A little giant
Wendell Freeland, a lawyer’s lawyer and friend of the friendless, stood tall for racial equality
He was a physically diminutive man of towering intellect and even mightier courage. He neither picked a fight nor backed away from one. And for nearly 70 years of his adventurous life, Wendell Freeland engaged in nonviolent warfare to force racial equality into the stubborn American experience. For his duel with the deleterious devil racism, his sword of justice was the law.
In a new documentary by masterful Pittsburgh filmmaker Billy Jackson and his NOMMO Productions, “Wendell Freeland: A Quiet Soldier” depicts the life and times of this uncommon Pittsburgh attorney. An aggressively black male crusader enveloped by a Caucasian epidermis, Mr. Freeland was able to easily pass for white, as his attorney daughter Lisa observes in the movie. Of course, she notes, he never did. He sooner would have volunteered for weekly proctological exams.
A poignant account of the complexity of that complexion-matter is offered by University of Pittsburgh historian Larry Glasco and does not appear in the documentary. During the Pittsburgh riots in the wake of the 1968 assassination of civil rights icon the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Mr. Freeland attempted to encourage Hill District residents to return to order and avoid arrest and worse, according to Mr. Glasco. Aware that his good friend wasn’t connecting, state Rep. K. Leroy Irvis, who represented the Hill District, astutely shouted to Mr. Freeland to instead go down to the city jail and legally represent the black youngsters as they were unloaded from police paddy wagons.
Thus, the bitterly ironic reality of a black attorney who was perceived as white bailing out numerous African-American detainees in riot-torn Pittsburgh likely was lost on both those in custody as well as their jailers.
What does appear in the documentary are convincing testimonials by Pittsburgh friends and associates, themselves noteworthy. Compelling commentaries from black-rights notables Esther Bush, whose Pittsburgh Urban League board Mr. Freeland chaired, and Doris Carson Williams; attorneys Robert Byer, Eric Springer and Glenn Mahone; and two nationally renowned lawyers contextualize Mr. Freeland’s relentless efforts.
Former Pennsylvania governor and former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, who appears prominently in the production, describes the partnership he formed with Mr. Freeland to deliver legal services to Allegheny County’s poor. President Bill Clinton pal Vernon Jordan, a former president of the national Urban League, is candid in his account of Mr. Freeland’s mentorship. A member of the organization’s board of directors during Mr. Jordan’s tenure, Mr. Freeland is recognized by him for the advice he gave. “Some I took,” he reported, “and someI did not.”
“A Quiet Soldier” traces the life of Wendell Freeland from his 1925 birth and formative years in Jim Crow racially-segregated Baltimore through his rise to the top of the Pittsburgh legal food chain, representing a billionaire philanthropist, the late Elsie Hillman, while continuing to represent the lowly and the dispossessed.
Along the way, young Mr. Freeland attended Howard University, leaving to join the U.S. Army Air Corps’ famed Tuskegee Airmen where he and about 100 other black 477th Bombardment Group officers were arrested and risked execution for entering an illegally segregated whites-only officers’ club at Freeman Field in Indiana in 1945. The controversy that ensued and its surprising ultimate conclusion reward the viewer with a rare glimpse into a littleknown aspect of the Tuskegee Airmen saga. Mr. Freeland’s own words provide an on-screen, first-person report of the incident.
After returning to Howard and graduating, Mr. Freeland earned his law degree at the University of Maryland as a member of the Order of the Coif, married and moved to Pittsburgh with his gifted wife Jane Young Freeland, the “human calculator.” The loving family life the couple fashioned in Pittsburgh is respectfully treated in the documentary. Commentary from son Michael, Lisa Freeland and the Freeland third generation are presented. But it is the lawyer’s power as mental and legal behemoth, deceptively out of proportion to his slight build, that the documentary most celebrates.
Through inspired use of illustration, rather than still photography or motion pictures for obvious reasons, a harrowing case of 1970s North Side police brutality against Mr. Mahone and brother Harvey is presented. Augmented by an eyewitness account by civic leader Andrea Mahone, the wife of Glenn, edge-of-the seat storytelling reveals Mrs. Mahone’s desperate plea to Mr. Freeland for lifesaving help as well as the outcome of the resulting lawsuit that Mr. Freeland and other attorneys brought on behalf of the Mahones. This original late-20th century report of police criminal assault on black men predates 21st-century Black Lives Matter by decades.
On Jan. 23, 2014, at age 88, Mr. Freeland died. At least through the talents of documentarian Billy Jackson, the story of this lawyer’s lawyer and friend of the friendless neverwill die. “Wendell Freeland: A Quiet Soldier” will have its world premiere on Nov. 2 at the Heinz History Center, through which tickets to the event may be secured online. Robert Hill is a Pittsburgh-based communications consultant (hillr012@gmail.com).