PBS Hawaii spotlights civil rights lawyer

Advertiser Staff

Advertiser library photo 'Biography Hawai'i: Harriet Bouslog' 8 p.m. tomorrow; repeats 8 p.m. Saturday PBS

Tomorrow on PBS Hawaii, in "Biography Hawai'i: Harriet Bouslog," director and editor Joy Chong-Stannard, writer Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, and series scholar Craig Howes take an in-depth look at the colorful and contentious lawyer and the improbable successes that marked her career.

Bouslog's words are brought to life by actress Bridget Kelly, with segments shot in the Merchant Street law office where Bouslog practiced.

Bouslog may be best known for her defense of 400 striking International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers in 1946. Combining the cases into the first omnibus civil rights suit in Hawai'i, Bouslog and her law partner, Myer Symonds, challenged the constitutionality of a law against unlawful assembly and riot applied to the strikers' picketing activities. The cases were eventually dropped.

When the ILWU staged a dock strike three years later, Bouslog argued against the mostly white composition of the grand jury that indicted Asian workers.

Her achievements — including her pivotal role in ending the death penalty in Hawai'i — were particularly notable given the times.

Bouslog was one of only a handful of women lawyers practicing in Hawai'i in the 1940s and 1950s, and she represented clients who were in opposition to Hawai'i's power elite. And she didn't escape unscathed.

Bouslog was disbarred for comments she made during the Hawai'i Seven trial of alleged communists. She was reinstated in a historic decision by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The show provides on-camera comments from retired ILWU social worker and University of Hawai'i regent Ah Quon McElrath, Georgetown law professor Mari J. Matsuda, retired ILWU organizer James Tanaka, Judge Samuel P. King, civil rights attorney Eric Seitz, Bouslog's husband Stephen Sawyer, and others. Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson narrates.