{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Keen On America","title":"Episode 2028: KEEN ON AMERICA featuring Thelton Henderson","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3320,"description":"Few Americans of any color or creed have had a legal career as historically rich or significant as Thelton Henderson. One of the earliest African-American graduates of Boult law school at UC Berkeley, Henderson was the first black attorney for the civil rights division of the US Department of Justice, going down to Mississippi in 1963 where he become familiar with MLK and many other civil rights leaders. He later became a Federal judge where he pioneered historic legal decisions regarding racial, environmental and gay rights. So it was a real honor for me to have the opportunity to sit down with Henderson at his Berkeley home to talk about his childhood, his memories of the Sixties and why, in his view, the success of the civil rights movement was as dependent on radicals like Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael as it was on MLK and other moderates. And then, of course, there is Henderson’s own relationship with America which, like so many African-Americans, is tangled and frayed. No, he confessed, he won’t be celebrating raucously in 2026 on the 250th birthday of the American Republic. Especially if, as Henderson fears, a certain Donald J Trump, who he likens to Hitler, is once again President. Judge Thelton E. Henderson is a world-renowned federal judge whose commitment to advancing civil rights spans six decades and three continents. He was the first African American lawyer assigned to field service in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, where he worked alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As the second African American federal judge in the Northern District of California and its first African American chief judge, he authored groundbreaking civil rights decisions.  Born in Louisiana, Judge Henderson left the Jim Crow South with his mother and grandmother for Los Angeles. He excelled academically and athletically, becoming one of the first African Americans to earn a football scholarship to UC Berkeley. After serving in the Army, he...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/bCpvkYgrorWYCv4ujOodZ7o-xqCKvQH-YHlEI5E7zpw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83NDM2/MGJjOTYyNjBkYzJi/ZDVhMTUwZDgwMWE3/ZDk3OS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}