“My life has been filled with luck,” Professor William B. Gould IV told a full room of friends, colleagues, students, and admirers at the Stanford Bookstore on December 4. The legendary labor law scholar was there to discuss his new memoir, Those Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden: Memoir of a Labor Lawyer (Worcester Polytechnic Institute Press). Beside him was former baseball major leaguer and San Francisco Giants manager Dusty Baker, there to honor the longtime friend he calls “Dr. Bill.
The Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus and a central figure at Stanford Law for 53 years, “Dr. Bill” touched on some of the stories that fill his memoir: his childhood, civil rights turning points, courtroom battles, and the moments of luck that shaped his life and career.
Almost every pivotal moment—from his first labor law job to his appointment as chair of the National Labor Relations Board—began with a door opened by someone else, he said. “What I’ve been able to accomplish is attributable to a lot of people who helped me over the years, starting with my parents,” said Gould, who joined the Stanford Law faculty in 1972 as the school’s first Black faculty member.
He grew up in Massachusetts in a family rooted there since before the Civil War, witnessing racial inequality and watching his father navigate an unequal world with dignity.
His memoir’s title comes from “The Comfortable Words,” Gould explained, a passage from St. Matthew’s Gospel that was part of the Episcopal...
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