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Catfish Row. Since 1955, one of the principal battlegrounds of the law has been the district courtroom on the second floor of Montgomery's post office, a federal outpost that flies the Stars and Stripes rather than the Stars and Bars that top the statehouse. Frank Johnson's courtroom is stylishly WPA, a towering place with ornate ceiling beams, a gallery, and a bench that stands before a blue wall studded with gold stars. Through a door in the starry wall strides the judge, lean and tanned in his unvarying crisp black suit, white shirt and black tie. He usually shuns robes: "If a judge needs a robe and a gavel, he hasn't established control."
Control was the word for Johnson in the recent trial of Harvey King Conner, a former Elmore County deputy sheriff charged with beating a Negro motorist to death last November. A county grand jury refused to indict the 200-lb. Conner, although two state troopers had seen him hitting the 155-lb. Negro with a blackjack. He was therefore tried in Johnson's court on the federal charge of having denied the victim's civil rights.
On the bench, Johnson perched half-moon spectacles on his patrician nose; his brown eyes scanned a document in the Conner case. He peered up from under bushy brows; a hush fell. The room was jammed with veniremen: Negroes as well as whites, women as well as men—a Johnson jury. Only one Negro survived defense challenges—an elderly Negro brickmason who later voted for conviction—but that might have happened in northern Maine. At one point, a defense lawyer mocked a Negro witness in the patronizing accents of Catfish Row. Objection by the prosecution. "Sustained," snapped Johnson. "Such remarks have no bearing on this case." At another point, a Government lawyer thudded to the floor in a dead faint. Pandemonium. Unfazed, Johnson intoned, "The other lawyers will carry on." They did. Conner was acquitted with all the fairness that can be wrung out of the jury system in Alabama.
Mutual Bell. One civil rights lawyer says that Johnson "runs his courtroom like a ship in the old tradition, like an English man-o'-war. He is about as good as a trial judge can.be." Another rights lawyer calls Johnson "entirely fair. You can never tell whether he's going to rule for you or against you." Even lawyers on the other side of the civil rights fence cannot restrain themselves. Adds one:
"He's the quickest at grasping points of complicated cases of any judge I've ever seen." Says another Alabamian: "He gives 'em all hell."
The classic example occurred in 1961 after Montgomery police watched idly as Freedom Riders were beaten. Sternly enjoining all parties from further action and reaction, Johnson limned a segregationist's nightmare: "If there are