March 10, 2026
How A Flint Attorney Helped Strike Down Virginia’s Poll Tax And Changed American Voting Rights
A Flint lawyer helped end a Jim Crow relic—and the hometown paper barely noticed. We sit down with Robert Steiger, a retired civil rights attorney whose argument before the Warren Court contributed to striking down Virginia’s poll tax. From Detroit roots and Michigan training to a chance move to Flint, Bob’s journey shows how a small, principled firm can punch far above its weight. He recalls colleagues who marched in Mississippi, the chill of the McCarthy era, and the National Lawyers Guild network that backed embattled Southern lawyers when local support collapsed.
Bob opens the courtroom door and walks us through strategy, nerves, and the give-and-take of a hot bench. He explains how the poll tax worked as voter suppression in plain sight, why a 1930s defeat set the stage for a 1960s victory, and how a 6–3 decision ended poll taxes in five states. We talk about the paradox of recognition—headlines in Time and the New York Times, silence in Flint—and what that says about local power and memory. For legal nerds and history fans, there’s rich detail: direct appeals, divided argument time, and the Warren Court’s role in expanding voting rights.
Beyond the spotlight case, Bob shares decades of trial craft and the quiet power of mediation. He argues that facts carry more weight than doctrine, that civility is a professional asset, and that a strong bar culture can keep hard fights human. Honors like “Champion of Justice” and the Herb Milliken civility award mark a career defined by principle over posture. If you care about voting rights history, Supreme Court storytelling, and the everyday choices that shape justice, this is your listen.
Enjoyed the conversation? Follow, rate, and share the show, then email us your thoughts at radiofreeflint@gmail.com. Your reviews help others find thoughtful stories rooted in Flint and relevant nationwide.
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Chapters
00:00 - Host Welcome & Guest Intro
02:55 - Early Life And Path To Law
05:20 - Choosing Flint And Firm Culture
08:10 - Civil Rights Activism And Risk
12:34 - McCarthy Era And Legal Courage
14:18 - National Lawyers Guild Support
17:02 - Enter The Poll Tax Fight
20:12 - Supreme Court Strategy And Argument
23:02 - Warren Court And Media Silence At Home
25:12 - Decision Impact: Poll Taxes Ended
27:02 - Litigation Craft And Creative Lawyering
28:57 - Mediation And ADR Philosophy
30:22 - Honors, Civility, And Bar Culture
32:12 - Michigan Supreme Court Reflections
34:02 - Facts Over Law And Final Thoughts
35:46 - Closing Notes And Music Credits
Transcript
WEBVTT
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Hello, this is Arthur Bush, and you're listening to Radio Free Flint.
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Thanks for joining us today.
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Our guest today in this episode is Robert Steager, a retired Flint area lawyer who is well known for his work in civil rights.
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Mr.
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Steeger was involved in a case, Butts vs.
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Virginia, in which his advocacy before the United States Supreme Court resulted in the Virginia Poltact in 1966 being declared illegal.
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Poltects, of course, was the relic of Jim Crow in voter suppression attempting to keep African Americans from voting.
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Mr.
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Speager argued that case with former Supreme Court Justice of the late Thurgood Marshall, who at the time was the United States Solicitor General.
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Bob Speager attended Princeton University, the University of Michigan, as well as Wayne State University.
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He obtained his law degree from the University of Michigan and a master's degree in taxation from Wayne State University.
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He's practiced law in the Flynn area for approximately 60 years with the law firm of Dean Dean Speager Hart and Coleman.
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That law firm is one of the premier civil rights practitioners in the state of Michigan.
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The law firm involved itself in a great number of unpopular clauses and worked extensively during the civil rights era to seek to undo the Jim Crow laws that had emerged after the Civil War.
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The group, some of the lawyers participated in marches in Mississippi for justice for African Americans.
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And Mr.
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Seeger himself has been given many accolades for his work.
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He's highly regarded by the lawyers throughout our state and our country for his dedication and his professionalism.
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He's received accolades from the State Bar of Michigan, the Tennessee County Bar of Michigan, just to name a couple.
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He is a champion of justice and has been named such by the State Bar of Michigan.
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I'm sure you'll enjoy this bit of Flint history and national history.
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Mr.
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Steeger was kind enough to join us.
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He's retired with his wife now in Ann Arbor.
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Thank you for listening to Radio Free Flint.
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We took a little vacation.
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We're back.
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We hope that you will subscribe to our podcast, like us on Apple, Spotify, or any of your favorite platforms, and rate this podcast episode as to whether you like it.
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That helps us to know for future programming.
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If you'd like to communicate with us, please send us a note at radiofreeflint at gmail.com.
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Here we go.
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Here's Mr.
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Seger.
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Thank you for listening.
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And it's really a pleasure, and as I said earlier, an honor to have you, Robert.
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Thank you for joining Radio Free Flint.
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Well, thanks for having me.
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Well, I want to get right into this because you're one of those guys that I don't know a lawyer in our region that doesn't have the highest respect for you.
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You've been given quite a few, you've been given some awards that reflect that over your long career.
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Let's talk a little bit about where you, you know, how you got to Flint, how long you were in Flint, and and all that kind of stuff.
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Okay.
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Well, it was uh kind of by chance, but what happened is this both my father and my brother were doctors, MDs.
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And I assumed that I would end up doing that too, and I was in a pre-medical course at the University of Michigan.
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But as it turned out, all the courses involved in going into medicine, all the science courses like embryology and biology, I didn't like them, and I didn't do all that well in them either.
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So I finally decided at one point that it was silly for me to go on wanting to be a doctor when I didn't really enjoy that kind of work.
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I had to think what I was going to do, I wasn't going to be a doctor.
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And the only thing that was left was law school.
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And so I thought, well, I'll give it a try and see how it works out.
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And as it turned out, it was a very fortunate choice for me because it turned out to be a really good career and one that I found very enjoyable and very rewarding.
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It just that's that's what happened.
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I was by default, I guess that you'd say went to law school as opposed to some other place.
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Where were you raised at?
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I was born in Detroit, went to school in high school in Detroit, Mumford High School, stayed in in Detroit, went to the University of Michigan after a year at Princeton my freshman year, and then I went to University of Michigan for my undergraduate degree, and then law school degree also for Michigan.
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And when I got out of law school, I went to interview for jobs, and I went with a rather staid conservative law firm in Detroit, which has been out of existence for quite a while now, and I stayed there a couple of years, but I was really not happy because, like all young, youngish lawyers, I was given kind of the scut work to do.
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And after a couple of years, I was ready to try something else, something a little more sophisticated.
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I was in Flint as doing some legal work, and I ran into an old friend from Detroit, a lawyer, and he asked me after we chatted a while, he asked me if I was interested in coming to Flint to work.
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Well, at the time, I never dreamed that that's what would happen ultimately, but as it turns out, he took me to meet his partners.
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It was a small law firm, five or six lawyers at that time.
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And my wife and I liked it.
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They took us out for a Saturday's outing and restaurants, etc.
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And we liked the city, and we just decided to make the move, much to our own surprise, because we're not that adventuresome, but that's what exactly what we did.
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You went to the Ivy League school and then left to come back to Michigan.
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Yes.
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Yes, I wasn't happy at Princeton, mostly because of the lack of social life there.
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At that time, it was an all-male school.
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It was just uh there was no dating.
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Drinking was the big thing, and I wasn't a big drinker or any kind of a drinker, really.
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And so I just was unhappy there.
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Social life was was absent.
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Now, at the University of Michigan, you you were an undergrad at U of M, and then you went to their law school.
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Yes.
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You got a specialty in tax, you got an advanced degree in tax law.
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Right, yes.
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I did get them after I was out practicing a few years in Flint.
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I did uh go back and get a master's at Wayne State University.
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When you came to Flint, it was a much different place than it is today.
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Yes, much bigger and thriving.
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I was going to mention that it's uh it was just a wonderful place.
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Wages were high, work was there, and for a young lawyer in particular starting out, it was a great place because the big law firms at that time weren't interested in sending people to Flint, lawyers to Flint to do work there.
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They would prefer any matter in Flint to a Flint lawyer, or not to a Flint lawyer, but to another lawyer.
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It was uh an exciting time in Flint at that at that time.
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Obviously, that changed at some point.
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You went on to your father, you said was practicing medicine.
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Was that in Detroit?
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Yeah, that was in Detroit.
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And my brother was a surgeon, a general surgeon, he was in Dayton, Ohio.
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You had you didn't have any relatives.
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Stay with us.
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We'll be right back.
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You're listening to Radio Free Flint, a production of the Mitten Channel.
00:08:09.439 --> 00:08:23.519
This is where Flint kids move from standlocked to professional baseball, and church musicians become Hollywood composers, where poets born of the water crisis, plane crash survivors, and victims of the Flint airport attack tell stories of survival.
00:08:23.759 --> 00:08:34.480
If you value reporting that treats these lives with the seriousness of a high court argument, grounded in the real history, culture, and resilience of Flint Michigan and its people, then take the next step.
00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:36.960
Join us on the Mitten channel on Substack.
00:08:37.200 --> 00:08:47.279
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00:08:47.440 --> 00:08:51.440
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00:08:51.600 --> 00:08:55.360
To hear full audio interviews, go to radiofreeflint.media.
00:08:55.519 --> 00:08:56.960
Now back to the podcast.
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Thank you for listening.
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No, no, none.
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There's no question, it was a wonderful place for a young lawyer, maybe a young businessman, but certainly a young lawyer just had a shingle, as you said, and you could earn a good living right almost from the start.
00:10:07.440 --> 00:10:09.279
So that was it was a good place for that.
00:10:09.839 --> 00:10:14.559
Tell us about the firm that you joined and describe some of the people that you worked with.
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Okay, well, when we decided to move to Flint, much to our surprise, as I mentioned, I was with this firm.
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Actually, I think I was the fifth lawyer that they hired.
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And it was a very liberal firm, as opposed to the first firm I worked for in Detroit, which was very state and conservative.
00:10:33.119 --> 00:10:38.480
But this Flint firm was very active in civil rights, and there's some interesting stories about that.
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Uh went to Mississippi.
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In fact, maybe two of them did at that time.
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It spent a lot of time to march in the civil rights marches and to do other things having to do with civil rights.
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Our firm was very active in that regard.
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And I'm sure we'll get into it later on.
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That I have received a rare uh chance to participate in a case in the U.S.
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Supreme Court involving the civil rights issue having to do with the poll taxes down south.
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Other partners of mine, as I mentioned, were going to Mississippi.
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And I want to say that going to Mississippi in those days to do civil rights work was a dangerous, dangerous undertaking.
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Really, it was we all know about Emma Till and lots of other people who had uh had problems there.
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That part of it, they were we were very active and it was a pleasure to be involved with the firm.
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Max Dean was involved in the, as I was told, in some kind of representation involving people that were hauled before McC the Senator McCarthy's committee when he was investigating communists.
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Right.
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Well, this was shortly before I got up to Flint and started working there.
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There were two lawyers in Flint who had been together in law schools as his students, and they and did things like, as I said, go to Mississippi, etc., etc.
00:12:04.799 --> 00:12:07.200
Yeah, Max, you mentioned Max Dean's name.
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But Max Dean and Mort Leedson were the two that were together as students.
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They did lots of things.
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One of them was they signed a petition for saving the Rosenbergs.
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You may remember Russian, alleged Russian agents, and uh but people felt they didn't get a fair trial and they were sentenced to death, and people who were activists who were concerned about justice, etc., thought that they should get another chance, that the what trial wasn't fair, the judge wasn't fair.
00:12:38.960 --> 00:12:46.319
So they filed, signed a petition saying some of these things, and it somehow got into the hands of the McCarthy hearing.
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People don't and today there aren't a lot of people who may not remember that, but there was a communist scare and there were blacklists out in Hollywood, California.
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If if anybody ever thought you might have breathed the leftist uh breath, you could be accused.
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It was like witches.
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I guess you'd say it was like a witch hunt.
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And uh so anyway, the two lawyers in my firm that I'm talking about were called before the Un-American Activities Committee from Washington.
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For the sake of posterity, explain, Bob, what the National Lawyers Guild was, because you were active uh uh active with them, and what was their importance not only in the 60s and the civil rights movement, but what's their importance in general?
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Well, it was, as I said, it was it was a it was a law firm, and there's no question about that, that uh that's what it was, but it was extremely what would be called in those days left-wing or liberal, and they took on cases.
00:13:46.640 --> 00:13:52.720
There was the name there was the National Lawyers Guild, and then there was a subgroup called the Committee to Assist Southern Lawyers.
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And what those committee, those lawyers did in that committee volunteered, they volunteered to handle cases down south, both lawsuits and just doing legal work for leaks for Southern lawyers, because for the Southern lawyers down it was uh not very healthy if you were a Southern lawyer trying to help a civil rights matter of the way the atmosphere was down there.
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They we were we got a call one day from the Ernie Goodman, who was a star uh civil rights attorney in uh in the Michigan area and beyond, actually.
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And our firm uh was asked if we would be willing to handle a civil rights case on a volunteer basis, and uh we jumped at the chance.
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You were helping Southern lawyers because often they would become blacklisted, is what I understood.
00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:46.960
Yeah, right.
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Well, what I understood was that there was a great need for civil rights litigators, and and these people that were lawyers in some of these communities just couldn't do that for a lot of reasons, not the least of which they'd be blacklisted or you know, bothered by bar associations and so forth.
00:15:06.880 --> 00:15:08.559
Is that is that the way it worked?
00:15:08.960 --> 00:15:10.160
Yeah, yes.
00:15:10.400 --> 00:15:12.240
And that's it worked.
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And uh, we there were, of course, was local counsel that this was this this case was involved the poll tax, which is an old uh one the one you worked on did, but you know, guys like Max Dean and others, they they worked on a lot of other issues, didn't they?
00:15:28.160 --> 00:15:38.960
Oh well, yeah, a lot of other other civil rights besides besides the poll tax, but most of their work was as far as I can recall right now, had to do with similar kinds of things.
00:15:39.039 --> 00:15:45.680
Although I know the Max spent some time in the law office, actually in the law office down in Virginia helping lawyers out there.
00:15:45.920 --> 00:15:49.200
And now they were also involved in other matters, as you might guess.
00:15:49.279 --> 00:15:58.480
That was during the Vietnam War andor after, maybe the Vietnam War was afterwards, but they were much involved in that, particularly Max.
00:15:59.039 --> 00:16:08.880
And then eventually what happened was you got involved in a case in Virginia, which was called the Evelyn Butts case.
00:16:09.200 --> 00:16:09.839
Right.
00:16:10.319 --> 00:16:15.839
That case was one of the most significant of the civil rights cases.
00:16:16.559 --> 00:16:29.599
You know, there was a whole period of time where you had board versus Brown of Education in the 50s, and then there became uh quite a bit of litigation over Jim Crow laws, basically.
00:16:29.759 --> 00:16:31.359
Uh right.
00:16:31.680 --> 00:16:34.079
So let's talk about the Evelyn Butts case.
00:16:34.160 --> 00:16:36.640
How how did you get involved in it?
00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:41.200
And just tell us how it played out because it's quite an exciting story.
00:16:41.680 --> 00:16:47.920
Well, as I mentioned, we were it was the poll tax case or the Butts case, which uh we got involved in.
00:16:48.079 --> 00:16:53.599
We were asked if we would be willing to contribute our services, which as I said, we kind of jumped at the chance.
00:16:53.839 --> 00:17:02.960
And the poll tax was a simply a voter suppression issue that came into uh being after Reconstruction and the Civil War.
00:17:03.119 --> 00:17:10.160
And what it was essentially was a it was a fee for voting that they if you if you hadn't paid your poll tax case, you couldn't vote.
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You have to automatically disqualified.
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And it was kind of a sham.
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I mean lawyers uh or the or the the government in Virginia didn't really want to collect this tax or this fee, so it was discouraged.
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But then if when people hadn't paid it and tried to vote, they wouldn't be allowed to vote.
00:17:30.160 --> 00:17:34.880
So it was uh it was just a gym, you're right, a Jim Crow voter suppression kind of law.
00:17:35.519 --> 00:17:42.720
It was targeted basically in its in its simplest terms to keep uh African Americans from voting.
00:17:43.359 --> 00:17:44.319
Absolutely, yeah.
00:17:44.480 --> 00:17:50.559
And it was clear from its history that that's what it was that was was what it was supposed to do.
00:17:50.720 --> 00:18:01.360
And the same statute, this Virginia law, which we were involved in, had been attacked before on a civil rights basis, back in the 1930s, I think around 1935.
00:18:01.680 --> 00:18:09.200
And the US Supreme Court at that time denied that there was anything wrong with it and found against the plaintiffs in that case.
00:18:09.360 --> 00:18:13.680
But it was a different time when I got involved in it than the 1960s.
00:18:13.840 --> 00:18:19.680
Actually, it was in the case was brought, I believe, in 1965 and decided, I think in 60, 1966.
00:18:20.080 --> 00:18:28.160
So that involved uh getting involved in a lawsuit in Virginia with a law firm, law having a local law firm down there.
00:18:28.640 --> 00:18:37.920
And we brought the case in the the United States District Court, and we lost in the United States District Court very quickly, didn't take any time at all.
00:18:38.240 --> 00:18:42.640
But we appealed, and at that time there was a direct appeal from to the U.S.
00:18:42.799 --> 00:18:51.440
Supreme Court in certain civil rights cases, and you you you you you could get into the court then, because most cases from the U.S.
00:18:51.600 --> 00:18:57.680
Supreme Court are only by the agreement of the court to hear them, and uh they handle very few cases.
00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:04.559
Yeah, I might say that's as a lawyer, it's kind of the holy grail of getting the argue uh case before the U.S.
00:19:04.640 --> 00:19:18.240
Supreme Court, and very, very few lawyers uh ever get to do that because most of the time the cases that are go go to the court are cases that are are significant, and if it's not significant for some reason, the court is not going to listen to it.
00:19:18.480 --> 00:19:28.000
But the poll tax case, you you're you're right, was a uh uh important case because uh the poll tax was an important impediment to a lot of people to voting.
00:19:28.160 --> 00:19:34.880
It was the only one uh there were other kinds of voter suppression, but I just we we just happened to get involved in the poll tax.
00:19:35.600 --> 00:19:38.799
And we appealed, as I mentioned, and we argued uh the case.
00:19:38.960 --> 00:19:45.680
I I I I actually argued the case in Washington and in the Supreme Court.
00:19:45.920 --> 00:19:54.080
I well uh the the local lawyer down there by the name of Jim Jordan or Joe Jordan was given a right to argue five minutes.
00:19:54.240 --> 00:20:03.440
You're allowed a half hour or 40 minutes to argue before the court, and then you can reserve time to argue if you want to and rebuttal, and that's what we did.
00:20:03.600 --> 00:20:10.320
And I so the five last five minutes of the case was argued by the local lawyer in uh Virginia.
00:20:10.799 --> 00:20:22.640
You were involved in that case standing in front of the Supreme Court of the United States, and on your team on your side, what was it like to listen to that argument?
00:20:23.200 --> 00:20:33.440
Well, it was, you know, I I can just say it was uh it was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime chance, and uh it was very exciting.
00:20:33.519 --> 00:20:38.080
I was a little nervous, I won't deny that, but managed to get through that all right.
00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:43.200
And then, you know, they took the case under advisement after the oral argument.
00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:47.039
And they weren't quite as rough with me as I thought they might have been.
00:20:47.279 --> 00:21:02.320
They when I say rough, I mean you have to go through a lot of questions and answers to the court, to the judges, and I expected to be quizzed, I think, a little bit more taxing than I than I know kind of tenant tenant that I was.
00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:09.759
But there were people from the New York Times and Time magazine, and it was just it was an important matter.
00:21:10.320 --> 00:21:13.200
Do you recall who the chief justice was at the time?
00:21:13.519 --> 00:21:17.360
It was Warren, Governor Warren, former governor of California.
00:21:17.600 --> 00:21:22.320
He was a Republican, and he'd been appointed by Republican president.
00:21:22.880 --> 00:21:23.600
Eisenhower.
00:21:24.000 --> 00:21:25.279
Yeah, Eisenhower.
00:21:25.680 --> 00:21:49.039
Eisenhower was very disappointed because uh Warren became the big chief uh lawyer uh civil rights litigation cases, and I think uh it was always said that uh Warren was quite disappointed, not Warren, Eisenhower was quite quite disappointed that uh picky made uh to this to the court.
00:21:49.680 --> 00:21:53.440
What was your reaction to this by uh people back in the Flint?
00:21:54.559 --> 00:21:56.960
Well your involvement in such a thing.
00:21:57.519 --> 00:21:59.840
That's a really interesting you should ask that question.
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:06.400
Uh because uh the Flint Journal was the newspaper in those days and Flint.
00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:17.840
And when we had when this case decision came out, there was publicity on, as I said in New York Times, Time magazine.
00:22:18.160 --> 00:22:21.519
There wasn't one inch of print in the Flint Journal.
00:22:21.600 --> 00:22:25.680
They never even put uh had a article about my being in the case.
00:22:25.759 --> 00:22:30.559
So I gotta tell you how they felt about it, right, Bob?
00:22:30.799 --> 00:22:31.440
Yeah.
00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:40.480
I mean, you know, I mean the you know, as I said, they were literally uh headlines and uh of course I was proud and pleased with all that.
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:45.600
But I I always always couldn't understand how, you know, the local guy makes good, etcetera.
00:22:45.759 --> 00:22:47.759
That didn't mention didn't mention the cases.
00:22:47.840 --> 00:22:53.039
I recall and I'm going back a lot of years, you know, thirty or forty or fifty years, whatever it turned was.
00:22:53.920 --> 00:22:56.000
What was the final result?
00:22:57.279 --> 00:23:08.559
The final result was that that case, and I should say there's another case that was involved, it was consolidated with it, they tried together, but there was the same case or cases really.
00:23:09.039 --> 00:23:14.320
But it that ended the poll tax case or the poll taxes in the South.
00:23:14.400 --> 00:23:18.160
There were five states that still had a taking over from civil rights days.
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:21.519
They were all no good after that in valid.
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:26.400
And uh so they showed you how how things uh change.
00:23:27.120 --> 00:23:27.759
Yeah, for sure.
00:23:27.920 --> 00:23:30.400
What was the final what was the vote of the court?
00:23:30.720 --> 00:23:31.759
Six to three.
00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:36.320
Let me share this with you, just just just for all time's sake.
00:23:36.559 --> 00:23:41.600
Uh Bob and I are both alumni of the Supreme Court case.
00:23:41.840 --> 00:23:47.039
So Bob and I both have appeared in front of the Supreme Court in the history of our county.
00:23:47.360 --> 00:23:51.600
Bob's case obviously was, uh, in my opinion, a lot more important than mine.
00:23:52.000 --> 00:23:56.000
My experience with the Flint Journal was exactly the same as yours.
00:23:57.120 --> 00:24:00.320
I was all jazzed about winning this case.
00:24:00.400 --> 00:24:02.080
I won nine to nothing.
00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:04.000
And it was a murder case.
00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:09.279
It was a gang-related case at a school in a Flint area, Hamady High School.
00:24:09.600 --> 00:24:13.840
And the issue was that it had to do with double jeopardy and some other stuff.
00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:21.680
And the Flint Journal put my victory on like the back side of the third page or some some stuff like this.
00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:27.600
As it happens, I was actually quoted in Time Magazine by a reporter that had been at the argument.
00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:30.160
And I always thought that was a pretty big deal.
00:24:31.600 --> 00:24:38.240
We had a lot of interesting cases, and I think any lawyer that does trial work will have a lot of interesting cases.
00:24:38.400 --> 00:24:49.519
And then you they may not be all would be, you know, involve a million dollars, but even a small case from an economic standpoint can have just the same fascinating legal issues as as others.
00:24:49.840 --> 00:24:53.279
Yeah, I had a I had a lot of interesting cases.
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