Lewis, Anthony -- Interview by Victor Geminiani, 1993 Mar 18

Item

Identifier: NEJL-009.049

Staff Only

Video/Transcript of interview with Anthony Lewis (NEJL-009.049)

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Lewis recalls how he became involved in Gideon v. Wainwright after seeing Gideon’s petition in the Supreme Court file room on June 4th, 1962, the day the Court agreed to hear the case.

He also recalls his impressions after meeting with Clarence Gideon in the prison library of the Raiford Penitentiary.

Dates

1993 Mar 18

Creator

Lewis, Anthony (Person)

Biographical / Historical

Anthony Lewis (March 27, 1927 – March 25, 2013) was a U.S. journalist, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a longtime NY Times columnist.

Lewis graduated from Harvard College in 1948, and started working for the New York Times. After working for the DNC on Adlai Stevenson's presidential campaign, and writing for the Washington daily News, he returned to the New York Times as the Washington bureau chief, where he was assigned to cover the Justice Department and the Supreme Court.

In 1963, in the category National Reporting, he won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court. During a four-month newspaper strike (November 1962 to February 1963), Lewis wrote Gideon’s Trumpet, the story of Clarence Earl Gideon, the plaintiff in Gideon v. Wainwright, the 1963 case in which the Supreme Court held that states were required to provide counsel for indigent defendants charged with serious crimes.