Civil Rights Movements & the Law

"Professor Scherer's research proves that increasing diversity on the bench promotes the courts' legitimacy among formerly-marginalized groups; at the same time, white men experience a backlash to an increase in diversity on the bench"--

"Many DEI interventions lack rigor and measurable value beyond staff composition, statistics, and surveys. Data-Driven DEI presents readers with science-based, technology-enabled assessments and tools that will help individuals and organizations achieve measurable lasting impact. With the tools in this book, readers can achieve greater diversity, equity and inclusion by: assessing their current state of DEI with the author's proprietary the Intrinsic Inclusion Inventory; analyzing that data to produce a personalized action plan; and implementing evidence-based, behavioral learning interventions like the author's proprietary The Inclusion Habit program. Following these steps will lead to several measurable individual outcomes: increased cultural competence, accelerated career advancement, genuinely inclusive leadership, and effective allyship. It also produces numerous, quantifiable organizational outcomes such as improved recruitment and retention, strengthened customer orientation, increased employee satisfaction, better-quality decision making, enhanced brand and reputation, and improved bottom line financial performance"--

"Critical Race Theory is essential for understanding developments in this burgeoning field, which has spread to other disciplines and countries. The new edition also covers the ways in which other societies and disciplines adapt its teachings and, for readers wanting to advance a progressive race agenda, includes new questions for discussion, aimed at outlining practical steps to achieve this objective"--

"Climate change. Two words that are quickly becoming the clarion call to action in the twenty-first century. It is a voter issue, an economy driver, and a defining dynamic for the foreseeable future. Yet, in Black communities, climate change is seen as less urgent when compared to other pressing issues, including police brutality, gun violence, job security, food insecurity, and the blatant racism faced daily around the country. However, with Black Americans disproportionately impacted by the effects of climate change--making up 13 percent of the US population but breathing 40 percent dirtier air and being twice as likely to be hospitalized or die from climate-related health problems than white counterparts--climate change is a central issue of racial justice and affects every aspect of life for Black communities. In Before the Streetlights Come On, climate activist Heather McTeer Toney insists that those most affected by climate change are best suited to lead the movement for climate justice. McTeer Toney brings her background in politics, community advocacy, and leadership in environmental justice to this revolutionary exploration of why and how Black Americans are uniquely qualified to lead national and global conversations around systems of racial disparity and solutions to the climate crisis. As our country delves deeper into solutions for systemic racism and past injustices, she argues, the environmental movement must shift direction and leadership toward those most affected and most affecting change: Black communities."--

"Tens of thousands of innocent people are behind bars for offenses ranging from misdemeanors to capital crimes. But proving their innocence in the court of law is extraordinarily difficult. After conviction, the presumption of innocence vanishes, and a new presumption of guilt forms and ossifies over time. Our criminal justice system values finality over accuracy, even if it comes at the cost of an innocent person's wrongful conviction and even when there's good evidence they haven't committed the crime. In Barred, acclaimed legal scholar and pioneering innocence advocate Daniel Medwed argues that our justice system's stringent procedural rules are to blame for the ongoing punishment of the innocent. Every state gives criminal defendants just one opportunity to appeal their convictions to a higher court. Afterward, the wrongfully accused can pursue various post-conviction remedies, but all too often they fall short in leading to exoneration. Because of narrow guidelines and deferential attitudes toward lower courts, higher courts tend to uphold convictions, even when there is compelling evidence of a miscarriage of justice. And although the executive branch holds the power to release people who are in custody, it exercises this power sparingly and views with intense suspicion those who insist upon their innocence. The result is that a startling number of people are incarcerated for crimes they didn't commit; highly-publicized death-row exonerations are just the tip of the iceberg. The regime is stacked against the innocent, Medwed concludes, and the appellate and post-conviction process must be entirely overhauled. Through heart-wrenching real-life stories, alongside accessible descriptions of complex legal procedures, Barred exposes how our legal system perpetuates gross injustice and issues a powerful call for change"--

An Arizona organization working to investigate and litigate cases of wrongful conviction in Arizona will receive funding from the Department of Justice to continue that work.The University of Arizona Innocence Project started as a small clinic in 2014 and today it's one of two such initiatives in Arizona.

The city of Minneapolis has reached settlements totaling more than $8.8 million in two civil lawsuits that accuse former police officer Derek Chauvin of using excessive force in two incidents that happened nearly three years before he killed George Floyd during an arrest.

When I was a high school student in the mid-1960s, I used to trek up to the West Wing of UCLA’s Powell Library on Sunday nights.  This was the place to see and be seen in the social scene of …

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a bid by South Carolina officials to revive a Republican-crafted voting map that a lower court said had unconstitutionally "exiled" 30,000 Black voters from a closely contested congressional district.

UAL Special Collections

Daniel Perry, a US army sergeant stationed at Fort Hood, Texas, had been found guilty of murder in a 2020 shooting.

"The Evidence of Things Not Seen, award-winning author James Baldwin's searing 1985 indictment of the nation's racial stagnation, is contextualized anew by an introduction from New York Times bestselling author and political leader Stacey Abrams. In this essential work, James Baldwin examines the Atlanta child murders that took place over twenty-two months in 1979 and 1980. Examining this incident with a reporter's skill and an essayist's insight, he notes the significance of Atlanta as the site of these brutal killings-a city that claimed to be "too busy to hate"-and the permeation of race throughout the case: the Black administration in Atlanta; the murdered Black children; and Wayne Williams, the Black man tried for the crimes. In Baldwin's hands, this specific set of events has transcended its era and remains as relevant today as ever. Rummaging through the ruins of American race relations, Baldwin addresses all the hard-to-face issues that have brought us to a moment in history when we are forced to reckon with some of the country's most ingrained, foundational issues and when, too often, public officials fail to ask real questions about "justice for all." In this, his last book, Baldwin also reveals his optimistic faith in America's ability to move toward repair: "This is the only nation in the world that can hope to liberate-to begin to liberate-mankind from the strangling idea of the national identity and the tyranny of the territorial dispute. I know this sounds remote, now, and that I will not live to see anything resembling this hope come to pass. Yet, I know that I have seen it-in fire and blood and anguish, true, but I have seen it. I speak with the authority of the issue of the slave born in the country once believed to be: the last best hope of earth.""--

"Deliberately writing against archival erasure and death driven logics of anti-Blackness, this volume chronicles Black women's aliveness, ethics of care, and rituals of healing. Nineteen contributors from interdisciplinary fields and diverse backgrounds explore Black feminine community, consciousness, ethics of care, spirituality, and social critique. They situate Black women's multidimensional experiences with COVID-19 and other violences that affect their lives. The stories they tell are connected and interwoven, bound together by anti-Black gendered COVID necropolitics and commitments to creating new spaces for breathing, healing and wellness"--

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched cultural observers of her generation. In these essays, the author takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman of color while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the 2010s (Girls, Django Unchained) and commenting on the state of feminism (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture. This book takes a look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and serves as a call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better.

"Dr. Baden chronicles his six decades on the front lines of the fight for accountability within the legal system-including the long history of medical examiners of using a controversial syndrome called excited delirium (a term that shows up in the pathology report for George Floyd) to explain away the deaths of BIPOC restrained by police"--

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Monday signed a bill that would make child rapists eligible for the death penalty in the state.  “In Florida, we believe it’s only appropriate that the worst o…

Who is Robert Morris:     Born in Salem Massachusetts in 1825, Neither Morris, his siblings, nor his parents were enslaved. This foundatio...

The family of Tyre Nichols, who died in January after being severely beaten by five Memphis police officers, has filed a $550 million federal lawsuit against the city of Memphis over his death. The five officers charged with second-degree murder have pleaded not guilty. Geoff Bennett discussed the latest with Nichols' mother RowVaughn Wells and attorney Ben Crump.

A White 85-year-old homeowner who allegedly shot and wounded Ralph Yarl, a Black teen, after the 16-year-old went to the wrong home to pick up his siblings will face two felony charges.

The juvenile system forces many children and teens into long confinement in unsafe institutions.

The city of Minneapolis on Thursday agreed to pay roughly $8.9 million to settle two lawsuits involving former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was charged with killing George Floyd in 2020. In th…

As the world watched, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday to reappoint Justin Pearson to the Tennessee House of Representatives, less than a week after the Republican-led House voted to expel him and fellow state Representative Justin Jones from the body for joining peaceful protests against gun violence after the school massacre in Nashville. Pearson and Jones were the two youngest Black lawmakers in the Tennessee House. The Nashville Metropolitan Council unanimously voted Monday to restore Jones to office, and he was sworn in Tuesday. Pearson is being sworn back in today. We feature their remarks at the vote and rally Wednesday in Memphis.

“Digidog is out of the pound,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a press conference showing off three new NYPD technologies, including a robotic dog.

Present-day courts, practitioners, and scholars continue to cite to and rely upon cases involving slavery and enslaved persons to construe, interpret, and apply

UCLA law professor Joanna Schwartz talks about the legal protections — including qualified immunity and no-knock warrants — that have protected officers from the repercussions of abuse. Her book is Shielded.Also, David Bianculli reviews Mel Brooks' History of the World Part II on Hulu.