The Watkins and Shuler families know this: When a loved one risks all to protect our Constitution, injustice and the rule of law become deeply personal matters

Joseph T. Watkins

What would it feel like to put your life on the line for your country only to return home as the target of racial discrimination? As a White American, I struggle to conjure up an answer to that question. But the family of longtime Alabama attorney and civil-rights advocate Donald Watkins (who is Black) has faced it in a close-up way. That's because his uncle, Joseph T. Watkins, lived it.

I suspect that experience helped Donald Watkins fight for the rule of law -- including publishing a Web site about justice issues (donaldwatkins.com) -- in a legal career of almost 50 years. It also might explain my desire to start the Legal Schnauzer blog in 2007 and keep it going continuously for 23 years.

How is that? Watkins helps explain it in an article published yesterday under the headline "Joseph T. Watkins: This Soldier Fought America’s Foreign and Domestic Enemies." Donald Watkins writes:

Joseph T. Watkins was my father’s youngest brother. He was smart, strong, and brave.

We called him “Uncle J.T.”

Uncle J.T. was a World War II veteran who served as a corporal in an all-black Army unit that fought in the campaign to liberate France from Nazi occupation. He was proud of his military service for America, and the Watkins family was proud of him.

Uncle J.T. would later become an effective fighter in another kind of war -- the never-ending battle for the protection and advancement of civil and constitutional rights in America.

After the War, Uncle J.T. moved to Washington and became a housing inspector for the District of Columbia government. He also rose through the ranks to become president of his local federal employees’ union.

The racial discrimination Uncle J.T. faced in Washington during the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s was heartbreaking. Uncle J.T. had put his life on the line in France for a nation that despised him at home.

I've known Donald Watkins for 8-10 years -- in fact, we were the two online journalists who wrote about "Luv Guv" Robert Bentley and the "Girlfriend Scandal," featuring senior aide Rebekah Caldwell Mason, that eventually forced Bentley to resign, drawing national news coverage in the process. Donald and I wrote about the Bentley scandal for roughly seven months before the mainstream press began to give it serious attention -- and we received relatively little credit for it.

AL.com columnist John Archibald appeared several times on The Rachel Maddow Show and was wrongly credited with "breaking" the Bentley story. The truth? Watkins and I wrote about the Bentley scandal, with depth and detail, for seven months before Archibald or anyone in the mainstream press gave it a serious look.

Bentley's own words and actions indicate he considered Watkins and me to be the central drivers of the "Girlfriend Scandal" that brought down his political career. Documents from a lawsuit involving Spencer Collier, former head of the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA), show that Bentley asked multiple subordinates to unlawfully use state and federal criminal databases in an effort to retaliate against us for our journalism.

While I have known Donald Watkins for a number of years, I did not know the story of his Uncle J.T. until yesterday. I've never encountered anything approaching the racial discrimination Uncle J.T. experienced. But I did work one summer in a rubber factory -- making V-belts for domestic vehicles, appliances, military equipment, and more -- and I remember working on the line with Vietnam veterans who said they felt the American public never appreciated their service in what proved to be an unpopular war.

I thought of that when I read about Uncle J.T., and it helped me realize that, in a roundabout way, my family's story intersects with that of the Watkins family. Here's how: Uncle J.T.'s military service centered around the effort to liberate France from Nazi occupation. My father, William J. Shuler was involved in that effort, too.

William J. Shuler

As I was growing up, I knew about my dad's military service, but I did not know many details. He had a Luger, the distinctive-looking pistol German troops used, and he showed it to me one time. It looked scary to my eyes, and I've never been much of a gun guy, so I did not ask to see it again and did not want to know where he kept it. I think he might have had a Nazi arm band, but I'm not sure about that. As for the Luger, one of my brothers almost shot his foot off with the thing, so I was glad we all survived that episode -- especially since the bullet went through our parents' bedroom floor and landed in the basement, barely missing our fish aquarium, which was a fairly heavily trafficked area, where quite a few folks (including me) made a habit of gathering to watch the fish.

My dad died in 2008, and about 10 years later as my mother was nearing the end of her life, she told me that Dad was in a unit that landed on Normandy beach three days after the D-Day invasion. I've looked online several times for information about Dad's unit, but I haven't found anything so far. My best guess is that they were on what might be called a "recovery mission," to recover bodies, equipment, perhaps German intelligence. I can only imagine the kind of danger my father was in on that mission.

I imagine that unexploded land mines and other munitions dotted the beach. One wrong step, and my father's life would have been over -- and the lives of my siblings and I never would have started.

When you know that a loved one has faced danger and taken great risk to protect our country, our Constitution, our democracy, it tends to make you want to expose the kind of judicial, legal, and law-eforcement crookedness I've witnessed in two states (Alabama and Missouri). It makes you appreciate that we are a nation of laws, and you want to see those laws faithfully upheld, not trampled by judges who have no qualms about violating their oaths of office. I know that is the case with me, and I suspect it drives Donald Watkins, knowing what his Uncle J.T. went through. Writes Watkins:

In 1966, Uncle J.T. initiated an Equal Employment Opportunity Act administrative complaint on behalf of himself and others similarly situated that challenged the District of Columbia's widespread employment discrimination against blacks in hiring and promotional practices. Taking this bold action unleashed pure hell against him as a black employee.

In 1969, Uncle J.T., having exhausted his EEOC administrative remedies, filed a class-action lawsuit alleging that the District of Columbia's unlawful employment and promotional practices violated his civil and constitutional rights, as well as those of the class of blacks he represented.

In 1971, Uncle J.T. won his lawsuit after proving a pervasive pattern of racial discrimination against African-Americans in the District’s employment practices.

However, the trial court declined to grant certain relief requested by Uncle J.T., including (a) an immediate promotion for himself and another nonwhite employee named Somera, the only two employees who had been denied promotions because of race and were still employees; (b) rescission of a specific promotion of a white employee; (c) disciplinary action against persons still employees who were found to have perpetrated the system of racial discrimination; and (d) an injunction against further acts of discrimination and retention of jurisdiction.

Uncle J.T. appealed the trial court’s denial of the promotional relief for himself and Somera and denial of the requested injunctive relief.

On December 29, 1972, Uncle J.T. won the requested equitable relief that had been denied to him and Somera by the trial court.

Black federal employees in the District of Columbia were ecstatic. It was the first major employment-discrimination victory for the plaintiffs' class in the District in the early 1970s.

In making its ruling, the Court of Appeals stated:

“Appellant Watkins, who has for six years waged an almost single-handed battle against racial discrimination in the Housing Division, deserves a clear response from the courts……Accordingly, …… [t]he District Court is directed to remand the question of the promotional status of employees Watkins and Somera to the Hearing Committee or other appropriate administrative forum. The court is also directed to issue an appropriate order enjoining the Housing Division from further acts of racial discrimination and ordering the Division to take steps necessary to ensure that the effects of past discrimination will be eliminated and that there will be no discrimination in the future, the order to provide that the court will retain jurisdiction to enforce its order.”

After I graduated from the University of Alabama's law school in 1973 and passed the Alabama Bar exams several months later, I joined Uncle J.T. on the front lines of the fight against racial discrimination in employment practices in the District of Columbia and other federal agencies in Washington.

With Uncle J.T.’s help, I secured a nice office in a building at the corner of Albemarle St. and Wisconsin Avenue in the Georgetown area of Washington. I represented unionized federal government employees in Washington from 1974 until I was elected to the Montgomery, Alabama, city council in 1979.

Uncle J.T. continued to wage a passionate fight against racial discrimination within a number of federal agencies in the District of Columbia. His passion for the fight was exceeded only by his commitment to the cause of freedom and equality for all.

On June 8, 1973, Uncle J.T. won another round of sweeping injunctive relief for the plaintiffs' class of black District of Columbia employees after the trial court described the government's massive resistance to its anti-discrimination orders as "unreasonable, obdurate obstinacy."

By 1974, Uncle J.T. had achieved as much judicial relief as the courts would grant him and the class he represented. During the pendency of his last motion to enforce the prior court orders regarding the denial of a personal promotion to a GS-12 position, Uncle J.T. received a promotion to a GS-11 position, and later to a GS-12 job, before the Court of Appeals could issue a final ruling on his motion.

With this favorable personnel action and years of accumulated back pay, Uncle J.T. shifted his focus to securing upward mobility for a host of other black employees by establishing an aggressive and well-funded litigation support network.

Uncle J.T. died on November 3, 2005. He fought for equal opportunity until the last breath of life left his body. Uncle J.T. died on his feet fighting like a real soldier. He never got on his knees and surrendered his manhood to anybody.