BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
When slaves abandoned their shackles and fled the South, one absolutely trustworthy guide was the North Star.
For A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., a black youngster trying to shed the shackles of racism in the 1940s, Cincinnatian Ted Berry was "my North Star."
So on Friday, Judge Higginbotham returned to Ohio to give the Theodore M. Berry Distinguished Lecture, the first in a series on public policy and human rights, sponsored by the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
"It's tough not to cry when I think what you've meant to me," the judge told the retired Cincinnati mayor and lawyer. "I had to be here as long as I had a breath of air in me."
Actually, the invitation gave Judge Higginbotham "the coveted opportunity to pay tribute to two distinguished Ohio citizens who, in their own way, were conductors, allies and major figures on my metaphorical underground railroad from 1945 to 1949."
One guide was the late Jessie Treichler, a white administrator at Antioch College, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, who championed young Mr. Higginbotham and others when the liberal college finally admitted blacks in the 1940s.
(Already at Antioch was Nathaniel R. Jones, who became general counsel of the NAACP, a federal appellate judge in Cincinnati, and host at Friday's lecture. Entering Antioch with Judge Higginbotham was Coretta Scott, who was to marry the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.)
The other conductor on that personal journey was to be Mr. Berry, whom Judge Higginbotham met in 1946 as a sophomore and president of the student NAACP chapter.
Judge Higginbotham's father was a New Jersey laborer, his mother a domestic.
Mr. Berry, however, "was this person who was poised and confident" and racking up firsts as an African-American lawyer and civil-rights advocate.
That encounter was life-changing.
The youngster who once aspired to be a township firefighter had gained a suave, accomplished role model.
Judge Higginbotham went on to graduate from Yale law school, and, in 1962, President Kennedy named him to the Federal Trade Commission, the first black to serve on any federal commission.
President Johnson named Commissioner Higginbotham to a federal trial judgeship and President Carter named Judge Higginbotham to a federal appellate court.
Retired from the bench, Judge Higginbotham teaches at Harvard University.
Throughout his career, he said, Mrs. Treichler and Mr. Berry represented what his parents, "wonderful as they were, could not provide.
"They symbolize what I hope many in America will always strive to provide, a helping hand and a sense of hope to those persons who have not yet made it . . . Thank you for starting me on the way."
Judge Higginbotham said it also was "moving" to renew his acquaintance with Rosa Parks earlier Friday. Her refusal to give her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Ala., sparked a national civil rights movement in 1955
The judge enjoyed school childrens' delight when they met Ms. Parks and realized what she had accomplished with her stubborn insistence on her rights. "That's the way I felt about Ted."
After his talk, Judge Higginbotham took questions from the audience, with Margaret Bush Wilson, former national NAACP chair, as moderator.
"I think we need to have a sense of reverence," she told the hushed audience at the Mayerson Academy in Corryville. This was a unique moment, not to be repeated, reuniting Judges Higginbotham and Jones and Mr. Berry.
"Not one giant, not two giants, but three giants," she said.
