By Bob Gaydos
A lot of people see no problem with the unrelenting decimation of the traditional news business, with newspapers and news magazines closing or severely reducing their staffs, with people having to rely on rip-and-read radio reports or superficial cable news shows that provide more heat than light or Internet blogs (not this one) that have only a passing acquaintance with the facts.
I’m not one of those people. I recognize the importance of the bottom line to any business, but I also know the value of the byline in the news business. That is, I still think it’s crucial for readers of the news to be able to trust the source of it, to have confidence they are getting the true depth and breadth of the story they’re reading. Without context in our lives, all we have is a series of unrelated happenings and historians take too long to tie things together for us. When newspapers or news services cut loose their most experienced hands to save money, this context inevitably suffers.
Which is a too-long, somewhat self-serving way to say, “Did you see what C. Vernon Mason is doing these days?”
“Who the heck is C. Vernon Mason?” some of you (the younger ones) are asking, and “Why should I care what he’s doing these days?”
Well, see now, context.
Let me do this in order. First off, if, like all news organizations, you depend on the Associated Press for the bulk of your news of the world, you wouldn‘t know about Mason’s recent activity because the reporter who wrote a story in which his name came up apparently didn’t know who he was or why it might be significant to include his name in the story. On Nov. 5, the AP New York bureau moved a story on the transition team named by newly elected Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. Vance will succeed the legendary Robert Morgenthau, who is retiring after 35 years in the office. To help him make the transition, Vance has named a 37-person team of advisers, including, the AP tells us, “a noted sex-crimes prosecutor, wrongful-conviction experts, a state ethics official …a former judge … a seminary professor, a diversity consultant, union officials” and so forth.
That unnamed seminary professor? C. Vernon Mason. Why is that newsworthy in a story about people chosen to help a new DA get off to a solid start? Two words: Tawana Brawley.
Mason was one of a trio of black community leaders (Al Sharpton and Alton Maddox were the others) who turned justice on its head and ignited a racial firestorm that engulfed New York and much of the country in 1987 and ‘88 by promoting a hoax initiated by a 15-year-old black girl from Wappingers Falls. Tawana Brawley was found in a garbage bag on the grounds of an apartment complex. Her clothes were torn and she was covered in feces. On her chest, “nigger” and “KKK” had been written. She told police who found her that she had been abducted by several white men (one of whom wore a badge) who raped her over a period of days, then smeared the feces on her and chopped off her hair.
None of it was true. Police and forensic experts found no evidence to support any of her accusations and witnesses contradicted her story. Yet Mason and his cohorts turned the accusations of a teenaged girl afraid of being punished for not coming home into a crusade to attack the police and justice system as racist and corrupt. By their own admission, they never questioned Brawley about the details of the alleged attack, instead holding press conferences and going on TV talk shows to hurl even more inflammatory accusations. The attackers were police officers, they said. One was an assistant DA, they said.
None of it was true. A grand jury tossed out Brawley’s charges. Her advisers never let her talk to the jury. Ten years later, a civil jury found Brawley and her three advisers guilty of defaming the assistant DA, Stephen Pagones. The jury ordered payment of damages, some $185,000 from Mason. Ten years later, Pagones says most of that has not been paid.
More context. Seven years after the Brawley hoax, Mason was disbarred by a New York court which cited “a pattern of professional misconduct” of at least six years.
The five-judge panel mentioned “repeated neglect of client matters, many of which concerned criminal cases where a client’s liberty was at stake; misrepresentations to clients; refusal to refund the unearned portion of fees” and the use of non-lawyers.
According to The New York Times, the court also noted that “virtually all the clients were low- or moderate-income persons” who had retained Mr. Mason “because of his reputation in the community as a representative of the disadvantaged.” (Footnote: Maddox, also a lawyer, was also disbarred.)
Today, Mason is indeed, as the AP told us, a visiting professor of urban youth ministry at New York Theological Seminary. He is also a deacon in a Baptist church in Harlem. And he heads a non-profit agency that helps troubled youth. He is, according to the head of Vance’s transition team, “a well-respected clergy member who cares deeply about his community and the criminal justice issues faced by youth and adults.” We know this only because the New York Daily News apparently still employs some people with institutional memory. The paper ran a story on Mason and Vance the day after the AP story was posted.
Mason, as usual, had nothing to say about his being named to a team to help a DA when he had spend so many years ruining the life of another DA. A story several years ago in The Times portrayed him as a man who had learned a lesson, that his old trash-and-burn methods of confrontation may not have been the best way to advance the legitimate grievances of the black community he represented — the community he took advantage of in his law practice. Time, he told, The Times, “alters roles and relationships.” He said then, in 2000, that he wished he might have been a more efficient lawyer and maybe he should have done things differently with the Brawley case.
But he never apologized. Not to Pagones. Not to police in Dutchess County who were labeled racist and rapists. Not to the community at large, which he led into a racial firestorm. Not even to the clients he cheated.
And try as I did, in countless hours on the Internet, I could not find any instance since then in which the words C. Vernon Mason and apology appear together in the usual manner. And I have a problem with that. I am a big fan of second, even third, chances. Lord knows, life is tough enough to get right the first time. But I am also a believer in making amends and taking responsibility for one’s sins, if you will. As a man of the church, I would have thought Mason would recognize the healing power of coming clean and moving on, rather than just moving on.
I would apparently be wrong. So I have a problem believing that Mason has totally dropped his con. Maybe I‘m being too cynical and rigid here, but I’m one of those who well remembers what the Brawley case did to the mid-Hudson and how Sharpton, Mason and Maddox built up their street creds in the black community by perpetuating a cruel, dangerous hoax.
As for Vance (whose father was secretary of state for Jimmy Carter) seeking advice from Mason, well, in 1985 (two years before Brawley) Mason ran for the very same office Vance just won. Mason pulled a shocking 32 percent of the vote against Morgenthau, who, by the way, says the Brawley case is “ancient history.” But some of the same issues Mason ran on against Morgenthua 24 years ago still exist. And Mason, unrepentant though he may be, remains a prominent figure in Harlem. Politics, as always, is about context.
Bob can reached at bob@zestoforange.com.
By Carrie Jacobson