Historian, Court Justice Give Voice to Wife's Memoir

Publishers weren't interested in this memoir, at least not until The New York Times reported on it in Page 1 article last summer. Now the edited manuscript - which is the result of collaboration between Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and UC associate professor of history Linda Przybyszewski - will be released in May as a title by Modern Library of Random House.

Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854-1911 represents a triumph for Ginsburg and Przybyszewski, who share an interest in a long-overlooked topic: the wives of Supreme Court Justices. Written by a woman who lived at the threshold of history, the memoir by Malvina Shanklin Harlan chronicles her life and marriage with Justice John Marshall Harlan. The Civil War, the end of slavery and her husband's most famous decision in dissenting the Supreme Court's "separate but equal" ruling all provide the historical backdrop to her account.

Written at a time when all Supreme Court justices' spouses were women, the typed manuscript had come to Ginsburg's attention when she decided to focus on the wives of Supreme Court justices for a lecture. Przybyszewski had researched it while working on her biography of Justice Harlan, The Republic According to John Marshall Harlan. After publishers rejected Ginsburg's idea of publishing it, the Journal of Supreme Court History stepped forward, devoting an entire issue to it in July 2001 and hiring Pryzybyszewski to edit it.

With a foreword by Ginsburg plus an introduction and 207 footnotes by Przybyszewski, the journal caught the attention of Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse. Her page 1 article in The New York Times in August 2001 prompted a bidding war among a dozen or more publishers. At least one of them had rejected the book the first time around.

Despite all Przybyszewski's work on the volume, the UC associate professor of history will not enjoy the monetary benefits of the publishing frenzy. The journal and Harlan descendents hold the rights to the memoir.

Prior to the journal publication, the Supreme Court Historical Society provided $10,000 to Przybyszewski to edit and annotate the work. Assisting her were UC graduate students Kelly Wright, Gregory Long and Stephen Rockenbach and the journal's managing editor, Clare Cushman.

The upcoming Random House edition will contain Przybyszewski's footnotes and original introduction as an afterword.

Why should anyone care what Mrs. Harlan has to say? One reason, says Justice Ginsburg, is that there are so few primary source materials that have been preserved about the lives of 19th-century women. Another, adds Przybyszewski, is that Malvina's husband was an early civil rights champion. His lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the case that made "separate but equal" the racial law of the land until the 1950s, makes him a complex figure for historians. His wife's words help to understand him.

Justice Harlan is all the more difficult to comprehend because he was the son of a Kentucky slave-holding family. Born near Danville, Ky., he served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1877 to 1911. He voted in over 14,000 decisions and wrote more than 700 majority opinions, said Przybyszewski. Some of them were among "the most famous words uttered from the bench on behalf of the country's black citizens," the historian noted.

Mrs. Harlan opens her memoir with the day she met her husband in 1854 and concludes with his funeral in 1911. Writing four years after his death, Malvina herself died within a year of completing her book. Like Justice Ginsburg today, her children tried to get it published, but no publisher was willing. The text ended up in the Library of Congress among John Harlan's papers. There it stayed until Ginsburg and Przybyszewski took an interest in it.

A native of Evansville, Ind., Mrs. Harlan writes of her experiences as a 17-year-old "northern" bride moving to her husband's slave-holding household in Kentucky. "All my kindred were strongly opposed to Slavery, the 'peculiar institution' of the South," she writes. "Indeed an uncle on my mother's side, with whom I was a great favorite, was such an out-and-out abolitionist that I think. . . he would rather have seen me in my grave than have me marry a Southern man and go to live in the South."

She also writes of her duty as a justice's wife to host "at-home" Monday receptions in Washington. Up to 200-300 visitors would stop by for refreshments, such as salad and cake. She speaks of her friendship with "Lemonade Lucy," First Lady Lucy Hayes, nicknamed for her practice of temperance.

The historian who has helped to bring Malvina's words to light has sometimes been scoffed at by fellow academics, who questioned why anyone would care what a justice's wife had to say. Przybyszewski (teaching, above left) replies: "How would you know if you never bothered to listen to them?"

Mrs. Harlan also held the distinction of being grandmother to another Supreme Court Justice, the second John Marshall Harlan, who served from 1955 to 1971.

"The idea that she (Malvina) would have nothing to tell us other than a few anecdotes is ridiculous. She has a lot to tell us," said Przybyszewski.

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