More Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers (eBook)

Thelegal struggle for civil rights throughout the Southeast and into the 1980s In this book, twenty-threelawyers discuss their experiences in the struggle to advance and maintain civilrights in the United States South. While the lives of civil rights lawyers areoften unknown or forgotten, this book draws attention to the importance of lawyersin facilitating dramatic sociopolitical changes, illustrates therealities of working in this profession, and shows the ways in which civilrights wereand still aretested at every turn. The eventsdocumented here happened not just in the 1960s and 70s but also in the 1980s, andthis book highlights the emergence of a new generation of lawyers who continuedto advocate for racial equity and expanded into other areas of social justicework, such as labor and gender. In addition, while the civil rightsmovement is commonly identified with protests in Deep South states, many of itsactivities and court challenges occurred beyond the region, and this bookwidens the geographic lens to include narratives from frontline lawyers inTexas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia.Many of thestruggles documented in these firsthand accounts provide the context forcontemporary civil rights concerns, including voting rights. As gains from thishistoric period are being contested and even rolled back, these narratives helpreaders remember the ubiquity of injustices in that time and to recognize thesystemic discrimination and racism that continue to undermine basic civilrights today.Contributors: Robert L. Wiggins Jr. | James Blacksher| Alan Levine | Melvyn R. Leventhal | David Rudovsky | James Ayers | CheveneKing Jr. | John Gresham | David Kern | Jack Drake | Stephen Oleskey | Kent Hull| Kent Spriggs | Charles Stephen Ralston | Barbara Phillips | Jim Rowan | MichaelB. Trister | Bruce Rogow | Wilhelm H. Joseph | Kenneth Cloke | Gerry Hebert | PaulHarris | Martha Bergmark | Amy Ruth Tobol