Politico Editor Peter Canellos Explores The Moral Formation Of An American Hero For Equality

This article was originally published on Religion Unplugged on January 21, 2022.

John Marshall Harlan. Photo via Mathew Brady or Levin Handy — Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).

(REVIEW) When former President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed John Marshall Harlan to the Supreme Court in 1877, anti-slavery Republicans mistrusted him, calling him “the sycophantic friend and suppliant tool” of White supremacists. Harlan had been born into a slaveholding family in 1833, and he was the lone Southerner on the court. 

To the surprise of his critics, Justice Harlan turned out to be the sole defender of civil rights in a series of Supreme Court cases that sharply limited the scope of the civil rights of Black Americans. Today, we read Harlan’s dissents as authoritative interpretations of the Constitution, and we repudiate the racist logic of many of the decisions of Harlan’s judicial contemporaries. How did Harlan get so much right at a time when his colleagues were getting so much wrong? 

At an online book talk organized by the King’s College in New York, Politico editor Peter Canellos said that his interest in the life of John Marshall Harlan was a “search for the roots of wisdom in the law.” 

“What makes Harlan wise in the estimation of history?” Canellos asked. “What made his colleagues unwise?” 

Peter Canellos

Canellos has a law degree from Columbia University, and he covered the nominations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts to the Supreme Court for The Boston Globe. His legal and journalistic training have equipped him to write “The Great Dissenter,” an engaging, popular and accessible book on Harlan and his jurisprudence. 

Canellos said that Harlan’s distinctive value system lay behind the differences between Harlan and his colleagues on the court. Harlan was a deeply religious man who served as an elder in the Presbyterian church, and he brought to his work a conviction that he was tasked with doing God’s will on Earth. He was not afraid to stand as a lone dissenter in cases to which he perceived his colleagues to be morally blind. In a letter to Harlan, Frederick Douglass wrote, “One man with God is a majority.”

A second source of Harlan’s moral courage was his commitment to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. American democracy was a great experiment in a world full of monarchs and authoritarians. He felt the wisdom of the Founding Fathers akin to a secular religion. He believed that a court that lived up to the spirit of America’s founding documents would ensure that all people who lived under the American flag were treated equally before the law. 

A third source of Harlan’s morality was his personal experience. He grew up in a family steeped in reverence for the law. He was the son of a prominent Kentucky lawyer and politician, and his father groomed him early in life to follow in his footsteps. John had a probable Black half-brother, Robert Harlan, whom his father brought up as a member of the family. In the face of Promethean odds, Robert thrived as a businessman, entrepreneur, politician and philanthropist. John’s relationship with Robert inoculated John from internalizing prevailing cultural concepts of Black inferiority. 

The Great Dissenter

Peter Canelloss, “The Great Dissenter,” Simon and Schuster, 2021.

In the civil rights cases of 1883, Harlan broke with his colleagues when the court ruled that the 14th Amendment applied only to the actions of state governments. In his dissenting opinion, Harlan argued that business owners who perform public functions should be subject to Congress’ power to enforce the 14th Amendment.

Harlan wrote his dissenting opinion using the inkwell with which former Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) — a case that Harlan considered to be America’s original judicial sin. It appalled Harlan that the same court that upheld Congress’ power to force private individuals to turn over runaway slaves in Dred Scot would now deny Congress’ power to prevent racial discrimination against freed men and women in places of public accommodation.  

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), eight Supreme Court justices set up the legal structure for Jim Crow by upholding a Louisiana law that mandated separate railroad cars for Black customers. In his dissent, Harlan wrote, “In the eyes of the law, there is no superior, dominant ruling class of citizens in this country. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind and does not know or tolerate classes among its citizens.”  

Peter Canelloss, “The Great Dissenter,” Simon and Schuster, 2021.

In 1906, Harlan intervened in the case of Ed Johnson, a Black man from Kentucky who was convicted of raping a White woman at night in a cemetery even though the victim testified that she wasn’t sure her assailant was Black. Harlan ordered a stay of Johnson’s execution.

A White mob responded to Harlan’s ruling by descending on Chattanooga’s jail and dragging Johnson from his cell. The mob murdered Johnson and pinned a note to his dead body, saying, “To Chief Harlan, Here is your Negro.” Harlan convinced his fellow justices to try for contempt local court officials in Chattanooga who failed to protect Johnson. This resulted in the first and only time in history that the Supreme Court functioned as a criminal trial court. 

At the height of the Gilded Age, Harlan continued his dissents. He defended legislative efforts to break up corporate monopolies, institute an income tax and protect children and other exploited workers. Harlan’s colleagues on the court were corporate lawyers whose commitment to economic freedom precluded government intervention to protect labor rights. 

In the 1901 cases on the status of U.S. territories acquired in the Spanish-American War, Harlan sought to extend full legal protections to people of newly acquired territories in Hawaii, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. He warned that the court must not treat people who live under the American flag as “subjects” or “dependent peoples” lest it “engraft on our republican institutions a colonial system … abhorrent to the principles that underlie and pervade our Constitution.” 

In Berea v. Kentucky (1908), Harlan issued one of his most anguished dissents. An abolitionist preacher had founded Berea College in 1855 to educate Black and White men and women side-by-side, in a state of biblical unity. In 1904, the Kentucky legislature passed a bill to prohibit Black and White students from attending the same institution, public or private. Berea College challenged the law, arguing that it violated its property rights and constitutional liberties. 

The Supreme Court upheld Kentucky’s prohibition as a reasonable application of the state’s police powers, citing the state’s interest in preventing racial commingling. Harlan’s dissent rang with righteous indignation. “The capacity to impart instruction to others is given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes, and its use may not be forbidden or interfered with by government,” Harlan wrote. “The right to impart instruction ... is beyond question part of one’s liberty as guaranteed … by the Constitution of the United States.”

Robert Harlan

Robert Harlan was probably the most important influence of John’s views on racial equality. Robert was 16 years older than John. In John’s eyes, Robert loomed as a fearless man of action. Robert’s refined cultural interests and entrepreneurial successes shaped John’s perceptions of what Black Americans could achieve in an atmosphere of freedom. 

Because he was African American, Robert was prevented from pursuing a formal education. Instead, he had to navigate from a young age the rough and tumble rituals of frontier life. At various times in his life, Robert succeeded as a horse racing impresario, a gold rush entrepreneur, a financier of Black businesses, a world traveler and an elected member of the Ohio House of Representatives. 

Robert opened a store in San Francisco during the California gold rush, and he returned to Kentucky with a fortune, which he invested in businesses in the free state of Ohio. Robert helped finance the first public school for Black children sanctioned by the Cincinnati school board. He also held the lease on the Duma House, a hotel that was the “beating heart of the Cincinnati Black community, honeycombed with hiding places for runaway slaves.” When John Harlan was nominated to the Supreme Court, Robert helped galvanize Republican support for his appointment. 

With his large house, fashionable clothing and biracial heritage, Robert became a representative of America’s aristocrats of color. When traveling, Robert and his influential Black friends — such as Frederick Douglass, Louisiana Governor P.B.S. Pinchback and Howard Law School founder John Mercer Langston — would stay in one another’s homes and host lavish dinners. Robert raised his children in a world of cosmopolitan sophistication, community service, political activism and appreciation for the arts. As John was resisting the legal threats to Black rights on the high court, Robert was fighting in the Ohio legislature to protect Black Americans’ access to inns, restaurants and public transportation. The New York World stated that Robert’s influence in Black America rivaled that of Douglass. 

During his lifetime, John Harlan was dismissed by many White Americans as an eccentric outlier. However, Black Americans responded enthusiastically to the justice whom they considered to be their sole ally on the Supreme Court. When Harlan died in 1911, Black congregations around the country organized spontaneous memorial services. The massive Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington hosted a multi-faith service in which Harlan’s Plessy dissent was read aloud.

“When the spirit of John Marshall Harlan left its temple of clay last Saturday morning, a great light went out,” proclaimed the Washington Bee. “An entire race, today, is weeping because ... a friend has been taken from us. ... Now that he has gone, we cannot help but tramble, and fear that no one after him may dissent against decisions against our race.”

In the 1950s, the NAACP found in Harlan’s Plessy dissent the legal basis to overturn segregation. Constance Baker Motley, who clerked for Thurgood Marshall, recalled, “Marshall would read aloud passages from Harlan’s amazing dissent. I don’t believe we ever filed a brief in which a portion of that opinion was not quoted.”

When Justice Marshall died in 1993, Judge Motley wrote, “Marshall admired the courage of Harlan more than any justice who has ever sat on the Supreme Court. Even Chief Justice Warren’s forthright and moving decision for the court in (Brown v. Board of Education) did not affect Marshall in the same way. Earl Warren was writing for a unanimous Supreme Court. Harlan was a solitary and lonely figure writing for posterity.”

Robert Carle is a professor at the King’s College in Manhattan. Dr. Carle has contributed to The Wall Street Journal, The American Interest, Religion Unplugged, Newsday, Society, Human Rights Review, Academic Questions, and Reason. Some of the material in this essay was published in The Public Discourse on July 13, 2021.

An Actor Discovered How Creatives Can Build A Personal Brand on TikTok

Brittin Ward works at The King’s College in NYC as Educational Ventures and Services Administrator. In that role, he helps organize several academic programs at King’s including the Summer Academy for high school students each July and the NYC Semester programs in Journalism and Theater for visiting college students from 41 partner schools.

We knew that Brittin is an aspiring actor, who stared in several theater productions at King’s and in New York City since he graduated from Kings in 2018. So we were excited to learn that Brittin has made the most of the Coronavirus pandemic by applying his theater skills and interests to a TikTok, where his videos have gained millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers. Brittin maintains a humble and studious attitude about this social media virality. And he agreed to answer questions about what he’s learning on TikTok that other actors, creatives and journalists might appreciate.

Q - How did your life in theater change when Covid emerged last March, April and May?

A - Theater stopped--everything stopped. I love theater and acting and suddenly I was not able to participate in any of it for the foreseeable future. Other than a couple of Zoom improv classes I had no creative outlet. I was not in any shows at the time, but I was a member of a performing choir that stopped due to COVID. Like everyone else, I felt a bit lost. My dream has always been to have a career in theater, and though I've done a couple of professional shows, I still have not hit my stride with performing. I don't have an agent and am not equity, so like most other actors in the city I'd been in the trenches trying to get booked. I was already fighting discouragement with the rejections and failure of "making it" as an actor when COVID hit, so when it became clear that my dream was in limbo and it was uncertain when theaters would re-open, I realized I needed to shift my priorities.

Q - How did you decide to get involved with TikTok and why?

A - Prior to COVID, I had been growing increasingly interested in social media and the format of entertainment being delivered via the internet. The Actor's magazine "Backstage" and other actor publications have really been emphasizing the importance of having a presence on social media (here's a 2020 article from them on why every actor needs to be on social media). I made a TikTok account in December of 2019 because of the popularity the app was gaining and I posted a few videos to the app, but I was uncommitted prior to the pandemic. Once the theaters closed and I could not perform anything in person, I decided to spend all the found time I had in making videos for the internet and trying to build an audience. I decided to specifically start putting all my efforts into creating TikTok content because I knew that it was the fastest growing social platform in 2019-2020, it had the highest demographic of teen users at the time, and because I regretted missing the wave with Vine (a popular video app that died in 2016). I thought that if I could get good at keeping an audience engaged through short videos, it would help my storytelling skills and increase my understanding of what it takes to build an audience. Since I was trapped at home in quarantine anyway, I decided it would be a good way to have some sort of creative outlet while growing my understanding of how to keep people entertained.

Q - Tell us about how your audience grew there and what you learned from that audience?

A - It took a solid couple months of uploading consistently videos that barely broke 100 views before one took off and gained over a couple thousand views. From there it was probably another month and a half of posting before one of my videos broke the 100k views mark. As I continued to consistently post throughout the year, that window between the successful videos would grow shorter. Eventually, after about 6 months of posting with a few viral videos, I had gained a following of 40k. Up to this point, I had a general idea of the kind of audience I attracted (a younger demographic), so I started focusing my content more on what I thought they might find engaging. Taking the time to really work through that helped my growth and I was able to produce successful videos on a more consistent basis, ending the year with 590K followers. Consistency was the most important part of the growth. I posted videos daily for a few months, then pulled back to every other day once I started feeling burnt out.

I learned quite a lot from the audience, but I would say the two most important things would be: never-ending improvement, and consistency are key. There is always something I could improve in my videos whether it be lighting, sound, pacing, dialogue, etc. Also being consistent with the upload schedule and the kind of videos I posted were the most important factors of growth.

Q - Tell us about the process of figuring out what kinds of posts do well and play to your strengths? E.g. Do you do dances? Songs? Skateboard tricks? Monologues?

A - I quickly realized that I was (regrettably) not a part of the class of creators who could simply hit record, strike a couple poses, look attractive, and get millions of views. Nor was I a dancer. So, I took stock of what I was good at and how I might incorporate that into my videos. Being from a theater background, I was very familiar with conflict and motivation (i.e. what is the conflict of a story and what is motivating the characters to act), so I decided to try and incorporate that into my videos. I tried a basic skit where I played two characters fighting over something they both wanted (a yellow balloon), and I tried to keep the conflict at the center of the video. Conflict with high stakes engages an audience, and that was my first video to hit 1 million views. From there, I did a ton of research on how to make entertaining videos, what keeps people engaged, attended workshops, listened to podcasts--everything. I ruled out trying to do monologues or straight theater scenes as I saw other actors doing that on the app but found the videos to be pretty cringy. Not that my videos aren't cringy, but I had more fun going the direction I did.

Q - How might other young artists and actors think about personal branding and craft on platforms like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram?

A - I am still trying to figure this out myself. I definitely think it's important to be on social media as an actor, since so much of the world relies on it. But I also see so many actors on social media only posting "actor" content, which I find really one-dimensional. As performers, our bodies are our instruments and our faces are our brand. As such, I think it's easy for us to be so self-focused that we get tripped up by what people actually enjoy or are entertained by. We post as a way to put ourselves out there, to show we're working on theater stuff, to say how happy and grateful we are to be involved in such-and-such production or Zoom play. But that does not attract an audience. That's "selfish content". The best thing you can do is offer value to people, whether that be information, entertainment or inspiration. Offering content that is valuable to people is what attracts them to follow you. I believe this is true across all social platforms.

Brittin Ward and his brother Titus

Q - What kind of discipline or time commitment have you developed and what might other people develop?

A - Each video I posted in the latter half of the year took around 3-4 hours to shoot, edit, and post, so it definitely required a good amount of discipline. That also does not include the time it would take to come up with a video idea and plan out the video. It sounds silly since it was only for TikTok, but I would literally storyboard my videos and break them down into increments of 5-10 seconds and plan what action I wanted to happen at which segment of the video. I basically spent all my time outside of my day job working on my videos.

Q - Why is it important for artists to build self-marketing skills?

A - Honestly, being cut off from theater was really great for me as it forced me to take stock of the direction my career was going and think creatively about how to entertain people. As an actor, I am my own business so it is solely up to me whether I succeed or fail. If I don't have the drive to keep picking myself back up after each failure and continuing to pursue my dream, it will not happen. Self-marketing is crucial for actors and entertainers, but I would emphasize the importance of not just self-promoting. No one likes that. But everyone appreciates a chuckle at a funny video, or feeling inspired to try something new because of a video they watched. I don't know who said this originally, but my dad always told me "people won't remember what you said or did, but they will remember how you made them feel.”

Q - When the pandemic is officially over (what a wonderful thought!) do you expect to remain as involved on TikTok? Or do you expect to channel your creative energies elsewhere?

A - I've really enjoyed building an audience on TikTok, and I will continue to post there, but I would also like to turn my attention to other platforms. With videos restricted to being 60 seconds long, I have a hard time creating content that connects with people on a deeper level. I don't think it's possible for a TikTok to have the same impact on a person as a great podcast or youtube video. You just can't go deep (whether it be comedy, inspiration, etc.) in 60 seconds. When the Pandemic lifts I will go back to auditioning and trying to book stage roles. However, I will continue to devote plenty of my time to making videos. I feel like I am only just now beginning to understand how all this social media stuff works, so I'd like to see what I can accomplish in another year.

- Edited by Paul Glader, executive director of MPJI.

MPJI is based at The King’s College in New York City. MPJI provides education, training and professional development projects for journalists at the high school, undergraduate and professional levels. It is named after the late John McCandlish Phillips, a legendary reporter at The New York Times.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @JMPjournalism and LinkedIn at McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute.

Q & A with Alumna and New York Time's Fellow Reporter Sydney Franklin

By Paul Glader

Sydney Franklin is a reporter covering design, architecture and real estate in the fellowship program at The New York Times this year. Earlier in her career, she attended Milligan College in Tennessee, which is a partner school to the NYC Semester in Journalism (NYCJ) program. When she was an undergraduate at Milligan, she spent a semester at the Washington Journalism Center, which closed in 2015 to merge with NYCJ and reboot in NYC. Sydney is one of the more than 300 alumni of the two programs from 41 partner schools of NYCJ, a program that helps bring students from diverse backgrounds and geographies to learn and intern for a semester in the nation's largest and most important media market. We caught up with Sydney to hear more about her journey to The Times and into her niche covering design, architecture and real estate.

Tell us about your fellowship at the NYT and what beat you are covering

I'm a reporter on the Real Estate desk. The fellowship program aligns fellows with the desks most suited to their backgrounds. For me, real estate made the most sense after spending several years in design media covering architecture and cities. I consider the beat to be the missing link in my tool kit in terms of writing about the built environment, so I’m here trying to learn as much as I can about how selling and buying real estate affects the socioeconomic landscape of the city.

Photo submitted by Sydney Franklin

There are 35 of us total in the fellowship class and we all are having wildly different experiences at The Times (think photography fellows jetting off on Air Force One vs. me calling real estate CEOs from my kitchen). We'll be here for a year then the next class will take over. Unfortunately, until there is a vaccine, I won't have the pleasure of working at The New York Times in-person… inside one of the coolest buildings in the city and of course, one designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano...my dream!

Please explain your journey to Milligan College and Syracuse and into your coverage area now at the New York Times?

Photo taken by Lauren Turner

After taking an undergraduate course on the intersection of media, the arts and religion, I decided I wanted to become an arts journalist. I knew Syracuse's Newhouse School had the first program in the country dedicated to this specialty, so I made it my mission to get in. Once there, I narrowed down my focus even further to architecture and design reporting, studying mostly in the School of Architecture to begin my education in this very dense, complicated field. My program had previously graduated alumni doing big work in New York, some of them in communications at major architecture firms and others serving as editors at the top design magazines. I followed in their footsteps in some ways but broke out into mainstream news this past year with the fellowship at NYT. I've always wanted to find my way back to newspaper reporting so I could use my depth of knowledge on cities to help tell the kinds of stories that locals need to know about the place they live...and in a pandemic where interest rates on mortgages and apartment rents have dipped to record lows, there are so many important real estate stories to share out there.

How did your semester at WJC help you in your career journey? How important was it for you to study in a major city like DC or NYC?

My semester at WJC in Washington, D.C. was the foundation for everything I'm doing today. It sparked my love of major cities and my interest in politics at the local and national levels. I interned for Street Sense Media, which reports on homelessness in D.C. and empowers people experiencing it by allowing them to take part in the organization's business model. Folks who are homeless are as much part of a city's fabric and future as anybody else and I learned how to pay attention to their stories through my beat.

What advice do you have for NYCJ students from our 41 partner schools who are spending a semester in NYC in an internship and classes?

My advice is to learn how to take micro risks. You’ve already done something big by making the decision to move to New York for this program. From here, keep building on that by making small moves every day to reach your goals, whether you want to report a certain story, meet an influential editor, or secure another internship or job. Reaching those goals will require a series of somewhat calculated and bold risks. People want to help you in this industry, so don’t be afraid to ask for what you want.

We see a challenged media industry but also an innovative one. What hope do you think exists for young people in high school or college or are considering a career in the news media today and in the future?

One of the redeeming qualities of the news industry right now is that it’s made up of people from all backgrounds, veritable experts in their own unique life experiences. You don’t have to climb the traditional ladder of journalism to get to an editorship at a major paper. Yes, you need the reporting and editing experience, but you can pursue other passions in tandem with your writing goals. One of my fellowship colleagues has a Ph.D. in immunology and is our science reporter at The Times. Let that inspire you for the future. There are some really smart people out here making the industry more innovative simply by existing in the space. There’s space for you, too.

What do you do for fun in NYC?

In pre-pandemic times, one of my favorite things to do was go to concerts. Nowadays, I'm enjoying watching the seasons change by going on longer walks in my neighborhood or even hikes outside the city. I also coach youth lacrosse in my spare time, which is something I've continued to do this fall but socially-distanced.

As someone who writes about urbanism and architecture, what are three of your favorite locations or neighborhoods in NYC?

Photo submitted by Sydney Franklin

I love this question. One of my favorite vantage points in New York is the view of FiDi from the Staten Island Ferry. I also love driving on the West Side Highway where you get a quick glimpse of all sorts of big architecture all the way from the George Washington Bridge down to Tribeca. Cycling on the Greenway works, too! My favorite building is the Bank of America Tower by Bryant Park. One time, driving home from a hike, my friend pulled out a special app that allowed us to change the colors of the antenna from our car. It was like magic.

For others who enjoy reading and thinking about urbanism, what publications - magazines, websites and newspapers - do you like to read (besides the NYT)? What related authors and thinkers do you recommend on the topic?

I highly recommend following Curbed, which now operates under New York Magazine. Justin Davidson is one of the funniest and most accessible critics out there, as well as Alexandra Lange (find her books too). I am on the advisory board of an online publication that highlights the stories of women in architecture called Madame Architect. It's so inspiring.

Paul Glader is director of the McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute and co-director of the NYC Semester in Journalism (NYCJ). If you are a journalism professor or student interested in the program, email pglader@tkc.edu.

Fall ‘20 NYCJ Students Use Internships to Cover Elections and COVID-19

NYCJ Fall 2020 students Destinee Evans and Marlena Lang having a lunch meeting with Prof. Paul Glader and Prof. Clemente Lisi

Students who are part of the NYC Semester in Journalism (NYCJ) program have had plenty of success in their internships this Fall, covering the recent presidential election and the ongoing pandemic for a number of news organizations.   

This semester’s students followed in the footsteps of past NYCJ classes by participating in the unique semester-long, off-campus study program operated by the McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute at The King’s College in NYC.

“I am most proud of two articles that I wrote for my internship at Newsweek. The first was my very first article about mail-in ballot controversies around the nation,” said Marlena Lang, a Biola student who is part of the magazine’s newly-formed fact-checking team. “I was proud of this article because not only was it my first, but it is also the longest one I have completed after spending two days researching and writing it.

Lang said the other piece she is most proud was about the Pfizer vaccine “because I pitched them the idea and then completed the research and wrote the article.”

Destinee Evans and Marlena Lang in Battery Park

Destinee Evans, a student from Olivet Nazarene University, said her internship at the New York Daily News allowed her to cover COVID-19 and its impact on the Big Apple.

“During this internship, I have been able to interview families of people who may have just lost a loved one but getting to tell amazing stories about the people they love has been rewarding,” she added. “It can be a lot to take in sometimes but getting over the fear of talking to new people is something I will take with me throughout my career.”  

Students taking part in the eleventh NYCJ cohort that chose to come to New York in person this semester took advantage of TKC’s hybrid model, a mix of both online and in person classes as well as their internship. The students are enrolled in classes including Entrepreneurial Journalism with Prof. Paul Glader and a course called The City taught by Anne Hendershott. The City course – required of all NYCJ students – also serves as an elective for King’s students.

Under the guidance of Prof. Clemente Lisi, a former editor at the New York Post and New York Daily News, the students work 20 hours per week in a New York City newsroom, earning six academic credits and pursuing bylines.

Being able to live and work in New York City remains a huge appeal to students.

“Living in New York has been an amazing experience that I was worried would not happen,” Evans said. “Getting to go different places in the city with new friends has been fun. I know it’s not the same as semesters in the past but it is still something that I will cherish.”

The New York City Semester program partners with 40 universities and colleges across the nation and globe. Apply to become a partner school by contacting Paul Glader at pglader@tkc.edu. Apply to join us as a student for a future semester by clicking here.