a

lot of what we had been doing was ingenious because at first we didn't have

statutes directly on point. Now civil rights law was blanketed by statutes, both

state and federal. In a way it was less challenging. Myres McDougal had

remarked to me - I have mentioned him from time to time as an important person

in my life - he said something to the effect that civil rights law is not as

intellectually stimulating as practicing law in other fields, is it. And at that time I

took issue with him and said that wasn't true. However, by the mid- or latter part

of the 'sixties I was beginning to think it may be true. Also, I wondered about my

long term career prospects in civil rights as a white person.

At that point Charles Abrams came along with an idea, something as

difficult and challenging as I could wish. I had done a little work for him on his

urban land report for the United Nations before I came to the Civil Rights

Bureau. Now he wanted to develop the same subject as a book for the benefit of

underdeveloped nations, where millions of people are crowding into urban centers

without any proper traditions of land planning. Their governments were doomed

to make mistakes. He wished to familiarize them with the known techniques and

provide guidance to them on what would be appropriate to their needs. For this

project he needed a helper, and so he approached me late in 1965 and persuaded

me to commit myself to be senior research associate who would devote full time

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Ms. Krey:

to the book. In his grant application to the State Department Agency for

International Development (AID) he gave my credentials and wrote in the letter

which accompanied the application, about me: "We are fortunate to have the

commitment to the project of Shirley Adelson Siegel. ... who displayed in her

pioneering work, The Law of Open Space, the analytic grasp which was able to

transform an amorphous almost intuitive concept of open space into a set of

working principles related to special problems. In many ways this would be a

comparable assignment, though on a larger scale." This is very sweet, no?

I just want to know now from reading this, if Professor Charles Abrams was the

Chairman of the Division of Urban Planning of the School of Architecture,

Columbia University?

Ms. Siegel: That's right.

Ms. Krey: What happened to the grant?

Ms. Siegel: Well, months went by, he was prodding them, the grant didn't come through.

Finally it was December 1966, one year later. John Lindsay had become Mayor of

New York and Hortense Gabel, an old friend of mine, had suggested to Lindsay,

without first speaking to me, that I was the ideal person to be the general counsel

of the super agency he was proposing to the City Council where he would put

together six, seven or more different agencies in City government that had to do

with housing, from the buildings department to urban renewal and in between.

The Mayor offered me the position, and so I called up Charles Abrams, to whom I

had made the prior commitment. I have here the note that I made on that

telephone conversation with him in which he said, "I can't tell you not to take it."

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That was it. Charlie died three or four years later, in his sixties. He put out a lot

of good books, but there was still one good book left in him and this was it, and it

didn't get written. Charles Ascher, and I think this is relevant to the story of my

life, wrote to somebody in a letter he wrote in 1965 and copied to me: "I have

considered it a great loss to land planning that she [Shirley Siegel] has allowed

herself to be diverted from an early career." That's the way he saw my career

when I was at the Civil Rights Bureau, which I found so fulfilling ..

So, I was appointed by Mayor Lindsay and this made news nationwide. A

woman was being given a salary of$25,000 for a municipal job: I don't know

why else it was carried by the Associated Press; the novelty was the woman.

Ms. Krey: What was the title of the agency?

Ms. Siegel: The Housing and Development Administration ("I-IDA") I was at HDA with

Mayor Lindsay for over seven years from the latter part of 1966 to the end of his

second term. I was General Counsel; my title was also Assistant Administrator

for Legal Affairs. I had tremendous responsibilities; I worked very hard. I think

it was appreciated. I handled the legislative program on the City and State, and

sometimes the Federal, level; I had about fifty bills in the State Legislature every

year. On the City level, among other things I worked on the housing maintenance

code with Frank Grad at Columbia Law School. I was involved in the 1970

amendments to the Rent Control law and in the writing of the Rent Stabilization

Law, where Mayor Lindsay was quoted to me to have said, "Shirley can do it

overnight." So Shirley wrote it on the kitchen table.

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While at HDA I was approached one day at the Bar Association by

Mendes Hershman, one of my old friends from the Real Property Law

Committee, who was then chair of Mayor Lindsay's committee to advise him on

judicial appointments. Mendes inquired if I would allow the committee to put in

my name for the Family Court. He told me that this committee had been

responsible for promoting Nanette Dembitz also for the Family Court. (She won

election and later ran unsuccessfully for the State Court of Appeals, the State's

highest court.) I said he could offer my name and I heard nothing further from

him. In time, however, there were rumors around City Hall that the Mayor was

going to appoint me to the Family Court. This was about 1968. I called the

Deputy Mayor, Bob Sweet (subsequently a Federal judge in the Southern District

of New York), and asked him the meaning of those rumors. He replied that ifl

lived in Queens and were black, I would have the appointment.

In 1971 I was asked to give a course at Columbia Law School on housing

law. My first reaction was to reject this because I was already overloaded with

work. But my brother-in-law, who took a longer view, persuaded me take this on

with a view to my career post-HDA. I had a class of about eighty-five students.

They were not only law students, they were from other parts of the University as

well. The class was from four to six on Wednesday . It was grueling, weekend

work. I made up my own textbook, and having to grade eighty-five students,

that's not fun either, you know. A completely different experience from teaching

the seminar at MIT.

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Tape2

INTERVIEW OF SHIRLEY A. SIEGEL

BY JOAN KREY

Feb.27,2007

Ms. Krey: We are starting with the end of the Lindsay Administration.

Ms. Siegel: Towards the end of the Lindsay Administration, it was agreed that the City should

establish a public authority to sell bonds and use the proceeds for the City's own

housing program. And so the New York City Housing Development Corporation

came into being, with its first bond sale before the end of 1972. Al Walsh, who

was then HDA Administrator, had suggested to me to leave HDA, move over and

become the General Counsel of HDC, a safe berth where I could survive the

changeover of administration due at the end of 1973. It was my impression that

this was a kind suggestion, mindful of the fact that I was much the oldest of the

top echelon at HDA and might have difficulty finding new position. In any

event, I made that move. The HDC position was a series of bond issue and real

estate closings, plus- some opinion writing. I was not at this long before my sister

Dorothy was hospitalized, again, with a serious heart condition. When I visited

her, I found she was very concerned about my future as I did not have a pension.

I had not bought into the system when I was with the State and had no retirement

plan. She said now that this was foolhardy and I must return to State

Government to remedy this. She urged me to call up Louis Lefkowitz, who was

still the Attorney General, and say "I'd like to come back." I could not come back

to the Civil Rights Bureau, which I had sort of handed over to George Zuckerman

Dorothy was sure that Lefkowitz would find a place for me in State Government,

if not in his own Department. And so it came about, largely to ease Dorothy's

concerns and partly because I lacked enthusiasm for staying in City Government

once Lindsay's term was over and Abe Beame would succeed him, that I called

Louis Lefkowitz.

Ms. Krey: About how old were you?

Ms. Siegel: At that time I was fifty-six years old. I called up Louis Lefkowitz and he said,

"Come back to work. I will give you good cases." Which he did. I went back

as Assistant Solicitor General. There were three or four of us, older types, in the

New York City office, who were given really the cream of the cases to argue in

the courts. Thus, from 1974 through 1978 I handled a succession of cases,

mostly in the Court of Appeals, some in the Second Circuit or the Appellate

Division, cases of unusual interest in any state or federal court even at the motion

stage. During this period I was assigned key cases emanating from the Bureau on

Real Estate Securities, including cases of first impression on cooperative or condo

conversion, and the case upholding the warranty of habitability. Other cases

arose out of the Attorney General's right to intervene in litigation to uphold the

constitutionality of State statutes or of State action . Through that route I got the

very interesting case of Hotel Dorset versus Trust for Cultural Resources, a

difficult case resulting in a split decision, but we prevailed. Recently I had the

great satisfaction of learning that even the American Museum of Natural History,

where my daughter works, had a successful bond issue under that statute, which

was written in the first instance for the Museum of Modern Art in the City of New

- 2 -

Ms. Krey:

York. Later I'll mention to you why this case was important to me for another

reason. Of greatest significance of all my cases during this period was the

litigation arising out of the fiscal crisis that hit New York in the mid 1970s. Jean

Cott, a brilliant lawyer in our Albany office, shared these cases with me. I largely

had those arising out of the crisis in New York City and Yonkers, but I had some

related to the crisis affecting State agencies, too; it was not a rigid division. We

had to support the many emergency measures adopted by the State Legislature. It

was a heady period and everyone who had a role in it has wonderful memories.

A few years later, while I was Solicitor General, The NewYork County Lawyers

Association had a large forum on the fiscal crisis at which I was the speaker. I

remember this meeting very well . I talked and talked about those cases, which I

knew so intimately; the story of New Y ark's recovery was a true cliffhanger, very

exciting.

Now, I just read some of the report on that forum into the record: "Solicitor

General Shirley Adelson Siegel tells behind4he-scenes stories ofN.Y: City

Fiscal Crisis. . . . Shirley Adelson Siegel, the gracious and erudite Solicitor

General ofNew York, set a delightfully informal and informative tone ... " etc.

Ms. Siegel: Yes, I also became familiar during that period with the State's bond sales and

Attorney General's opinions that were always rendered on those sales, Attorney

General Lefkowitz delegated to me the preparation of opinions on sales occurring

at that time. Later, when I became Solicitor General, we still did these opinions

in house, rather than hire outside counsel, as often was the practice. When I look

back on my life for what were my outstanding experiences in law practice, they

- 3 -

were the Civil Rights Bureau and the fiscal crisis cases. I did a lot of interesting

and wonderful things, but nothing outshines these two. That's it. Recall that in

that same period of'74 through '78 I chaired the City Bar Association Committee

on Housing and Urban Development, which I think :I mentioned earlier Being

chair of that Committee was also a wonderful experience. Now, as the litigation

on the fiscal crisis was winding down, Louis Lefkowitz' term was winding down

and he announced he would not seek reelection. One day I was approached by a

young woman attorney who was or had been an Assistant Attorney General,

Marion Scheuer, offering to tour the State on her own time and at her own

expense to test the receptivity of newspaper editors, Democratic politicians and

community leaders to my candidacy for election as the next Attorney General. I

was hesitant about entering politics and consulted Hortense Gabel, a savvy person

and longtime friend. Her reaction was that for me, rather than politics, I should

pursue a judgeship -- and I took her advice. Horty was then a Supreme Court

Justice ( our lowest trial court of general jurisdiction). Months later, during the

Spring of 1978, I was approached by another, young woman attorney, who had

worked in the State Law Department, Karla Moskowitz (now a Supreme Court

Justice), who urged me to apply for a Civil Court judgeship, assuring me that to

secure nomination in the Democratic Party in Manhattan, one needed only to be

cleared by a broadly based committee, not by a political leader. This sounded

reasonable, and I applied. I was cleared by the committee but when I presented

myself to the clubs for endorsement, found that I had been sidetracked. I did not

care enough to be a Civil Court judge to fight the political system and I withdrew,

-4-

letting the nomination pass to a woman with whom I was slightly acquainted, a

solo practitioner who I felt needed the opportunity more than I, and who had

apparently worked within the system, Shirley Fingerhood. Finally the day

arrived when a new Attorney General was sworn in. On January 1, 1979, Bob

Abrams, a Democrat who had just left the position of Borough President for The

Bronx, one of the five counties comprising New York City, was now my boss.

If I stayed on for another two or three months, I would have the twenty years I

wanted for my pension. I just sat tight. But a State constitutional crisis

developed having to do with recess appointments by the Executive on the eve of

January one. Bob Abrams and the new State Comptroller, Edward Regan, were

taking opposite sides and I became involved in handling the Attorney General's

position. My counterpart was James Magavern, counsel to the Comptroller. I

got some help within our office and within weeks, the crisis was resolved.

Meanwhile, Abrams got to know about me. Sometime during January I had a

note from Abrams to come in to see him. He said he was pleased to meet me and I

responded by welcoming him as Attorney General. He immediately said, rather

abruptly, "Have you seen my ad in the New York Law Journal?" He had put an

ad in the Law Journal for a Solicitor General. I said I had. He said, "What do

you think of it?" I said that I thought it was rather funny. The next thing to

happen was an invitation to join him and his group for dinner at a restaurant.

These four or five persons who had worked in his political campaign, most of

whom had been on his staff in The Bronx, were his close buddies, a sort of

kitchen cabinet. Most were lawyers. At dinner they all asked me questions

- 5 -

about my past. Evidently my work on civil rights was agreeable to them because

Bob Abrams had a liberal record.

Ms. Krey: Who was Governor then?

Ms. Siegel: Hugh Carey. After the dinner meeting I got a further call from Bob Abrams

saying he would like me to be his Solicitor General. It was rumored that he

wanted Harriet Pilpel, a well known and successful woman lawyer, but that he

could not persuade her to come to Albany. Ruth Toch, the Solicitor General at

the end of the Lefkowitz period, had told Abrams that the Solicitor General

should be based in Albany, where the State departments could have ready access

to her. Ruth herself confirmed this to me, stating that I therefore owed my

appointment to her. I was sworn in by Bob Abrams in the presence of Governor

Carey, incidentally also a Democrat. My associates at the New York City Bar

Association were so delighted with the news of my appointment that they

promptly made me Vice President I said that I would not be abkto come to

meetings; they said that's alright. When I became Solicitor General, the Women's

Bar Association of New York State convened for its first annual convention, in

effect a federation of existing local women's bar associations, and I was the

keynote speaker. I enjoyed this new found sisterhood and for the next few years

attended many of their meetings. I not only had never been a member of any

women's bar association, I had not been personally acquainted with any of their

members, except Hortense Gabel. Somehow, coming into New York from a law

school where there were so few women, we had no local community. Only one

or two Yale women that I knew were working in New York.

- 6 -

Ms. Krey: You must have been the highest ranking woman in government?

Ms. Siegel: At that point, perhaps. There were a few woman commissioners appointed by

Governor Carey. I was the Solicitor General for most of the first term of Robert

Abrams, who went on to be Attorney General for two more four year terms after

that. It was not easy for me to work with that administration because they had so

much to learn, as on the matter of whether to take an appeal. It took them years

before they got the .sense that as the State's attorney they had to represent the State

and defend the Legislature's actions even if, politically, they did not find the issue

one to their liking. It was a very serious matter not to take on a State appeal,.

except under extraordinary circumstances. So this kind of thing made it difficult

for me. Also the fact that all the others in the cabinet of Attorney General Bob

Abrams were part of his group, his club, including the non-lawyers.. I was the

only outsider. I came down from Albany every Friday to participate in the

weekly cabinet meeting. I was in Albany all week.

Ms. Krey: Where did the cabinet meet?

Ms. Siegel: In New York City, where Bob Abrams spent most of his time.

Ms. Krey: Even though they wanted you in Albany.

Ms. Siegel: They wanted me in Albany, and I didn't mind that.

Ms. Krey: Was that a family problem?

Ms. Siegel: It wasn't. By that time my children were on their own and my husband had just

closed his film company and was doing single projects, some of which took him

to California. So it was a period when we were empty nesters and free to come

and go. I thought he would move up to Albany with me; I had an apartment

- 7 -

Ms. Krey:

which I furnished and everything was set to go, but after he visited Albany a few

times it didn't appeal to him as a place to live. Consequently I came down to

New York every Thursday afternoon for the Friday morning meeting and I went

back upstate on Sunday. This is a sort of disjointed report. I don't know where

to go on from here. Well, I had under my direct supervision the members of the

Appeals and Opinions Bureau in Albany, who were less than twenty. They were

a good crowd, I got to like them very well and they became extremely supportive

of me. When I left, I was greatly touched by their feelings for me and my

administration. So that was a very sweet part of the whole experience, Lawyers

from all of the regional offices of the Attorney General had to submit to me for

review all briefs for the New York Court of Appeals, the Federal Second Circuit

Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court. I reviewed these personally. I

also personally reviewed the briefs by my own staff for the Appellate Division,

Third or Fourth Department; briefs for the First and Second Departments were

reviewed in the New York City office. I made it my practice to attend Court in

Albany to audit all the arguments by our lawyers, whether from the other regional

offices or from my own Bureau. This had not been my predecessor's practice and

I found it was greatly appreciated by the members of the Court of Appeals I

found it was invaluable both in sending a message to the lawyer that I would be

critical and in giving comfort to the Court that I cared about the quality ·of our

performance.

Were you able to give women opportunities to argue.

- 8 -

Ms. Siegel: Most assuredly. There were women among the litigators

and appellate attorneys because Louis Lefkowitz had hired many women,

breaking all records for the State Law Department. It happened that in the sixties

and seventies the Attorney General was called upon to defend a host of cases

raising significant constitutional challenges concerning criminal defense and

welfare in particular~ and during this period a number of outstanding women were

hired. Women lawyers with little or no experience in appellate argument were

ending up before the Court of Appeals and even the U.S. Supreme Court. Many

were graduates of Harvard or Yale To continue further with my practice in regard

to oral arguments: I revived the tradition to have the Solicitor General personally

argue selected cases My predecessor Ruth Toch had simply worked from her

desk, and I had to overcome some sense on the part of the lawyers in my office

that I was depriving them of the opportunity, but they understood. I had an

opportunity to argue in the U.S. Supreme Court in behalf of the State almost

immediately after I became Solicitor General. The case was called Committee

for Public Education and Religious Liberty (PEARL, for short) versus Edward

Regan, the State Comptroller, and involved the validity of a statute under which

the State would reimburse private schools for the cost of giving required standard

tests and taking attendance. I overheard Bob Abrams speaking on the 'phone to

one of his callers, evidently someone ftom a religious community, assuring him

( or her) that he cared so much about this case that he was having his best

advocate, his Solicitor General, handle it personally. In fact, because the State's

position was contrary to his own personal views on church-state relations, he did

- 9 -

not want us to win Consequently, the news of our success was suppressed, was

never publicized by the Law Department. One of my accomplishments in the

office of Solicitor General I was particularly proud of was my development of the

Department's first Statewide recordkeeping on all pending appeals. When I

arrived, individual bureaus or regional offices knew what they had, but a bureau

in New York City might have an issue that was also before the Buffalo bureau,

and there was an element of luck in their getting together. The State Legislature

was then beginning to computerize, and I was able to borrow their techniques and

with their help and the help of one of my attorneys, work up an elementary system

into which all attorneys in the Department had to feed timely reports on their

assigned appeals .We supplied standard forms. So it was rudimentary, but it was

a beginning where there had been zero. Similarly I made extensive improvements

in the Law Department's library system, physical and otherwise, for which I

scoured the country for a first class librarian.

While I was Solicitor General, the State of New York was in litigation

with the United States over the boundary of New York State at Long Island

Sound. The State prevailed. The experts I had recruited for the State, who served

pro bono, were my friend Professor Myres S. McDougal of the Yale Law School

faculty and my brother-in-law Professor Jean Gottmann of Oxford University.

I deliberately developed a special relationship with the University of

Buffalo Law School because it was part of the State education system. I spoke

there and secured a couple of excellent interns from that School. It was during

my service as Solicitor General that I became active in the American Bar

- 10 -

Association. Just prior to this appointment I had been elected to the Board of the

Urban, State and Local Government Law Section and from there moved to liaison

and committee assignments in that Section and others. I found the ABA

experience very rewarding. As you can see, it was a very busy period for me.

While I was Solicitor General, New York City Mayor Koch's committee on

judicial appointments offered me a Civil Court appointment to serve for the

unexpired term of a Civil Court judge who had stepped down. Whether I would

then have secured a nomination and election_for the ensuing full term was of

course problematical. At the time this offer arrived, I was too deeply involved in

my Albany duties to give it mature consideration, and I passed it up. Well, early

in 1982 Governor Carey announced that he would not seek reelection. I had

worked with him through the fiscal crisis and found him to be a a wonderful

governor. I didn't really mind his having said kindly to me, at the time of one of

those pivotal appeals, in the presence of his counsel Judah Gribetz, "Do you really

think you ought to handle this yourself, shouldn't the Attorney General engage

outside counsel?" (of course I handled it myself). His announcement that he

would not run was unexpected and caused quite a tremor in State politics. Within

a couple of months thereafter I announced to Bob Abrams that I was submitting

my resignation and that too was unexpected and it caused a little tremor in the

Department. I received a very nice letter from the Governor (he comes up again

in the story of my life) and a very nice letter from Bob, too.

At the beginning of my career with Bob Abrams' administration, they did

not appear to be happy with me and I was not happy with them, because they

- 11 -

were bent on reducing my role and I was intent on preserving it. The statute made

me the highest paid lawyer in the office, yet I was not "one of them". In time I

settled into my role, as I saw it, and they accepted it. It was very awkward for

me that they did not move quickly to fill the vacancy when I resigned. It was

vacant for the rest of the year, and following his reelection the Attorney General

did not fill it right away. In fact, for the rest of his twelve years in office Bob did

not make a mark in his appointments to this position. The people around him

seemed to feel it was a kind of competing office they could not control. That's too

bad, because a lot of very able lawyers, including women, sought the position.

When the position was unfilled, that was exceedingly inconvenient and even

troubling to the Court of Appeals. I was apologetic when I encountered any of

the judges or the Court Clerk thereafter. There was an interesting reaction from

the president of the Women's Bar Association ofNew York when it was

announced that I was not going to stay with Abrams for another term. The

president was then Joan Ellenbogen, a bright woman for whom I had a lot of

respect. And she was furious with me. She said I did a disservice to the cause of

women by not staying on the job. I certainly was not doing a disservice to the

cause of some women, since I knew a few who were angling for the job. But I

have since thought about Joan's reaction, and I am sorry that at the time I was

thinking to resign I did not give any thought to what it would mean to the cause of

women. If I had, I would probably have discussed this with a few of my women

friends, including Joan, and thought it through with them It may be that I should

- 12 -

not have resigned for the reason that despite the problems I had with it, it was a

wonderful and very fulfilling position. But that's another matter!

Meanwhile, here I was out of work, and the very first thing I did was to go

to Washington for a month or two to visit with my son, whom I hadn't seen for a

while. It was during that Washington visit that I had the meeting with Justice

Byron White and Chief Justice Warren Burger that I told you about during an

earlier interview. It wasn't long after my retirement that I began to receive

invitations to join interesting bar related activities. Judge Lawrence H. Cooke,

the Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, promptly appointed me to the

State Advisory Council on Civil Practice of the Office of Court Administration;

after a few years I yielded my place to a lawyer more actively involved in trial

practice. Shortly after my resignation I became a member of the so-called

Southern District Discovery Committee chaired by U.S. District Judge Gerard L.

Goettel of the District Court for the Southern District ofNew York; we had

meetings over a period of a year or two and issued a report in 1984 The New

York State Commission on Judicial Conduct began in or about 1985 to call on me

from time to time to serve as a Referee in disciplinary proceedings, and that has

continued sporadically until this year.

Within a year or two after I retired from the Office of the Attorney

General, a vacancy developed in the seven member Court of Appeals, the State's

highest Court. Governor Mario Cuomo publicly declared that he would approve

a woman. Until then the Court had been exclusively male. Under the State

Constitution, upon occurrence of a vacancy in that Court a nominating

- 13 -

commission is appointed by the Governor and the Legislature, the commission

appoints three qualified candidates and the Governor makes the final choice. I

threw my hat in the ring as I was very familiar with the Court and its docket and

felt that service on this Court would crown my career. I was interviewed in July

1983. I did not receive a nomination, and thereby hangs a tale. A member of the

nominating commission told me subsequently, breaching the pledge of

confidentiality, that it was a close vote as the commission had split between two

camps; a commission member who was a retired member of the Court of Appeals

strongly urged that the commission not appoint anyone who would be unable to

serve the full 14 year term because of the mandatory retirement at age 70. He

maintained that it was necessary to spend a few years on the Court just to get the

feel of it and begin to serve effectively. And on the other hand the chair of the

commission, Mendes Hershman, urged just as strongly that Shirley Siegel was

qualified to serve with full effectiveness on day one because of her background

and experience. There was no rule to disqualify a candidate who would be unable

to serve a full 14 year term, and in fact there was a lot of precedent for appointing

judges who would have to step down after only a few years. In my case it would

have meant service for five years. You may recall that it was Mendes Hershman

who had approached me in the 'sixties on behalf of John Lindsay's committee for

my consent to appointment as a Family Court judge. By the way, the commission

member who breached the pledge of confidentiality was not Mendes. I did not

encounter Mendes Hershman for several years after this episode. We were having

a friendly lunch and he broached the subject of judicial service .. He said with

- 14 -

evident sincerity that it was a great disappointment to him that he was unable to

make me a judge. Funny, I believe he wanted to recruit me as a judge at least as

much and maybe more than I wanted to be one.

Meanwhile, even since I returned from Washington, I was exploring the

possibility of appointment "of Counsel" to a private law firm. I felt confident that

the reputation I had earned at the New York bar during the fiscal crisis and as

Solicitor General made me a plausible candidate. I was rejected, always by a

senior partner telling me that he personally would welcome me; I was told once or

twice that the junior partners did not want to share. Whatever the reason, I

moved on. There were plenty of offers to help with ideas. A Law School

classmate with whom I had taught a course a few times at the Yale School of

Management, Harold Segall, wrote to several friends in high places, including

Time Inc and an executive search firm, seeking an opportunity for me on a

corporate board or whatever. Merrell E. ("Ted") Clark, Jr., of .Winthrop Stimson

Putnam and Roberts, who I had met through the Hotel Dorset - MOMA case,

offered to help me seek appointment as house counsel for a major corporation.

which he thought was a particularly good match for me. I did not pursue this.

As I did not have to earn money for my support, I next explored the

possibility of serving full-time pro bono for a non-profit organization. But which

one? In the early '80s we did not yet have the City Bar Justice Center such as we

now have at the New York City bar. It occurred to me that former Mayor Robert

Wagner would be well connected with the leading do-good organizations and

might have ideas for me. Many years earlier he had interviewed me for an

- 15 -

appointment to the State Court of Claims in behalf of the then governor, when I

was interested in the State's eminent domain proceedings, which took place in that

Court. I did not hear from him on that, but I felt I had impressed him. Well, I

learned that he was now a partner at Finley Kumble, a firm I had never heard of.

He graciously interviewed me and promised to think further about our

conversation on non-profits. To my amazement, when I returned home I found

that someone by the name of Alan Gelb had phoned from his office. Mr. Gelb

wanted me to come down to meet him and other attorneys in the litigation

department at Finley Kumble about coming to work with them "of counsel" We

had a pleasant meeting and I said I would consider the offer and let him know on

my return from Israel, where I had planned a visit. I then learned that this was the

same firm which Governor Carey had joined as partner on his retirement from

public service.

I visited Judge Weinfeld for advice. You will recall that he had advised

me on taking the Civil Rights Bureau offer. He had limited experience with

Finley Kumble and undertook to find out what he could learn about it from his

former clerks, now embedded in large law firms in the City. In short, he finally

advised me to accept the offer. I had strong contrary advice from Irving Parker, a

Law School friend, who urged me to stay away from that firm. In view of the

positive feedback from Weinfeld's former clerks, I discounted Irv's advice,

guessing he had experienced nothing more than incivility, not uncommon among

litigators. In brief, I stayed at Finley Kumble until its breakup about four years

later following a scandal involving the chief of litigation, Gelb's superior. I

- 16 -

turned down an invitation to join the litigators in a new firm. My personal

experience at Finley Kumble was positive. I was in charge of a vigorous and

successful pro bono activity among the firm's attorneys. I worked on interesting

matters, including appeals, during reasonable hours with pleasant colleagues.

Last but not least, I was well paid, and used this reward to acquire a second home

in upstate New York. The sequel to my Finley Kumble experience is sad. For

some time I had neglected to see Judge Weinfeld; it was such a trek to get

downtown to the Court. When he was dying, there was a parade of visitors to his

bedside for private farewells. Knowing I would have only a few minutes, I

launched at once into the Finley Kumble matter, which I knew would be on his

mind when he saw me. I fervently assured him it had been a positive experience

for me, whatever the firm's story. He shook his head, saying it had been his

mistake. I cried, unable to reassure him. Eddie was my friend for many years.

At this time I plunged into bar association activity at the New York City bar. I

chaired the Civil Court Committee, followed by others. I innovated a symposium

on how to become a judge that became a regular feature of the Association. On

this I received invaluable help from Victor Kovner, who knew the politics, and as

a result in 1988 we were awarded a Special Merit Citation by the American

Judicature Society That was a fine occasion, celebrated at the City Bar building

with family and friends.

By 1990 I was chairing the Committee on the State Constitution at the

New York State Bar Association and elected a Fellow of the State Bar

Foundation; teaching a course on land use planning at Columbia University; and

- 17 -

Ms. Krey:

Ms. Siegel:

Ms. Krey:

assuming office as a member of the Conflicts of Interest Board of the City ofNew

York. Teaching grew out of a suggestion by my brother-in-law, who was a

professor at Oxford University. After I left Finley Kumble he arranged for me to

teach for a semester at the University of Maryland; I found that I enjoyed teaching

again, and I approached Columbia. I was then an Adjunct Professor at the

School of Architecture for five or six years, giving a required course to the

architecture students that was open to other University graduate students. I had

about thirty students and I worked them hard. It was an exhilarating experience

for me to teach them land use planning law. In later years I became an Adjunct

Professor at Cardozo Law School and at Fordham Law School, mostly teaching

state and local government law. I retired myself from teaching at age 86 in 2004.

Finally I would like to say something about the five person Conflicts of

Interest Board, where I served for eight years until 1998 under a strong and able

chairman, James Oliensis. We were the first board following a major revision of

the City Charter. We served pro bono and worked hard at "making new law" with

our opinions interpreting the Charter provisions, which govern the ethical conduct

of the quarter million or so City employees. I was appointed to the Board by

Mayor David Dinkins following a nomination by Ted Clark- his proper name

escapes me; I have referred to him earlier.

You seem to really enjoy having been a lawyer. Is that true?

Oh yes, unquestionably.

It seems to appeal to you academically.

- 18 -

"'

Ms. Siegel: I think it was a matter of heredity, I had the tum of mind of the Talmudic scholars

in the generations ahead of me.

Ms. Krey: You seem to have met a lot of interesting people?

Ms. Siegel: That's an understatement.

Ms. Krey: One of the lessons I take away from your history that I think might interest

women lawyers is how you did keep up with people and ....

End of tape 2.

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