Portraits and Perspectives: A Look at Us: Marian Mayer Berkett: A Life and Law Career of "First" for This People's League Cofounder

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Publication year: 2022

Portraits and Perspectives: A Look at Us: Marian Mayer Berkett: A Life and Law Career of "First" for This People's League Cofounder

Marian Mayer Berkett began her law career with the firm of Deutsch & Kerrigan.

Marian Mayer Berkett has been practicing law for 61 years and is still active. Her accomplishments in the law were recognized as recently as November 1998 when the New Orleans Bar Association presented her with its Award of Special Distinction. It was noted that she had written the first treatise, or the "bible," on workers' compensation law in Louisiana while still in law school. Although she prefers to be known as a lawyer and not as a female lawyer, she has been singled out as a pioneer among women lawyers and for her role in contributing by example to the acceptance of women in the practice of law in this state. Among other firsts, she was the first woman to be accepted into an established Louisiana legal firm. She was interviewed for this article shortly after receiving the New Orleans Bar Association award.

Journal: I understand you're from Baton Rouge. Tell me a little bit about your family.

Berkett: Well, I was born in the shadow of the Old State Capitol on St. Ferdinand Street. There were only about 30,000 people in Baton Rouge at that time. My father was Maurice Mayer. He and his family came to Baton Rouge in the 1880s from Harrisonburg, Louisiana. My mother was from New Orleans. She graduated from Newcomb in 1906. I had three siblings.

In 1937, Marian Mayer, a Tulane law graduate, signed the register as a full-fledged lawyer. Standing from left, attorney Bernard Mintz; Tulane law graduate Alva S. Weatherford; Loyola law graduate Margaret Dwyer; and LSU graduate John Overton, Jr., son of the United States senator. Photo reprinted from the New Orleans States-Item (July 1, 1937).

Journal: After you graduated from Baton Rouge High School in 1929, you went to Louisiana State University, right?

Berkett: Yes. I majored in journalism and, since I was so absolutely intrigued by political science, I minored in that. After I graduated, I got a scholarship to the Geneva School of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. While I was there, I met Manly Hudson who is generally considered the father of international legislation. He was teaching at Harvard and he suggested that, while I couldn't come to Harvard because they didn't allow women, I take classes at Radcliffe and he would get me a scholarship there and I could then audit his courses. It sounded wonderful. Now this is 1933. Hitler had just come to power. I'm Jewish. I came home and applied to Radcliffe and they said that, in order to qualify, I had to have a reading knowledge of German. I had never taken German and the last language I wanted to learn at that point was German. So I decided not to go to Radcliffe.

I came back to LSU and got my master's in political science. My master's thesis was on workman's compensation. The thesis was eventually published as Workman's Compensation Law in Louisiana.

Marian Mayer Berkett has spent her 61-year law career with the firm of Deutsch, Kerrigan & Stiles. Photo by Joe Bergeron.

Journal: Then you went to law school. Why law? Was it because of your experience in writing that book?

Berkett: I wrote the book the summer after my first year of law school. I went to law school because I was interested in the law. What started my interest was international law and, of course, political science.

Journal: How many ladies did they have at LSU Law School when you started?

Berkett: I can't remember any others, but there may have been. I don't think there was anybody else in my class.

Journal: I've been told that Huey Long ran you out of the LSU Law School. What was that all about?

Berkett: Well, this was in the era of the Longs and the anti-Longs. It seems that I was the only vocal anti-Long person in the whole of the law school. One day the dean of the law school called me into the office and said, "Somebody's got to shoot that man. He's just a tyrant." That's the dean of the law school talking to a freshman student.

Journal: That's more information than you needed.

Berkett: I understood where he was coming from. My phone was tapped. I was followed.

Journal: And when they say you were vocal, what does that mean?

Berkett: Well, I went around making speeches. And I expressed myself at the law school. I had to go out of East Baton Rouge for a while. Martial law was declared in Baton Rouge. No more than two people could stop to talk to one another on the street. That lasted a short time.

Journal: I never heard about that.

Berkett: Well, you see, a lot of people never heard of it because, when T. Harry Williams wrote the book on Huey Long he only talked with the Longs. He did not talk to anyone else. He never got the whole story.

Journal: So what would you go speak about?

Berkett: About Huey Long and what a tyrant he was. He was beating people up. He was doing all kinds of things. He had absolute power.

In 1939, members of the Special Committee of the People's League (with league cofounder Marian Mayer, seated) publicly inspected 1,062 names of the Orleans Parish grand jury venire. Photo reprinted from the New Orleans States-Item (Aug. 9, 1939).

Journal: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Berkett: Absolutely. Look what happened to The Reveille, the LSU student newspaper. Every one of those people had to resign and go off somewhere else. I'm a journalism student, remember? At that time, I had graduated in journalism and, although I was not on The Reveille's staff, I could put myself in their position. Huey Long wanted to tell them what they could write.

Well, that was the worst thing that could happen to someone with training in journalism. They all just went to the University of Missouri that had a good journalism school. Huey Long had a gestapo long before Hitler understood how to do one.

Journal: I understand you had your phone tapped and you were followed, is that right?

Berkett: Well, I think so. Anyway, I came down to Tulane as a result of all that.

Journal: Tell me how you made the decision to leave LSU.

Berkett: That was easy. I just felt so uncomfortable, so isolated.

Journal: What about the rest of the students at the law school? Were they Longs and you were the only anti-Long?

Berkett: It was hard to get them to reveal themselves. In Louisiana, everybody has cousins and so forth and if one of them spoke up against Long the whole family got the axe. There were economic reprisals and so forth. So I decided to come down to Tulane and that was the smartest thing I ever did.

Journal: When you were in Tulane Law School were you still vocal about the Longs?

Berkett: Oh, yeah, and even afterwards. When we graduated in '37, things were still pretty bad in Louisiana.

Journal: Tell me about the organization which you cofounded—the People's League.

Berkett: A bunch of us who graduated in the Tulane class of '37 got together and decided we can do something about this. It's youth and enthusiasm and optimism and we did do something about it. We organized the People's League. When we started the group, we all agreed that anyone who joined the group must agree he was not going to run for any public office. That was not the purpose of that organization. All agreed, except Hale Boggs. Hale said he couldn't agree with that. He said he wanted to go into politics.

We thought about it and decided that, look, here's the kind of guy that we'd like to see in public office, so we made an exception for him. We had a small group. We didn't have any money, but we had some access to the press and we sounded big.

We had a committee for everything you could think of and it was plastered all over the paper, giving the impression that we were thousands, although we were only a few dozen. When we met, each person could put in 10 cents—that's how we tried to finance all this. That's all we could afford. When we got out of law school, I was the highest paid. I got $125 a month. Some of my fellow students worked for nothing just to get training.

Journal: I hear your organization targeted the district attorney of Orleans Parish.

Berkett: The story of how we got rid of him is a spectacular story.

We decided that the reason nobody was doing anything about all this corruption was because there was something wrong at the criminal court. We didn't know whether it was with jury selection or the district attorney. One of the photographs accompanying this interview depicts our surveillance of the jury selection. We all gathered around where they had this big fishbowl. We had a professional investigation of each person picked to see who he was and whether he would be a desirable grand jury member. Then we were officious enough to suggest to the court who should be chosen out of the 144 for the grand jury. We gave the judge all the information we had assembled and told him whom he should choose. Well, the judge did not berate us for being officious but he didn't exactly follow our advice. It turns out that the people he did select were people we welcomed because they revolted against the district attorney. The district attorney refused to bring...