Basic Legal Rights

Part 3 discusses the growth of basic legal rights. In the twenty-first century it can be hard to appreciate how remarkably welcoming the federal judiciary was to the claims of the civil rights movement. Part 3 includes chapter 7, “Access to Justice”; chapter 8, “Voting Rights and Political Representation”; chapter 9, “Public Accommodations”; chapter 10, “School Desegregation and Municipal Equalization”; and chapter 11, “Employment Discrimination.” Voting rights and political representation were key. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 opened the portals for dramatic increases in black voter registration. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 mandated equal accommodation in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and other public places. Some applications of these rights were realized immediately, others not so much. This was the era in which the promise of the Supreme Court’s school desegregation decision became a reality in the Deep South. Desegregation suits proliferated. The Supreme Court dramatically increased the pace of desegregation. The varied forms of pushback were astonishing: the shutting down of a historic black high school lest white students have to attend (even at the expense of double sessions); the hiding of athletic trophies from the historic black high school upon merger; the suspension and expulsion of many black students at the moment of desegregation. The other major accomplishment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was the ban on employment discrimination. At the time of its passage, job and labor union segregation were ubiquitous in the Deep South. This all changed.

How Civil Rights Lawyers Emerged

Part 1 tells ten stories of young people who chose to be civil rights lawyers. Part 1 includes chapters 1, “Children of the South,” and chapter 2, “Children of the North.” Some of the lawyers were children of the South. All had grown up in a completely segregated society. For blacks, the opportunity to challenge the status quo they had always known contained a large measure of personal and cultural gratification and moral outrage. For whites, the evolution was one of a growing conviction of the immorality of the system that had nurtured them. Some of the lawyers were children of the North. Through a variety of experiences, they caught the fever of the civil rights movement in the Deep South and came south to help make changes. Some were Jews whose feelings were informed by the Holocaust. Some were blacks who had had a big enough taste of racism in the North to be lured into the rapidly changing South. For young lawyers from both the North and the South, their experience was materially impacted by their race

Introduction

John Maxey, a white lawyer, grew up in North Mississippi. He’d been educated in white segregated schools, attended a white church, and was a member of a prominent all-white social fraternity. In 1968, having recently graduated from Ole Miss Law School, he agreed to represent black parents suing to desegregate the public schools in Holly Springs. John was stunned when a revered former law professor and county judge angrily confronted him and declared, “You represent the greatest threat to Holly Springs since Ulysses S. Grant.”...

How the Civil Rights Movement and Litigation Advanced Other Movements for Social Justice

Part 4 describes how many of us who cut our teeth on race-based litigation subsequently used the same tools to reform prisons, mental health hospitals, and other public facilities. Part 4 includes chapter 12, “Constitutional Race-Based Litigation and the Friendly Judicial Climate Lead to Other Areas of Constitutional Litigation”; chapter 13, “How the Civil Rights Movement and Litigation Informed Other Movements for Social Justice”; and chapter 14, “Framing the Contemporary Dialogue of Race.” The courts of the time did not shrink from establishing minimal constitutional standards for prisons and hospitals. Wyatt v. Stickney established the national precedent for residential treatment of mental health. The Prison Project brought constitutional standards to Parchman Prison. Race-based litigation also informed later social movements, such as the women’s movement and the movement for LGBT rights. The anthology concludes with two authors’ assessments of where we are now in framing the discussion of race and white supremacy. Barbara Phillips explores the challenges of what we call “diversity.” Larry Menefee explores Jacquelyn Hall Dowd’s thesis concerning the restricted view of the civil rights movement.

The Context of Civil Rights Litigation

Part 2 provides the context for civil rights litigation and includes chapter 3, “Big Events”; chapter 4, “The Tenor of the Times”; chapter 5, “Arrests of Lawyers (and Other ‘Minor Indignities’)”; and chapter 6, “Modes of Law Practice.” Some of the stories arise from big events like the 1965 Selma march, the 1968 Democratic Convention, and the first civil damages verdict against the KKK in Mississippi. Other stories provide the tenor of the times: the atmosphere of mass meetings, marches, and boycotts; the frustration of unsuccessfully seeking damages for police brutality; abuses encountered for being married to a civil rights lawyer. Arrests of and assaults on civil rights lawyers were not uncommon. The growth in civil rights protests and demonstrations required a great increase in the number of lawyers to represent the movement. This chapter explores how those needs were met: by nonprofits (like the Legal Defense Fund, LCDC [Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee], and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law); by government funded legal services, and by an emerging group of lawyers in private practice, both black and white, who aligned themselves with the civil rights movement