In order to preserve and document important history on movement attorneys based in Austin, Texas, Peoples’ History in Texas (PHIT) gathered oral histories from four attorneys and an office worker in the Austin Law Commune. PHIT intends to make the material available several ways:
- A 27-minute educational documentary for use in high school, college, and adult education presentations. It will be made accessible to the general public on the PHIT website;
- A series of short podcasts and blogs on the PHIT website will provide additional in-depth coverage of historic material;
- The longer oral history interviews will ultimately be donated to the University of Texas Briscoe Center for American History where material from two of the principle attorneys is housed.
Description of the Austin Law Commune
In the midst of the national upheaval ignited by the civil rights and antiwar movements, attorneys created a law practice devoted to the needs of the movement. They defended movement leaders who were harassed on the streets or in their offices; they defended demonstrators when they were arrested, draft resisters facing charges and GIs at courts martial. They came to the aid of an ever-growing community of dissidents who needed to be defended in courts of law. They worked to create a statewide network with other like-minded attorneys, and they created a unique, collectively run, model for practicing law.
Background
On October 1, 1969, the Austin Law Commune was born. First located in a small office on West 24th Street, they moved to an office at West 15th and then, in 1973, to an office on West 12th. According to Time magazine, it was the third such commune in the country.
- As a sole practitioner, Jim Simons represented draft resister Enrique Madrid; defended 42 arrested in May 1968 at Don Weedon’s Conoco; and represented SNCC organizer Larry Jackson, and antiwar GIs and Oleo Strut staff in Killeen, Texas.
- December 12-14, 1968, Conference on Legal Service for Political Dissidents, held at the Holiday Hills Corral Resort, Wimberley, Texas. Following the conference, Cam Cunningham, law student Jeff Friedman, SNCC organizer Bobby Geice, and a staff member of the Oleo Strut, a GI coffeehouse in Killeen, formed a steering committee to organize a Movement for Legal Services. A thirtieth reunion of the Wimberley conference took place in 1999.
- Late summer, 1969, conference in Montreat, North Carolina with attorneys from the Southern Legal Action Movement. Cam Cunningham and Jim Simons met members of the New York Law Commune.
- October 1, 1969 the Austin Law Commune was created, the third such commune in the country according to Time magazine.
- Fall, 1977 the commune disbanded.
INTERVIEWS
Cam Cunningham, October 2009
Jim Simons, July 2018
Brady Coleman, September 2019
Bobby Nelson, September 2019
Julie Howell, February 2020
Defending Dissidents, the 27-minute video on the People’s History in Texas website, features interviews with four attorneys and a legal worker. John Howard, who began as a law clerk before joining the practice as a partner in the 70s, died in 1988. He worked on the Wounded Knee defense with Jim Simons. Vivian Mahlab and Steve Russell worked as law clerks with the Austin Law Commune.
ARTICLES / BOOKS
Hall, David, “Movement Legal Services Aids Unpopular Defendants,” The Texas Law Forum, March 3, 1969.
Muir, John, “The Daring Duo,” The Rag, September 9, 1969.
Northcott, Kaye, “Radical Caucus of Bar,” Texas Observer, July 24, 1970.
Northcott, Karen, “Sex Discrimination at UT,” Texas Observer, July 30, 1971.
Scott, Glenn, “Law Collective Cures Perry Mason Palsy,” The Rag, October 7, 1974.
Simons, Jim, “Memoirs of a Movement Lawyer,” The Texas Observer, 1977.
Simons, Jim, “Barrister at the Barricades,” No Apologies: Texas Radicals Celebrate the 60s, Austin: Eakin Press, pp. 131-147, 1992.
Simons, Jim, Molly Chronicles: Serotonin Serenade, Austin: Plain View Press, 2006.
Simons, Jim, “Remembering Cam Cunningham,” The Rag Blog, July 15, 2012.
Simons, Jim, “The Fifty Year Lawyer: Defying the Systems of Power,” The Rag Blog, July 30, 2014.
ARCHIVES
The Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin houses papers of Jim Simons and Cam Cunningham. Oral histories conducted by People’s History in Texas will be archived at the Briscoe Center.
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