Civil Rights Movements & the Law

"My Father's House is both a biography of iconic African-American Congressman John Conyers Jr. and his more than half-century of groundbreaking legislation, and a son's memoir of leveraging his own voice in a world that his father helped create"-- Provided by publisher.;My Father's House by John Conyers III is a reflective tribute to his father, Congressman John James Conyers, Jr., blending personal memoir with political history. It offers an intimate portrait of Conyers as both a civil rights icon and a complex family man, highlighting his legislative legacy and his mentorship of key national figures. Through his son's eyes, the book humanizes the giants of the civil rights era and underscores their enduring influence on modern American politics.

Carla Hayden, the first African American to hold the post, was fired over diversity initiatives.

May is Jewish American Heritage Month. Join ARL in honoring this community by viewing our round-up of events, blog posts, and resources from our member libraries. Events | Blog...

ARL shines a spotlight on Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander heritage during the month of May. View our round-up of events, blogs, and other resources. Events | Blog...

"Sarah Lewis deciphers the hugely popular nineteenth-century images that failed to dislodge Americans' faith in the mythical white homeland of the Caucasus. Actual Caucasians little resemble race science's ideals of whiteness, so Americans learned to manipulate their visual regime-and visual media-to suppress evidence of race's incoherence."--;"In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were confronted with the fictions shoring up the nation's racial regime and learned to disregard them. The true significance of this hidden history has gone unseen--until now. The surprising catalyst occurred in the nineteenth century when the Caucasian War--the fight for independence in the Caucasus that coincided with the end of the US Civil War--revealed the instability of the entire regime of racial domination. Images of the Caucasus region and peoples captivated the American public but also showed that the place from which we derive 'Caucasian' for whiteness was not white at all. Cultural and political figures ranging from P. T. Barnum to Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois to Woodrow Wilson recognized these fictions and more, exploiting, unmasking, critiquing, or burying them. To acknowledge the falsehood at the core of racial order proved unthinkable, especially as Jim Crow and segregation took hold. Sight became a form of racial sculpture, vision a knife excising what no longer served the stability of racial hierarchy. That stability was shaped, crucially, by what was left out, what we have been conditioned not to see. Groundbreaking and profoundly resonant, The Unseen Truth shows how visual tactics have long secured our regime of racial hierarchy in spite of its false foundations--and offers a way to begin to dismantle it." --

"Tamara Lanier grew up listening to her mother's stories about her ancestors. As Black Americans descended from enslaved people brought to America, they knew all too well how fragile the tapestry of a lineage could be. As her mother's health declined, she pushed her daughter to dig into those stories. "Tell them about Papa Renty," she would say. It was her mother's last wish. Thus begins one woman's remarkable commitment to document that story. Her discovery of an eighteenth-century daguerreotype, one of the first-ever photos of enslaved people from Africa, reveals a dark-skinned man with short-cropped silver hair and chiseled cheekbones. The information read "Renty, Congo." All at once, Lanier knew she was staring at the ancestor her mother told her so much about-Papa Renty. In a compelling story covering more than a decade of her own research, Lanier takes us on her quest to prove her genealogical bloodline to Papa Renty's that pits her in a legal battle against one of the most powerful institutions in the country, Harvard University. The question is, who has claim to the stories, artifacts, and remnants of America's stained history-the institutions who acquired and housed them for generations, or the descendants who have survived? From These Roots is not only a historical record of one woman's lineage but a call to justice that fights for all those demanding to reclaim, honor, and lay to rest the remains of mishandled lives and memories"--

"A history of post-Brown school desegregation in Detroit, with a focus on Milliken v. Bradley"--

"Purnell details how multi-racial social movements rooted in rebellion, risk-taking, and revolutionary love pushed her and a generation of activists toward abolition. The book travels across geography and time, and offers lessons that activists have learned from Ferguson to South Africa, from Reconstruction to contemporary protests against police shootings. Here, Purnell argues that police can not be reformed and invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place"--Provided by publisher.

Three former Memphis officers have been acquitted of all state charges, including second-degree murder, in the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols after he ran away from a traffic stop.

A new policy in Hennepin County, Minnesota, that allows prosecutors to consider racial identity in plea deals has led to a probe by the U.S. Department of Justice.

BOSTON, MA – April 30, 2025 - To honor Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, the Boston Public Library (BPL) is…

The attrition rate for associates in law firms was 20% in 2024, up from 18% in 2023 but still lower than the historic high of 26% in 2021, according to the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education.

Actions attack funding and accreditation but also seek to increase affordability and retention at Black colleges

Grijalva, who earned a sociology degree from the U of A in 1987, was a steadfast champion of the university’s land-grant mission and a testament to what it means to be a Wildcat for Life.

The president's contention that birthright citizenship is unconstitutional is considered a fringe view because the Supreme Court ruled to the contrary 127 years ago.

Racist covenants once impacted where minority families in Tucson could live.

Longtime Tucson Congressman Raúl M. Grijalva, who inspired generations of environmental and inner-city activists in a political career that spanned more than a half-century, died Thursday morning.

Grijalva spent half a century in public service and represented Arizona in Congress for more than two decades.

As ABC15 honors Black History Month, we are taking you inside the African American Museum of Southern Arizona, located on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson.

The bill would make it illegal for a city to spend less on its police force than it did in the year prior. But no Arizona cities have reduced their police budgets since the 2008 recession.

This semester, 12 clinical law students, representing six law schools, participated in our Spring 2024 Movement Lawyering Clinical Cohort. Through the work in the cohort, their skills were used to advance the campaigns of four of our beloved movement partners. The cohort's reach extended from the Northeast to the Midwest and down to the South, showcasing the broad impact of our collective work. The students' work and research shared the common theme of "Ending Criminalization and Building Thriving Black Communities Our Way."

"America was founded on the principle that all men are created equal. Throughout our history we have not always lived up to that self-evident truth. This has been especially true in our criminal justice system."

"A federal grand jury has indicted the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd's arrest and death accusing them of willfully violating the Black man's constitutional rights as he was restrained face-down on the pavement and gasping for air."

"A recent American Bar Association study found that the legal profession in America has remained overwhelmingly white and male over the last decade and that racial diversity among lawyers has actually regressed in some respects"

"An unusual coalition is banding together in a petition to release an 84-year-old former Black Panther convicted for his role in the killing of a police officer."

"Colorado's attorney general said Wednesday that a grand jury indicted three officers and two paramedics in the death of Elijah McClain a Black man who was put in a chokehold and injected with a powerful sedative two years ago in suburban Denver."

"State judge overturns earlier ruling orders police force to give Cariol Horne her backpay and pension."

"The Justice Department will launch an investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department to determine if there is a pattern of discrimination or excessive force within its ranks Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday."

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - Civil rights group Muslim Advocates sued Facebook Inc and its top executives on Thursday alleging they misled the U.S. Congress and others by falsely claiming the company removes content that violates its policies."