Civil Rights Movement Spurred Donald Tamaki Into The Law

Donald Tamaki will remind those who were there and teach those who were not how important the civil rights movement was during his keynote address at AABA’s 27th Annual Installation Dinner on March 19, 2004.

“The door was opened for Asian Americans by the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. Now, we have Asian Americans entering the legal profession in more significant numbers,” Tamaki said. “It is important that these doors were opened because of a lot of activity that happened before their arrival. All of us are beneficiaries of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was a rising tide.”

It was this rising tide that inspired Tamaki to become an attorney. “A lot of us in that generation were heavily influenced by the civil rights movement. We were growing up when Jim Crow segregation was just beginning to end. Separate but equal was starting to be dismantled, “ Tamaki said.

“We were fortunate to be alive when Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were still alive. We started to see barriers come down, and a lot of the leaders during the civil rights movement were lawyers. That really influenced me a lot to go into the profession.”

Tamaki, who was born in Oakland, graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1973 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, and received his J.D. from Boalt Hall in 1976. Upon graduation, Tamaki received the Reginald Heber Smith fellowship to practice poverty and civil rights law in San Jose. During his fellowship, he helped cofound the Asian Law Alliance, a public interest law firm that represented thousands of low-income Asian Americans in Santa Clara County.

When Tamaki first started practicing law, he noticed there were very few Asian attorneys. “When the Asian Bar Association was first formed, you could put all the members in one room because it was that small. The opportunities at that time for Asians were very few,” Tamaki said. “Minorities didn’t fit the conventional image of what a lawyer should be. Big law firms were not hiring Asian lawyers, and they were not hiring women in general. There were not a whole lot of minorities in the pipeline in law school either.”

At that time, Tamaki said it was not easy being a minority in the legal profession. “When we arrived in that profession, we ran into a lot of racism,” Tamaki said. “In the courts and in the day to day practice, we did run into instances where the stereotypes began to come back. There were plenty of situations where we made our court appearance and the judge assumed we were the defendant instead of the lawyer.”

Since then, things improved with more minorities and women entering the legal profession. However, Tamaki said there is still room for improvement. “Even though we have a lot of Asian Americans, women and people of color in law firms, people of color are still bumping up against the glass ceiling. This is a continuum that still exists.” Tamaki said. “We’ve come a long way, but we have a long way to go. We have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to others to continue to open doors. The good news is things are better, but the bad news is that race still matters.”

During his keynote speech, Tamaki wants to encourage everyone to remember how they got to where they are today, and to turn around and give back to the community. He said it is important to “reserve a spot to remember that obligation.”

“There is a responsibility to be a good lawyer, take care of the family and contribute to the community,” Tamaki said. “In the crush of that pressure, it is very easy to lose our way and forget. We lose our capacity to be outraged at what is wrong. We need a reminder of that.”

Tamaki has done his part to give back to the community. From 1980 to 1983, he served as the Executive Director of the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco, the nation’s first public interest law firm representing Asian Americans in civil rights and poverty law cases. From 1983 to 1985, he served on the legal team that re-opened the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Fred Korematsu, overturning his criminal convictions for refusing to be interned. From 1998 to 2001, Tamaki served on the legal team representing the Japanese-American community in a suit against the San Francisco YWCA arising out of California’s racist Alien Land laws, which barred immigrant Japanese Americans from owning certain types of property.

Tamaki has been recognized for his achievements by receiving the 1987 Loren Miller Award, the State Bar of California’s highest recognition for providing legal services to the poor and for working on civil rights issues, and the 2003 Trailblazer Award from the National Asian Pacific Bar Association (NAPABA).

Tamaki, who is currently the managing partner of Minami, Lew & Tamaki LLP in San Francisco, is most proud of his work on the Korematsu case. The 20th anniversary of the decision in the Korematsu v. U.S. case will be on April 19. However, despite his achievements in the civil rights and the pro bono arena, Tamaki received the most attention for his work in the litigation over Barry Bonds’ record-setting 73rd home run baseball. Tamaki was on CourtTV and ESPN, to name a few programs.

“The irony of the case is that the case got a ridiculous amount of publicity and in the long run, it was a really dumb case,” said Tamaki who represented Patrick Hayashi with Michael G.W. Lee, former AABA president. Tamaki, who is an Oakland A’s fan, said the litigation has not lessened his love for baseball.

“I’m a big baseball fan. But, it’s just a silly case,” Tamaki said. “It became a metaphor for everything that is wrong about the game and wrong with the legal system. It’s no longer about the celebration of sportsmanship but now it’s about the money. It’s not about celebrating these great athletes, but it’s about how high of a fee you can get from catching the ball if you catch it. And it’s a metaphor of the excess of the legal system. This is why this case has become a symbol of everything that has gone wrong with American sports and the courts.”

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