Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers

Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers PDF Author: Kent Spriggs
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
“Fascinating. . . . The kind of book you can open anywhere, maybe thumb back or forth a few pages, and settle into a good story.”—USA Today "One of the great, largely unknown stories of American history. This volume is a wonderfully evocative demonstration of something often discounted--how important law and lawyers were, and remain, in realizing the promise of full equality for all citizens."--Kenneth W. Mack, author of Representing the Race "Filled with tales of ordinary people exhibiting extraordinary courage, Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers provides a penetrating and vital new perspective on one of the most turbulent and important periods in American history."--Lawrence Goldstone, author of Inherently Unequal "Spriggs has performed a great service for future historians and for all of us by collecting the personal memories of lawyers who put their boots on the ground and their lives on the line in the Deep South during the tumultuous civil rights movement."--James Blacksher, civil rights attorney, Birmingham, Alabama "The different voices are incredibly effective at both describing a harrowing series of events for the lawyers and allowing readers to hear how they interpreted those events in their own individual ways. A powerful work."--Thomas Aiello, author of Jim Crow's Last Stand While bus boycotts, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience were the engine of the civil rights movement, the law provided context for these events. Lawyers played a key role amid profound political and social upheavals, vindicating clients and together challenging white supremacy. Here, in their own voices, twenty-six lawyers reveal the abuses they endured and the barriers they broke as they fought for civil rights. These eyewitness accounts provide unique windows into some of the most dramatic moments in civil rights history--the 1965 Selma March, the first civil judgment against the Ku Klux Klan, the creation of ballot access for African Americans in Alabama, and the 1968 Democratic Convention. The narratives depict attorney-client relationships extraordinary in their mutual trust and commitment to risk-taking. White and black, male and female, northern- and southern-born, these recruits in the battle for freedom helped shape a critical chapter of American history. Kent Spriggs, author of the two-volume Representing Plaintiffs in Title VII Actions, has been a civil rights lawyer for over fifty years. He practices in Tallahassee, Florida, where he was a city commissioner and mayor.

Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers

Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers PDF Author: Kent Spriggs
Publisher: University Press of Florida
ISBN: 0813059690
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
“Fascinating. . . . The kind of book you can open anywhere, maybe thumb back or forth a few pages, and settle into a good story.”—USA Today "One of the great, largely unknown stories of American history. This volume is a wonderfully evocative demonstration of something often discounted--how important law and lawyers were, and remain, in realizing the promise of full equality for all citizens."--Kenneth W. Mack, author of Representing the Race "Filled with tales of ordinary people exhibiting extraordinary courage, Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers provides a penetrating and vital new perspective on one of the most turbulent and important periods in American history."--Lawrence Goldstone, author of Inherently Unequal "Spriggs has performed a great service for future historians and for all of us by collecting the personal memories of lawyers who put their boots on the ground and their lives on the line in the Deep South during the tumultuous civil rights movement."--James Blacksher, civil rights attorney, Birmingham, Alabama "The different voices are incredibly effective at both describing a harrowing series of events for the lawyers and allowing readers to hear how they interpreted those events in their own individual ways. A powerful work."--Thomas Aiello, author of Jim Crow's Last Stand While bus boycotts, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience were the engine of the civil rights movement, the law provided context for these events. Lawyers played a key role amid profound political and social upheavals, vindicating clients and together challenging white supremacy. Here, in their own voices, twenty-six lawyers reveal the abuses they endured and the barriers they broke as they fought for civil rights. These eyewitness accounts provide unique windows into some of the most dramatic moments in civil rights history--the 1965 Selma March, the first civil judgment against the Ku Klux Klan, the creation of ballot access for African Americans in Alabama, and the 1968 Democratic Convention. The narratives depict attorney-client relationships extraordinary in their mutual trust and commitment to risk-taking. White and black, male and female, northern- and southern-born, these recruits in the battle for freedom helped shape a critical chapter of American history. Kent Spriggs, author of the two-volume Representing Plaintiffs in Title VII Actions, has been a civil rights lawyer for over fifty years. He practices in Tallahassee, Florida, where he was a city commissioner and mayor.

This Is Not Civil Rights

This Is Not Civil Rights PDF Author: George I. Lovell
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226494039
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Since at least the time of Tocqueville, observers have noted that Americans draw on the language of rights when expressing dissatisfaction with political and social conditions. As the United States confronts a complicated set of twenty-first-century problems, that tradition continues, with Americans invoking symbolic events of the founding era to frame calls for change. Most observers have been critical of such “rights talk.” Scholars on the left worry that it limits the range of political demands to those that can be articulated as legally recognized rights, while conservatives fear that it creates unrealistic expectations of entitlement. Drawing on a remarkable cache of Depression-era complaint letters written by ordinary Americans to the Justice Department, George I. Lovell challenges these common claims. Although the letters were written prior to the emergence of the modern civil rights movement—which most people assume is the origin of rights talk—many contain novel legal arguments, including expansive demands for new entitlements that went beyond what authorities had regarded as legitimate or required by law. Lovell demonstrates that rights talk is more malleable and less constraining than is generally believed. Americans, he shows, are capable of deploying idealized legal claims as a rhetorical tool for expressing their aspirations for a more just society while retaining a realistic understanding that the law often falls short of its own ideals.

Voices of Freedom

Voices of Freedom PDF Author: Henry Hampton
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307574180
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 721

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Book Description
“A vast choral pageant that recounts the momentous work of the civil rights struggle.”—The New York Times Book Review A monumental volume drawing upon nearly one thousand interviews with civil rights activists, politicians, reporters, Justice Department officials, and others, weaving a fascinating narrative of the civil rights movement told by the people who lived it Join brave and terrified youngsters walking through a jeering mob and up the steps of Central High School in Little Rock. Listen to the vivid voices of the ordinary people who manned the barricades, the laborers, the students, the housewives without whom there would have been no civil rights movements at all. In this remarkable oral history, Henry Hampton, creator and executive producer of the acclaimed PBS series Eyes on the Prize, and Steve Fayer, series writer, bring to life the country’s great struggle for civil rights as no conventional narrative can. You will hear the voices of those who defied the blackjacks, who went to jail, who witnessed and policed the movement; of those who stood for and against it—voices from the heart of America.

Rebels in Law

Rebels in Law PDF Author: John Clay Smith
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472086467
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
The reflections on their lives in law of pioneer black women lawyers

The Education of a Black Radical

The Education of a Black Radical PDF Author: D’Army Bailey
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807146110
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
"A strong, uncompromising voice that dreams of a better America, Judge Bailey has experienced the ugliness of both racism and fear. Yet he has not stepped back. What a wonderful life to share." -- Nikki Giovanni, from her Foreword When four black college students refused to leave the whites-only lunch counter of a Greensboro, North Carolina, Woolworth's on February 1, 1960, they set off a wave of similar protests among black college students across the South. Memphis native D'Army Bailey, the freshman class president at Southern University -- the largest predominantly black college in the nation -- soon joined with his classmates in their own battle against segregation in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In The Education of a Black Radical, Bailey details his experiences on the front lines of the black student movement of the early 1960s, providing a rare firsthand account of the early days of America's civil rights struggle and a shining example of one man's struggle to uphold the courageous principles of liberty, justice, and equality. A natural leader, Bailey delivered fiery speeches at civil rights rallies, railed against school officials' capitulation to segregation, joined a sit-in at the Greyhound bus station, and picketed against discriminatory hiring practices at numerous Baton Rouge businesses. On December 15, 1961, he marched at the head of two thousand Southern University students seven miles from campus to downtown Baton Rouge to support fellow students jailed for picketing. Baton Rouge police dispersed the peaceful crowd with dogs and tear gas and arrested many participants. After Bailey led a class boycott to protest the administration's efforts to quell the lingering unrest on campus, Southern University summarily expelled him. After his ejection, Bailey continued his academic journey north to Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, where liberal white students had established a scholarship for civil rights activists. Bailey sustained and expanded his activism in the North, and he provides invaluable eyewitness accounts of many major events from the civil rights era, including the protests in Washington D.C.'s financial district during the summer of 1963 and the gripping violence and arrests in Baltimore later that year. He sheds new light on the 1963 March on Washington by exploring the political forces that seized the march and changed its direction. Labeled "subversive" and a "black nationalist militant" by the FBI, Bailey crossed paths with many visionary activists. In riveting detail, Bailey recalls several days he spent hosting Malcolm X as a guest speaker at Clark, hanging out with Abbie Hoffman in the early days of the Worsester Student Movement, and personal interactions with other civil rights icons, including the Reverend Will D. Campbell, Anne Braden, James Meredith, Tom Hayden, and future congressmen Barney Frank, John Lewis, and Allard Lowenstein. D'Army Bailey gives voice to a generation of student foot soldiers in the civil rights movement. Moving, powerful, and intensely personal, The Education of a Black Radical offers an inspirational tale of hope and a courageous stand for social change. Moreover, it introduces an invigorating role model for a new generation of activists taking up the racial challenges of the twenty-first century.

Walk with Me

Walk with Me PDF Author: Kate Clifford Larson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190096861
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 361

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Book Description
She was born the 20th child in a family that had lived in the Mississippi Delta for generations, first as enslaved people and then as sharecroppers. She left school at 12 to pick cotton, as those before her had done, in a world in which white supremacy was an unassailable citadel. She was subjected without her consent to an operation that deprived her of children. And she was denied the most basic of all rights in Americathe right to cast a ballotin a state in which Blacks constituted nearly half the population. And so Fannie Lou Hamer lifted up her voice. Starting in the early 1960s and until her death in 1977, she was an irresistible force, not merely joining the swelling wave of change brought by civil rights but keeping it in motion. Working with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which recruited her to help with voter-registration drives, Hamer became a community organizer, women's rights activist, and co-founder of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. She summoned and used what she had against the citadelher anger, her courage, her faith in the Bible, and her conviction that hearts could be won over and injustice overcome. She used her brutal beating at the hands of Mississippi police, an ordeal from which she never fully recovered, as the basis of a televised speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention, a speech that the mainstream partyincluding its standard-bearer, President Lyndon Johnsontried to contain. But Fannie Lou Hamer would not be held back. For those whose lives she touched and transformed, for those who heard and followed her voice, she was the embodiment of protest, perseverance, and, most of all, the potential for revolutionary change. Kate Clifford Larson's biography of Fannie Lou Hamer is the most complete ever written, drawing on recently declassified sources on both Hamer and the civil rights movement, including unredacted FBI and Department of Justice files. It also makes full use of interviews with Civil Rights activists conducted by the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, and Democratic National Committee archives, in addition to extensive conversations with Hamer's family and with those with whom she worked most closely. Stirring, immersive, and authoritative, Walk with Me does justice to Fannie Lou Hamer's life, capturing in full the spirit, and the voice, that led the fight for freedom and equality in America at its critical moment.

The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi

The Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi PDF Author: Ted Ownby
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617039330
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Essays from innovative, leading scholars covering the gamut of the civil rights movement

Integration Now

Integration Now PDF Author: William P. Hustwit
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469648563
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Recovering the history of an often-ignored landmark Supreme Court case, William P. Hustwit assesses the significant role that Alexander v. Holmes (1969) played in integrating the South's public schools. Although Brown v. Board of Education has rightly received the lion's share of historical analysis, its ambiguous language for implementation led to more than a decade of delays and resistance by local and state governments. Alexander v. Holmes required "integration now," and less than a year later, thousands of children were attending integrated schools. Hustwit traces the progression of the Alexander case to show how grassroots activists in Mississippi operated hand in glove with lawyers and judges involved in the litigation. By combining a narrative of the larger legal battle surrounding the case and the story of the local activists who pressed for change, Hustwit offers an innovative, well-researched account of a definitive legal decision that reaches from the cotton fields of Holmes County to the chambers of the Supreme Court in Washington.

Voices of Historical and Contemporary Black American Pioneers

Voices of Historical and Contemporary Black American Pioneers PDF Author: Vernon L. Farmer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 924

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Book Description
The stories of black American professionals, both historic and contemporary, reveal the hardships and triumphs they faced in overcoming racism to succeed in their chosen fields. This extraordinary four-volume work is the first of its kind, a comprehensive exploration of the obstacles black men and women, both historic and contemporary, have faced and overcome to succeed in professional positions. Voices of Historical and Contemporary Black American Pioneers includes the life and career histories of black American pioneers, past and present, who have achieved extraordinary success in fields as varied as aviation and astronautics, education, social sciences, the humanities, the fine and performing arts, law and government, and medicine and science. The set covers well-known figures, but is also an invaluable source of information on lesser-known individuals whose accomplishments are no less admirable. Arranged by career category, each section of the work begins with a biographical narrative of early black pioneers in the field, followed by original interviews conducted by the editors or autobiographical narratives written by the subjects. In all, more than 150 scholars and professionals share inspiring insights into how they persevered to overcome racism and succeed in an often-hostile world.

Dissenting Voices in American Society

Dissenting Voices in American Society PDF Author: Austin Sarat
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107378990
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Dissenting Voices in American Society: The Role of Judges, Lawyers, and Citizens explores the status of dissent in the work and lives of judges, lawyers, and citizens, and in our institutions and culture. It brings together under the lens of critical examination dissenting voices that are usually treated separately: the protester, the academic critic, the intellectual, and the dissenting judge. It examines the forms of dissent that institutions make possible and those that are discouraged or domesticated. This book also describes the kinds of stories that dissenting voices try to tell and the narrative tropes on which those stories depend. This book is the product of an integrated series of symposia at the University of Alabama School of Law. These symposia bring leading scholars into colloquy with faculty at the law school on subjects at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary inquiry in law.