Civil Rights Movements & the Law

"Larry Krasner spent thirty years learning about America's carceral system as a civil rights and criminal defense lawyer in Philadelphia, working to get some kind of justice for his clients in a broken system in the era of mass incarceration, before deciding that the way to truly transform the system was to get inside of it. So he launched an unlikely campaign to become the District Attorney of Philadelphia, a city known for its long line of notorious "tough on crime" DAs. When Krasner announced his candidacy, surrounded by the activists and community organizers he'd worked with for years, the president of the Philadelphia police union described it as "hilarious." Despite the odds, Krasner laid out a simple case for radical reform and won the November general election by a margin of nearly 50%--he was able to enter the halls of power and begin the work of dismantling mass incarceration from the inside. This is not just a story about Krasner's remarkable life as a defense lawyer and his powerful, grassroots campaign, but the bigger story of how power and injustice conspire together to create a carceral state unprecedented in the world. Readers follow Krasner through the streets and courtrooms and election precincts of one American city to see how our system of injustice was built--and how we might dismantle it"--

To mark its 100-year anniversary, the American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman to bring together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation's premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the organization's one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in--Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona--need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue. Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights--which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU's spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU's stance on campaign finance. These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.;"To mark its 100-year anniversary, the American Civil Liberties Union asked authors to contribute an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case. Since its founding on January 19, 1920, the ACLU remains the nation's premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. This collection takes readers inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some are the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in; others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now"--Adapted from the book jacket.

Determined to be a U.S. Marine Corps officer, Bruce Yamashita enrolled in Officer Candidate School, where he was the target of persistent racial harassment by officers and staff. After enduring nine weeks of emotional and physical abuse, Yamashita was "disenrolled" in April 1989--kicked out of the Marine Corps because of the color of his skin. Fighting Tradition is Yamashita's own story of his courageous struggle to expose a pattern of racial discrimination against minorities that has existed at various levels of the Corps. With the support of a broad coalition of community and civil rights organizations, the Hawaii-born law school graduate fought a five-year-long legal, political, and media battle against the military establishment that ended in his commissioning as a captain and the revision of Marine Corps policies and procedures. Fighting Tradition not only is a moving story of personal sacrifice and vision, but contributes also both directly and indirectly to our understanding of the complexities of institutional racism in a politically conservative, demographically shifting society. It is a unique window into the dynamics of race, government, and the law and a stirring reminder of the importance of political mobilization by the individual to achieve justice.

Pauli Murray (1910-1985) was a poet, lawyer, activist, and priest, as well as a significant figure in the civil rights and women's movements. 'The Dream Is Freedom' examines Murray's substantial body of published writings as well personal letters, journals, and unpublished manuscripts. Azaransky traces the development of Murray's thought over fifty years, ranging from Murray's theologically rich democratic criticism of the 1930s to her democratically inflected sermons of the 1980s.

This book is a unique, inspirational collection of letters from 44 experienced, highly accomplished women attorneys of color to the next generation outlining various roadmaps for success in the legal profession as a minority woman attorney. The book is organized by practice setting, and at the end of each chapter are tips for success from the authors featured in that chapter. The essays end with a response from a sister/daughter from the next generation.

In the past few years, a new generation of progressive intellectuals has dramatically transformed how law, race, and racial power are understood and discussed in America. Questioning the old assumptions of both liberals and conservatives with respect to the goals and the means of traditional civil rights reform, critical race theorists have presented new paradigms for understanding racial injustice and new ways of seeing the links between race, gender, sexual orientation, and class. This reader, edited by the principal founders and leading theoreticians of the critical race theory movement, gathers together for the first time the movement's most important essays.

This law school casebook examines cases through the analytical framework of critical race theory. The third edition includes a new chapter on racial bias and the judiciary and a focus on fighting racism in the 21st century. There is a separate chapter on torts, contracts, criminal procedure, criminal law and sentencing, property, and civil procedure. It also examines cases where race is not always obvious, showing how race is oftenrelevant even where it may initially appear not to be relevant. Lastly, the book provides cases where the courts have applied a critical race theory perspective.

"Racism has permeated the workings of the U.S. Constitution since ratification. At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, supporters of slavery ensured it was protected by rule of law. The federal government upheld slavery until it was abolished by the Civil War; then supported the South's Jim Crow power structure. From Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era until today, veneration of the Constitution has not prevented lynching, segregation, voter intimidation or police brutality against people of color. In 2016, the Electoral College-a constitutional accommodation for slaveholding aristocrats who feared popular government-gave the presidency to the candidate who lost the popular vote by the widest margin in U.S. history. This book describes how pernicious flaws in the Constitution, included to legalize profiting from human bondage, perpetuate systemic racism, economic inequality and the subversion of democracy"--

"Explores George W. McLaurin's two-year battle to gain admission as the first African American student at the University of Oklahoma-the help he received from the NAACP and attorney Thurgood Marshall, the legal maneuvering in state and federal courts to secure his rights, and the segregated conditions to which he was subjected once he was on campus"--

"Grounded in Critical Race Theory (CRT), [this book] refutes the claim that when African American law students are "mismatched" with more-selective law schools, the result is lower levels of achievement and success. Presenting personal narratives and counter-stories, Jackson demonstrates the inadequacy of the mismatch theory and deconstructs the ways race is constructed within American public law schools. Calling for a replacement to mismatch theory, Jackson offers an alternative theory that considers marginalized student perspectives and crystallizes the nuances and impact that historically exclusionary institutions and systems have on African American law school students. To further the debate on affirmative action, this book shows that experiences and voices of African American law school students are a crucial ingredient in the debate on race and how it functions in law schools"--Page i.

Relying on a multidisciplinary framework of inquiry and critical perspective, this edited volume addresses the unique experiences of Black males within various stages of contact in the criminal justice system. It provides a comprehensive overview of the administration of justice, mental and physical health issues faced by Black males, and reintegration into society after system involvement. Recent events--including but by no means limited to the shootings of unarmed Black men by police in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore; Minneapolis; and Chicago--have highlighted the disproportionate likelihood of young Black males to encounter the criminal justice system. Black Males and the Criminal Justice System provides a theoretical and empirical review of the need for an intersectional understanding of Black male experiences and outcomes within the criminal justice system. The intersectional approach, which posits that outcomes of societal experiences are determined by the way the interconnected identities of individuals are perceived and responded to by others, is key to recognizing the various forms of oppression that Black males experience, and the impact these experiences have on them and their families. This book is intended for students and scholars in criminology, criminal justice, sociology, race/ethnic studies, legal studies, psychology, and African American Studies, and will serve as a reference for researchers who wish to utilize a progressive theoretical approach to study social control, policing, and the criminal justice system.

And justice for all : the United States Commission on Civil Rights and the continuing struggle for freedom in America-book

America's Gun Wars contends that an understanding of America's gun controversy cannot be found in statistics documenting the rise (or fall) of violent crime, or in examining trade-offs between societal needs and personal safety, or in following the political maneuvering of advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association or Everytown for Gun Safety. At heart, the gun controversy is a values conflict involving how people see themselves and how they make sense of the world they live in. Understanding this controversy requires a deep analysis of the profoundly different cultures inhabited by pro- and anti-gun activists, lawmakers, and voters. Written by a social scientist who has spent his life exploring how values and self-perceptions impact behavior, this book explores the origins and evolution of cultures in American society; the beliefs, experiences, and principles that guide the behavior of members in both camps; and the triumphs and failures that the two sides have experienced from colonial times to the present day. --

Patricia Williams is a lawyer and a professor of commercial law, the great-great-granddaughter of a slave and a white southern lawyer. The Alchemy of Race and Rights is an eloquent autobiographical essay in which the author reflects on the intersection of race, gender, and class. Using the tools of critical literary and legal theory, she sets out her views of contemporary popular culture and current events, from Howard Beach to homelessness, from Tawana Brawley to the law-school classroom, from civil rights to Oprah Winfrey, from Bernhard Goetz to Mary Beth Whitehead. She also traces the workings of "ordinary racism"--everyday occurrences, casual, unintended, banal perhaps, but mortifying. Taking up the metaphor of alchemy, Williams casts the law as a mythological text in which the powers of commerce and the Constitution, wealth and poverty, sanity and insanity, wage war across complex and overlapping boundaries of discourse. In deliberately transgressing such boundaries, she pursues a path toward racial justice that is, ultimately, transformative. Williams gets to the roots of racism not by finger-pointing but by much gentler methods. Her book is full of anecdote and witness, vivid characters known and observed, trenchant analysis of the law's shortcomings. Only by such an inquiry and such patient phenomenology can we understand racism. The book is deeply moving and not so, finally, just because racism is wrong--we all know that. What we don't know is how to unthink the process that allows racism to persist. This Williams enables us to see. The result is a testament of considerable beauty, a triumph of moral tactfulness. The result, as the title suggests, is magic.

"Unknown to many, Alabama has played a remarkable role in a number of Supreme Court rulings that continue to touch the lives of every American. In Alabama Justice: The Cases and Faces That Changed a Nation, Steven P. Brown has identified eight landmark cases that deal with religion, voting rights, libel, gender discrimination, and other issues, all originating from legal disputes in Alabama. Written in a concise and accessible manner, each case law chapter begins with the circumstances that created the dispute. Brown then provides historical and constitutional background for the issue followed by a review of the path of litigation. Excerpts from the Court's ruling in the case are also presented, along with a brief account of the aftermath and significance of the decision. The First Amendment (New York Times v. Sullivan), racial redistricting (Gomillion v. Lightfoot), the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Frontiero v. Richardson), and prayer in public schools (Wallace v. Jaffree) are among the pivotal issues stamped indelibly by disputes with their origins in Alabama legal, political, and cultural landscapes. In addition to his analysis of cases, Brown discusses the three associate justices sent from Alabama to the Supreme Court-John McKinley, John Archibald Campbell, and Hugo Black-whose cumulative influence on the institution of the Court, constitutional interpretation, and the day-to-day rights and liberties enjoyed by every American is impossible to measure. A closing chapter examines the careers and contributions of these three Alabamians"--

The amendment that refused to die : equality and justice deferred : the history of the Fourteenth Amendment-book

"This bill prohibits no-knock warrants, which generally permit law enforcement officers to enter a premises without first identifying their authority and purpose."

"Standard legal ethics courses long considered dry and theoretical by many students have experienced a renaissance over the past two years due to the pandemic and an increased focus on social justice."

" Former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin who was previously convicted of murdering George Floyd pleaded not guilty on Thursday to violating a Black teen's civil rights in 2017. "

"Calling it a "moral mandate" Washington Gov. Jay Inslee a Democrat signed a dozen bills into law on Tuesday that backers hope will improve policing in the state reduce the use of deadly force and ensure that when deadly encounters do occur the investigations are thorough and independent."

"The Monell Rule is the most important racial justice issue you've never heard of."

"On a windy Thursday morning in mid-February the Rev. Michelle Thomas walked up a winding gravel path surrounded by dirt broken tree branches and mostly brown grass."

"A Minneapolis commission decided Wednesday to take more time to review a City Council amendment to dismantle the Police Department in the wake of George Floyd's death ending the possibility of voters deciding the issue in November."

"City council voted to override Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan's recent veto of cuts to the police department's remaining 2020 budget by a 7-2 vote with the mayor issuing a statement after the fact indicating she might not adhere to all of the provisos laid out in the council's proposal."

"The Tucson City Council voted Tuesday to make it illegal to enforce dress code or grooming policies that discriminate against a person’s natural hairstyle."

"After more than 120 years of flying over the state of Mississippi the Confederate battle flag is no longer a part of the state's official flag. On Tuesday Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law a bill fast-tracked by the Mississippi Legislature over the weekend that calls for a new design. In a somber ceremony Reeves said he was signing the law to turn a page in Mississippi."

"A North Carolina city is using a restrictive ordinance to outlaw protest threatening to arrest anyone who even attempts to peacefully protest without a permit as part of an effort to protect a Confederate monument that sits outside its courthouse."

"Alabama voters will decide on Nov. 3 whether to start an effort to take outdated racist language out of the state constitution such as the requirement for segregated schools and revise the massive document into a more understandable form."

"Arizona recdisently expanded provisions of the Arizona Civil Rights Act (ACRA) to cover pregnancy and pregnancy-related conditions. Additionally following a national trend in response to perceived state and federal inaction cities in Arizona on their own passed new ordinances that expands protected categories and coverage."

"Bill would dismantle police officer immunity against lawsuits."