- Collection:
- Social Change Collection
- Title:
- Millard C. Farmer oral history interview, 2012-03-09
- Creator:
- Farmer, Millard
- Contributor to Resource:
- Fowlkes, Diane L., 1939-
- Publisher:
- Atlanta, Ga. : Georgia State University Library
- Date of Original:
- 2012-03-09
- Subject:
- Trials (Murder)
Law enforcement
Social classes
Race discrimination
Lawyers - People:
- Farmer, Millard
Wallace, John, 1896-1950 - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Coweta County, 33.35346, -84.76337
United States, Georgia, Coweta County, Newnan, 33.38067, -84.79966 - Medium:
- oral histories (literary works)
interviews - Type:
- Sound
Text - Format:
- audio/mpeg
application/pdf - Description:
- Born in 1934, noted death penalty defense attorney Millard C. Farmer, Jr. grew up in Newnan, Georgia. A University of Georgia graduate (1956), he worked in the family business and attended Woodrow Wilson College of Law during the evenings. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar in 1967, built a successful practice in Newnan, and was a co-founder of the Bank of Coweta there. Farmer also represented disadvantaged clients, and came to question whether African American defendants could be tried fairly before all-white juries. By 1970, he and his associates were challenging jury composition on the grounds of race. In 1976, he co-founded the Team Defense Project (TDP) with social psychologist Courtney J. Mullin and Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center. TDP was dedicated to the representation of indigent persons in death penalty cases and enjoyed many high-profile successes in the 1970s and 1980s, notably the case of the “Dawson Five” in Dawson, Georgia. Most of Farmer and Team Defense Project’s work was intended to bring attention to the inequities in the way capital punishment is used, and many of TDP’s litigation strategies, such as jury composition challenges and motion filings it developed, have become widely adopted tactics. Farmer and his colleagues taught and lectured on these strategies to numerous legal groups and audiences. An acknowledged expert in capital cases, Farmer has also represented clients bringing racial discrimination suits. He has received numerous honors from legal and civil liberties advocacy organizations.
Farmer details his childhood recollections of attending the John Wallace trial of 1948 (made familiar by Margaret Anne Barnes’ book Murder in Coweta County) in which the testimony of two African Americans led to the conviction of a white man. He mentions subsequent insights given to him by those involved in the trial. He describes the moonshine industry in Meriwether and Coweta counties and local law enforcement’s acquiescence to it. He reveals how sheriffs were compensated with the fines collected and how individuals could pay the fines of culprits in order for the offender to work for them instead of serving time. He describes his family’s agriculture business, rural lawyers, segregation, race relations, and the culture and status of high school baseball and football in Coweta County. He notes the lack of women and African Americans on juries and points out how wealthy white males upheld the social establishment and ran the community. He describes his first experience of serving on a jury and how protocol was different from today. He describes the operation of county jails. He explains how a lawyer friend bargained with him to have his client take a life sentence instead of going to trial and facing the death penalty. He recounts an altercation with an older cousin and how that experience led to his life mission of standing up to the injustices of the established social order. He mentions the class division in the Georgia legal profession and how Ben Johnson’s refusal to allow him to attend a business law class at Emory led him towards a more significant legal career in defending indigent persons in death penalty cases. - Metadata URL:
- http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/schange/id/5
- IIIF manifest:
- https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/iiif/2/schange:5/manifest.json
- Language:
- eng
- Additional Rights Information:
- Copyright to this item is owned by Millard Farmer. Millard Farmer has made this item available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License. Please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ for more information.
- Bibliographic Citation (Cite As):
- Millard Farmer, interviewed by Diane L. Fowlkes, 9 March 2012, Y2012-03, Social Change Collection, Special Collection and Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta
- Extent:
- 1 hour, 40 minutes of audio, and a 56 page transcript.
- Original Collection:
- Social Change Oral Histories
Social Change Collection - Holding Institution:
- Georgia State University. Special Collections
- Rights:
-
