CALL ME PHAEDRA - Lise Pearlman

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had just formed a new law partnership with his long-time fellow Guild member Barney Dreyfus. Both were becoming legendary for their vigorous defense of unpopular causes. Her quest for work at the new firm was ill-timed. The week after the partnership opened its doors on Market Street in San Francisco, three of its four principals were subpoenaed to appear before HUAC in San Francisco. The Committee was particularly bent on exposing Barney Dreyfus as a Communist: Dreyfus had played a leadership role in opposing Smith Act loyalty oaths and convincing the State Bar’s most prominent attorneys to champion the rights of HUAC targets.

      Both Garry and Dreyfus were identified by a witness who had attended clandestine Communist educational programs in San Francisco with them back in the ’40s. Yet, much to the HUAC panel’s chagrin, the Bay Area hearings attracted large crowds who sympathized with the lawyers and applauded their refusal to cooperate. Still, when Fay came calling, Garry and Dreyfus did not know if their new firm would have any future. Garry suggested that Fay instead seek a job with Claude Allen, a black solo practitioner in the East Bay.

      Allen was sixteen years Fay’s senior, but had just become a lawyer in 1954, two years before Fay. Born and raised in Mississippi, the World War II army lieutenant had supported his wife and four children as a bar owner while attending night law school for five years. Allen did not provide Fay with much guidance as he set her to work handling minor charges against black prostitutes. Fay convinced judges to order the same lenient sentences as white prostitutes routinely received.

      While working for Allen, Fay became attracted to a young black lawyer. She confided to her friend Pip that she was tempted to cheat on Marvin with this handsome colleague. Despite this distraction, Fay soon became disillusioned with her new job. Allen had little idea how to run a practice. Shortly after Fay joined his office, he became desperate for witnesses to corroborate his client’s version of a two-year-old car accident. Allen paid an agent to hire a pair of “witnesses” who turned out to be staff members of the district attorney’s office. Allen pleaded guilty to perjury and was disbarred.5 This again left Fay without a paying job. Relying on Marvin’s support, Fay decided to join her good friends Pip and Stan, who were still in graduate school. She re-enrolled at Cal in political science.

      Meanwhile, Fay and Marvin still worked on the ACLU’s job discrimination lawsuit for Mrs. Gaines. Their aim was to destroy the credibility of the Chief Probation Officer, who had been well-coached to cite legitimate reasons for not hiring Mrs. Gaines. The conservative judge was expected to accept any potentially plausible explanation given by this trusted long-time county employee. Yet the ACLU’s legal challenge coincided with an escalating national racial crisis.

      At the beginning of September 1957 — two weeks before the hearing — an ugly confrontation in Little Rock, Arkansas, began to draw international attention to lack of progress in integration in the United States since the landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education three years earlier. Governor Orval Faubus decided to take a stand for segregation by ordering the National Guard to block access of nine black teens trying to enroll in an all-white high school. As the situation intensified, President Eisenhower felt compelled to call in federal troops to ensure the black students were admitted. Ike then gave a televised speech explaining the necessity of that drastic action to redeem America’s tarnished image in the world.

      Judge Donovan took the President’s speech to heart and gave the Gaines matter careful consideration before issuing his ruling on February 10, 1958. Relying on Perez v. Sharp, he found in Mrs. Gaines’ favor. The judge wrote: “Can it be validly contended that an inter-racial marriage does not come within the constitutional prohibition against discrimination because of race, creed or color? … To permit such action to go uncorrected should be of grave consequence to believers in the democratic system.”6

      Fay and Marvin were elated. Spurred by the international spotlight on American racism, a conservative judge had unexpectedly rejected the testimony of his own chief probation officer. The two of them had helped the judge look with fresh eyes on the weight of the evidence and case law. Marvin remembered with fondness that they turned to each other and said: “This is so easy. Look what you can do!”

      ∎ 7 ∎

       Turbulence

       Fay … surveys the tangled jungle and … offers a toast:” To chaos.”1

      — JUDITH NIEMI

      Fay became pregnant in the early fall of 1957, finished her classes and prepared for the baby to arrive. Marvin had found work as an associate in the offices of Martin Jarvis in San Francisco, trying criminal defense and personal injury cases. Marvin’s new boss was among the most stalwart of the small circle of local lawyers, including Charlie Garry and Barney Dreyfus, who had challenged political persecutions during the Cold War. As Marvin worked long hours, Fay retrieved from her cousins the bassinette her parents had bought to welcome her own birth and made it ready for her infant son, born the first week of June 1958. The delighted new mother named her baby Neal as an anagram of Lena, her favorite grandparent. Fay gave Neal the middle name Aviron for her paternal grandfather’s Russian family.

      Fay decided to nurse Neal. By 1958, when Neal was born, breastfeeding in the United States had dropped to close to 20 per cent and the term was not even accepted in polite company. By then, Fay and Marvin had moved to a rental cottage in a wooded area of Palo Alto. Often isolated, Fay surprised some of her old friends by taking up the cause of the newly formed La Leche League. They, too, supported breastfeeding, but found the organization too preachy.

      Fay also found herself drawn to join those who challenged the modern opposition to natural childbirth. Expectant mothers, discouraged from home births as outmoded and too painful, were instead rushed to hospitals where obstetricians made nearly all the decisions. The mother was often anesthetized. The father, prohibited by law from entering the delivery room, was consigned to waiting in the hall or visitor’s room for some word about his wife and newborn. The child was commonly delivered by forceps and then whisked off to a communal nursery tended by hospital personnel.

      Realizing that her brother-in-law Don now had medical privileges as a new doctor, Fay convinced her pregnant sister to get Don to join her in the delivery room. Lisie had already suffered one miscarriage. Don grew alarmed when his tiny newborn daughter showed signs of serious problems, but said nothing until the crisis had passed. At Fay’s urging, Lisie immediately started nursing her new baby, Linda, who quickly lost ten ounces and weighed slightly over five pounds by her tenth day. Lisie’s alarmed pediatrician warned, “Well, Mother, you keep this up and she’ll be in an incubator next week.” Fay insisted that her sister ignore the doctor’s advice and was angry when Lisie instead switched to bottled formula.

      Fay herself had been nearly eight months pregnant when Lisie gave birth. In late January of 1960, Fay had her own newborn daughter, Oriane. Soon Fay’s toddler Neal nicknamed Oriane “Fifi,” and the name stuck throughout her childhood. Fay stayed home with her babies essentially full-time for three years. In an interview at the height of her career, Fay recalled only the joy she had experienced as a new parent. Yet, at the time, she grew increasingly depressed. She could not keep up with the demands of motherhood and had no desire to manage a household. So she threw her energy into another cause — an organization recently formed in Los Angeles, the International Childbirth Education Association.2

      Fay embraced ICEA’s promotion of freedom of choice in childbirth and family-centered maternity care. Best of all, the loosely run organization gave her lots of latitude. Fay received the lofty title of Western Regional Director, a post she held for the next four years as she busied herself with ICEA and La Leche League projects. She authored a widely distributed pamphlet, “Husbands in the Delivery Room,” and listed her home phone as a resource for new mothers under the name “Nursing Mothers Anonymous,” with the slogan, “Don’t reach for the bottle, reach for the phone.” With help from a local lawyer, Fay brought suit to challenge a hospital policy that then barred fathers from delivery rooms. The case resulted in a settlement through which the hospital agreed to change its practice.

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