Professional Career
Bane worked as an attorney for the law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell from 1938 until 1942 and from 1946 until 1949. From 1942 until 1943, Bane was an attorney with the U.S. Office of Lend-Lease Administration, and he was on active duty with the United States Navy as an intelligence officer with OSS, stationed in London, from July 1943 until February 1946. OSS personnel were instrumental in convincing the enemy that D-day forces would land at a beach-head other than Normandy.
From 1949 until 1952, Bane was a partner with the law firm of Mitchell, Conway and Bane in Chicago. In the early 1950s, Bane also worked as the lawyer representing the Chicago City Council's Crime Investigating Committee, which focused on organized crime. He quickly concluded that the crime syndicate had corrupted Chicago's Police Department. He later resigned from his post when the Chicago City Council refused to force police officers to disclose sources of income. As a result of his crime -fighting career, he was asked by prominent Chicago Republicans to run for mayor. He declined.
Bane became a partner in the Chicago law firm of Isham, Lincoln and Beale in 1953. The firm was founded by the surviving son of Abraham Lincoln, Robert Todd Lincoln. The younger Lincoln used a letter of recommendation from Thomas Edison to obtain the firm's first client, Commonwealth Edison. Bane served on the Advisory Board of The Lincoln Legal Papers Project, a mammoth effort that resulted in the collection of more than 5,000 documents relating to Abraham Lincoln's legal practice.
Bane also played a major role in the findings of the National Advisory Committee On Civil Disorder, or Kerner Commission, established by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of 1967 national race riots, and chaired by Illinois governor Otto Kerner Jr. The Commission was established by Johnson to reportedly find conspiracies aimed at violence within Black communities. Bane chaired the concurrent Citizen's Committee To Study Police Relations (in Chicago). The Committee called 47 witnesses which produced 1,900 pages of transcript. When the Kerner Report, issued February 28, 1968,declared famously that "our nation is moving towards two societies,one Black, one White-separate and unequal", and that race riots could be traced to inadequate employment opportunities and substandard housing, Johnson was enraged.
Bane also served as Editor of the Chicago Bar Record, Chairman of the American Bar Association Journal, and authored "The Electrical Equipment Conspiracies:The Treble Damage Actions" (1973), a groundbreaking legal text. He also served as President of The Chicago Council On Foreign Relations.He served two years as Co-Chairman of The Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights under President Jimmy Carter. Following retirement to Florida, he was Visiting Professor Of Law at the University of Miami School Of Law and planned to begin a legal biography of Abraham Lincoln.
Each year the Charles A. Bane Humanitarian Award is presented to a volunteer by the United Way Of Illinois.
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