The Nahmias Cipher Report

Among Attorney Julius W. Robertson many talents as an author, civil rights activist and lawyer, he was also the lead attorney on the case of Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, and he is my maternal grandfather.

He graduated at the top of his class from Howard University in 1948 with combined degrees (B.A. and LL.B.); and today would have received the order of the coif for his academic standing.

Upon graduation, Attorney Robertson established the law firm of Robertson & Roundtree in 1950 as a firm with junior partners, of which Attorney Dovey J. Roundtree was the first. Attorney Roundtree has acknowledged that Attorney Robertson was her mentor as well as her law partner. He was the “majority” partner of Robertson & Roundtree, receiving 51% of the firm’s income to Attorney Roundtree’s 49%. Today, Attorney Robertson would be referred to as “senior and managing partner.”

“The real differences around the world today are not between Jews and Arabs; Protestants and Catholics; Muslims, Croats, and Serbs. The real differences are between those who embrace peace and those who would destroy it; between those who look to the future and those who cling to the past; between those who open their arms and those who are determined to clench their fists.” ~ Bill Clinton

Famed Lena Horne died yesterday at age 92. An iconic figure in Hollywood and on stage, Lena Horne was a pioneer who forced the film industry to evaluate casting African-American women in roles other than stereotypically safe and culturally preferred maids and ‘mammies’. Blazing the trail in presegregration America, Ms. Horne used her intellect, talent and ambition to forge a career that spanned six-decades. Ms. Horne was an extremely talented and accomplished vocalist, and one of the first African-American actresses to sign a significant contract with a major studio. She continued to break barriers through her marriage to a Jewish conductor and bandleader Lennie Hayton in 1947. This was a bold move at a time when miscegenation laws were on the books in 30 states.

“In the United States, the various state laws prohibited the marriage of whites and blacks, and in many states also the intermarriage of whites with Native Americans or Asians. In the U.S., such laws were known as anti-miscegenation laws. From 1913 until 1948, 30 out of the then 48 states enforced such laws. Miscegenation was finally ruled unconstitutional 12 June 1967 through the case Loving vs. the State of Virginia effectively ending legal enforcement of this practice nationwide.

“This invisibility—this erasure out of the complex history of our life and time—is the greatest source of my longing. As you know, I’m a woman who yearns, who longs for. This is the key to me and to the work, and something which is rarely discussed in reviews or essays, which I also find remarkably disappointing. That there are so few images of African-American women circulating in popular culture or in fine art is disturbing; the pathology behind it is dangerous. I mean, we got a sistah in the White House, and yet mediated culture excludes us, denies us, erases us. But in the face of refusal, I insist on making work that includes us as part of the greater whole. Black experience is not really the main point; rather, complex, dimensional, human experience and social inclusion—even in the shit, muck, and mire—is the real point.” — Carrie Mae Weems