Growing up in a small Appalachian town in Tennessee, Ellen Godbey Carson was raised in an insulated, privileged world in which she rarely crossed paths with black people.
"Everything was segregated. Black people were living in an entirely different life on the other side of the tracks. We had different schools; their jobs would never intersect with ours; our churches would never have people of color in them," she said.
In junior high school Carson experienced "a real moment of awakening" in realizing how much racism injured the black community, and vowed to become an attorney to advocate for justice and equality.
For her achievements during 35 years as an attorney, Church of the Crossroads and the Cathedral of St. Andrew will jointly present the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Peacemaker Award to Carson at 7 p.m. Monday. The service and reception to celebrate the national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday will be held at Crossroads, 1212 University Ave., which began the award more than 20 years ago.
"Dr. King has been a hero to me since the 1960s," said Carson, 59. "I grew up in the Tennessee mountains and heard his dream of racial equality, nonviolent resistance and the power of love. I found his message of Christian faith and love so compelling, but it stood in stark contrast to the cruel racial injustices in the South."
A stockholder and director of Alston Hunt Floyd & Ing, Carson said she was about 14 years old when she recognized that people who called themselves Christians "weren’t doing what Jesus called us to do."
"The Christian community and the political community were wearing these huge blinders, where we just tried to ignore — or we just didn’t see that there were people in so much pain — that were being discriminated against."
A self-described rebel from early on, Carson said, "I was always whining that something wasn’t fair."
Carson remembered "wanting to try to make a difference in the world, and realizing I was in a place where we were the majority and we have a privilege, and it’s one that had been gotten through oppression of other people; and we need to fight that and try to rectify what’s happened. That was my mindset going to Harvard and coming out of it."
After graduating with honors from Harvard Law School, Carson said she spotted an ad about helping with a lawsuit on behalf of Japanese-Americans who were forced into internment camps during World War II. "I don’t think I met a Japanese person before," she recalled, but she immediately applied.
The case was William Hohri et al. v. United States of America, and Carson was one of the lead attorneys. The 1984 class-action lawsuit helped pave the way for a presidential apology and redress to survivors.
Carson’s legal work in Hawaii has focused primarily on health care law and litigation, women’s rights, alternative dispute resolution, and justice and equality issues. She has received numerous local and national awards, according to a biography from Crossroads.
She has been active in seeking equality and respect for the lesbian, gay and transgender community and has provided "Biblical Self-Defense" workshops to answer arguments used to condemn homosexuality based on certain biblical passages.
Carson admitted to being blind to sexism until her husband, Bob Godbey, whom she met in college, made her aware of it. And she credits Church of the Crossroads, which she joined in 2004, for helping her to see the discrimination against members she befriended who were gay and lesbian.
"I was a happy heterosexual but oblivious to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people living in closeted fear because of whom they love," she said.
"We all wear blinders in different ways. Our challenge is to remove our blinders and look beyond our own life experiences, to see the inequality and indignities of people who are different from us."
Citing a quote by former President Jimmy Carter, Carson said, "My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."
The annual Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Parade begins at 9 a.m. Monday at Ala Moana Beach Park, winds through Waikiki and ends with a unity rally at the Kapiolani Park Bandstand.
