Book Selections

"Author Donald Jelinek offers a powerful, first-hand account of his time working as a civil rights attorney in Mississippi and Alabama during a three-year period from 1965-1968. Originally Jelinek, an NYU-trained lawyer in his early 30s, volunteered only to spend a few weeks working pro bono for the ACLU in Mississippi. Instead, he ended up quitting his job with a New York City law firm and staying in the South for several consequential years. Jelinek provides compelling testimony of the work that he and other movement activists did during that time. Perhaps the richest portions of the book come when Jelinek describes his interactions with the local people who formed the core of the Movement in the Deep South. The passages describing conversations with Black sharecroppers and fellow civil rights organizers provide highly readable discussions of the nature of on-the-ground organizing that will be valuable both to scholars of the Movement and interested parties more generally. His account highlights the long, slow, hard work of organizing, work that was built one house at a time, through the cultivation of relationships and trust"--

Lawyer, Activist, Judge: Fighting for Civil and Voting Rights in Mississippi and Illinois is the story of Martha A. Mills, who worked to bring justice to a place where injustice thrived. In this compelling and fascinating account, Mills describes her journey to Mississippi as a young civil rights lawyer in the late 1960s after joining the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She boldly challenged the racial status quo and racial barriers in the south, risking her personal safety in the process. Yet she looked racist judges, lawyers, lawmen, and Ku Kluxers in the eye--never backing down, in court or out. Mills's work as a civil rights activist continued through to her work as a judge in Cook County, Illinois.