COMMITMENT IN FULL

Russell Lovell’s career fighting for civil rights included groundbreaking wins and justice for society’s most vulnerable.

Russell Lovell (BBA ’66) paused for more than a few beats when I asked him which lifetime accomplishment he was most proud of.

Hardly a tough question for someone with Lovell’s impressive résumé. An accountancy-major-turned-lawyer, Lovell has a storied career advocating for civil rights and training the next generation of lawyers to carry on this work (see sidebar). In August 2023, the Notre Dame Alumni Association honored Lovell with the Rev. Louis J. Putz, C.S.C., Award in recognition of his “dedication to advancing civil rights and his commitment to providing experiential learning to the next generation of lawyers.”

And yet, he answered by recalling a talk he heard as a law student in the 1960s. The speaker was U.S. Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, who recounted his previous pro bono work defending an indigent defendant, Clarence Gideon, in a case that eventually went all the way to the Supreme Court. The court’s unanimous decision in 1963 guaranteed the right to legal counsel for criminal defendants — a monumental verdict supporting civil rights.

Fortas, Lovell explained, ended his remarks with a clarion call: “America needs you. I challenge you to make a difference. Live your life in the law. Make a difference in fighting for racial justice and equality.”

For Lovell, the words set his path. “I went home and typed those words up on my portable typewriter, and I taped them right over my desk,” he said. “And I guess I’ve tried to live by those ever since.”

Early Influences

Lovell grew up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, a small conservative town where, he says, discrimination and segregation against Mexican Americans was an accepted part of daily life. 

A library book sparked his early convictions about racial justice — and made him a lifelong Dodgers fan. The story of Jackie Robinson’s courage in the face of racial hostility and death threats after he broke baseball’s color line helped reshape how he saw the world. Then, at the University of Notre Dame, where he sang in the Glee Club and served as president of the Notre Dame Young Republicans, Lovell encountered the work of Father Ted Hesburgh, C.S.C. 

“Father Ted challenged students not only to learn about the injustices of our time, but to do something about them,” he recalled. “He had a full-time job as priest and president of Notre Dame, but he nonetheless found time to engage in civil rights advocacy.” 

Father Ted’s work on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission made a strong impression on Lovell. “Because of Father Ted, the commission was able to find the common ground crucial to achieving unanimous reports that opened America’s eyes to the reality that segregation in the Deep South was apartheid; it was not remotely ‘separate but equal,’” said Lovell. “His deep understanding of America’s apartheid enabled him to contribute as a principal author of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. He clearly understood that while laws alone cannot change hearts and minds, they can change conduct.”

After graduation, Lovell studied law at the University of Nebraska, intending to work with his father’s law firm in Scottsbluff. But then there came two watershed moments that changed the trajectory of his life — and put the national fight squarely in his path.

The first was Justice Fortas’ talk. The second followed soon after. 

The Elks Lodge in Lincoln had just built a new building near the law school and claimed to have the best chef in town. At his father’s urging, Lovell had become an Elks Lodge member. It seemed like the perfect place for his law class to hold a social event.

“The Elks said, ‘We’re delighted to have the law class come over for the banquet, but Wayne Williams cannot come,’” he recalled. “We are a segregated organization. That’s our formal national policy and he can’t come.”

Williams was the sole Black student in the class. “Well, to the credit of my classmates, we all decided we’re not going anywhere that Wayne Williams couldn’t go,” said Lovell. “So we canceled and held our dinner at another place.” 

But Lovell had another decision to make: what to do about his Elks Lodge membership? He quickly realized that he needed to resign. He wrote a letter to the lodge that he asked to be posted. In it, he explained that segregation was contrary to their values of brotherhood and Christianity and, in Lovell’s view, a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

That letter became the flashpoint of a long, sad and bewildering estrangement from his parents. His father was not only an Elks Lodge member but also the fraternal organization’s attorney in Scottsbluff. More than that, it was an important part of his dad’s identity.

“That’s where he went to socialize after work every day on Monday through Friday,” said Lovell. “He’d grown up poor, and he could go to the Elks Lodge and be comfortable there with plumbers, tradesmen, and small businessmen.”

This was in 1968. Martin Luther King would be assassinated in April; Bobby Kennedy in June. Remembering Hesburgh and Fortas’ words, Lovell and his wife, Linda, realized his civil rights commitment meant that he couldn’t return to Scottsbluff as planned. Joining his father’s law practice would have ensured financial security, but the couple feared that they would constantly butt heads with his parents and that Lovell’s racial justice commitment would wither in his dad’s general practice firm — in sum, everyone would be unhappy. 

Divine Interventions

Instead, Lovell accepted a federal appeals court clerkship in Kansas City, Missouri, which prepared him for his future work in civil rights litigation. There, his research persuaded the court to protect Black teachers from retaliatory layoffs when integration closed Black schools. 

Then, he moved to Indianapolis where he spent five years providing legal aid to low-income clients, most of whom were Black. During this time, he became law director for the Indiana Center on Law and Poverty where he worked on cases involving prisoners’ rights, employment discrimination, school segregation, landlord-tenant issues and welfare rights. 

In 1976 Lovell accepted a position with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in Denver — a job that provided economic security for his family. As they prepared to move, Lovell got a call from his dad. 

“He said, ‘Rusty, they found cancer in both of my lungs, and they’re going to operate on me in Denver on Monday. Is there any way you could come and keep my solo practice alive if I survive?’” Lovell recalled. “OK, that’s an offer that’s pretty hard to refuse.”

With Linda’s blessing, he resigned his EEOC position, returned to Scottsbluff and lived with his parents for five months. Lovell not only kept the practice going, he won a major constitutional law case that ensured the financial viability of the local community college that had given his dad the opportunity to go to college during the Depression. 

Lovell also saw his relationship with his parents slowly change. “It wasn’t like we all of a sudden began to see the same on racial justice issues,” he said. “But I think finally the reasoning that you can disagree and still love each other became persuasive. My responding during my parents’ time of great need healed a lot of the old wounds.”

During his children’s spring break, he flew back to Indiana to drive the family out for a visit. As he drove, he remembered a job opportunity a good friend had suggested at Drake University Law School. Des Moines, Iowa, was on their I-80 route. He pulled over in Illinois and, from a pay phone, made the call.

The next day, he interviewed with the faculty recruitment committee chair and, a month later, returned for interviews with the full faculty and students. Within weeks, he landed his “dream job” at Drake, where he taught constitutional and civil rights law by day and served as a pro bono NAACP civil rights lawyer by night, on weekends and summer breaks for 38 years until his retirement in 2014. 

In the decade since, he has continued to work pro bono nearly full time, spearheading the NAACP’s successful effort to ensure representative juries in Iowa and its push for anti-racial profiling reform. 

“I’ve often thought if I’d taken that EEOC job, that probably never would’ve happened,” said Lovell, a man whose decision to live by the example set by Father Ted and the challenge issued by Justice Fortas improved the lives of thousands. “Those are my divine intervention stories.”

Photo provided.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Russell Lovell’s civil rights commitment has shaped history. He:

• Played a key role in the 1972 Morrissey v. Brewer case, which established due process rights for parolees.
• Served as co-counsel on a groundbreaking prisoners’ rights case involving the first federal court-ordered closure of a solitary confinement unit at the Indiana State Prison because of its inhumane conditions.
• Was lead counsel on the NAACP class-action cases that integrated the Indiana State Police Department in the 1970s and the Des Moines Fire Department in the 1980s.
• Served as the NAACP co-counsel for the remedies portion of the Supreme Court desegregation case involving the Kansas City school system.
• Was twice recognized by the NAACP for his work as Drake University Law School associate dean for the school’s inclusive environment and for securing federal stipends for students of color.