Mr. Van Os grew up in segregated Kilgore, in East Texas; the first part of the interview is spent in his recollections of the era, including the eventual integration of the schools in the mid-to-late 1960s. He attended UT Austin, where he became involved in SDS and joined several activities that involved African American and Mexican American activists. While studying law, he did an internship with the law firm of David Richards, who had been working on voting rights litigation earlier that decade. After graduating, he worked as a union-side labor lawyer and represented the Austin chapter of the NAACP in a lawsuit to do away with at-large place system for city council elections. In addition to his early activism and work in civil rights litigation, Mr. Van Os talks about the relationship of racial and economic justice and the role of labor unions in ensuring both.