“You ought to think about doing a podcast!”

In the beginning we held a series of special events at our partner law schools in Georgia that we called Hidden Legal Figures: Conversations with the Unsung. They were about the lawyers and judges who - in the words of law professor Harry Kalven, Jr. - made the civil rights movement “the first revolution in history to be conducted on advice of counsel.”

After a special event at the Southern Conference of Bar Presidents, one of our supporters mentioned how this would be ideal for a broader audience and said, “you ought to think about doing a podcast!”

And with that simple suggestion, Hidden Legal Figures: The Podcast was born.

Few people know that legal and judicial efforts ensuring civil and human rights span the entirety of our nation’s history. Hidden Legal Figures rediscovers those untold stories and brings them into plain view in a way that is entertaining, educational, and compelling. And we found our first stories in one of the most pivotal moments in American history - the civil rights movement.

Our episodes - or exhibits as we like to call them - bring to life the courtroom battles and professional brilliance that were a major part of the social forces connected to the civil rights movement. In the 32 inaugural episodes we recalled the legal efforts associated with some familiar events, like the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the sit-ins, and the historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. And we highlighted the not-so-familiar; lawyers like Donald Lee Hollowell, Constance Baker Motley, Noah Parden, James Weldon Johnson, and Sadie Mossell Alexander and judges like Jane Bolin, Frank M. Johnson, and Judge William Augustus Bootle to name a few.

We have plans to expand the storytelling to include a visual component - something like, but not quite, a documentary. And we have more legal figures to feature, like Raymond Pace Alexander, Charles Hamilton Houston, Pauli Murray, Elbert Parr Tuttle, Eunice Carter, and many, many more!

Hidden Legal Figures is more than a podcast. We’re an oral museum and we invite you to step inside and join us as some of the nation's foremost experts in law and history explore the heroic and vital contributions lawyers and judges made, explain what that role meant to the nation then, and examine what it means for us today.