Marching Through '64
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Brief for the Honorable Congressman John Lewis As Amicus Curiae in Support of Respondents and Intervenor-Respondents
No. 12-96 In the Supreme Court of the United States SHELBY COUNTY, ALABAMA, Petitioner, v. ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., ATTORNEY GENERAL, ET AL., Respondents. ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT BRIEF FOR THE HONORABLE CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS AS AMICUS CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF RESPONDENTS AND INTERVENOR-RESPONDENTS Aderson B. Francois Deborah N. Archer HOWARD UNIVERSITY Counsel of Record SCHOOL OF LAW Tamara C. Belinfanti Civil Rights Clinic Erika L. Wood 2900 Van Ness Street NW NEW YORK LAW SCHOOL Washington, D.C. 20008 RACIAL JUSTICE PROJECT (202) 806-8065 185 West Broadway New York, NY 10013 (212) 431-2138 [email protected] i TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................. i TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES ......................... iv INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE ........................... 1 SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................... 2 ARGUMENT .............................................................. 5 I. The History of Voting Rights In America Has Been One of Recurring Retrenchment and Reconstruction Rather than Uninterrupted and Continuous Progress. ................................... 5 A. Young Men and Women Risked and Sometimes Gave Their Lives During The Civil Rights Movement to Secure the Right to Vote for All Americans. ........................ 5 B. A Century Before the Congressman Was Nearly Murdered for Trying to Exercise The Right to Vote, His Great- Great-Grandfather Freely Voted During Reconstruction. ........................ 8 C. Congressman Lewis’ Public Service Career Has Been Devoted to the Proposition that Democracy Is Not a State but an Act that ii Requires Continued Vigilance to Ensure a Fair and Free Democracy. .......................................... 13 II. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act Remains Crucial to Protect the Rights of All Americans to Participate in Our Electoral System Free from Racial Discrimination. -
Lessons from the Life and Works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
CIVIL RIGHTS, IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS, HUMAN RIGHTS: LESSONS FROM THE LIFE AND WORKS OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. JENNIFER M. CHACON* Unlike several of the scholars participating in this symposium, I have no personal memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. I was born several years after the assassination of Dr. King. My "memories" of Dr. King are the product of books1 and television.' I have seen documentary footage of the March on Washington and have therefore heard, in scratchy recording, Dr. King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech.3 These derivative memories are powerful, but I suspect they do not compare with the living memories carried by other symposium authors. While I have no independent memories of the marches in Birmingham and Washington, D.C. that were led by Dr. King, I do have a clear image in my mind of the marches of May 1, 2006-a date when hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their allies took to the street.4 The marchers, who sought the normalization of legal status for millions of unauthorized migrants living and working in the United States,5 organized in opposition to * Professor of Law, U.C. Davis School of Law. The author would like to thank Dean Rex Perschbacher and Dean Kevin Johnson for their support of her research. She would also like to thank Sarah Martinez and Carolyn Hsu for excellent research assistance. 1. See, e.g., TAYLOR BRANCH, AT CANAAN'S EDGE: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS, 1965-1968 (2006) [hereinafter BRANCH, AT CANAAN'S EDGE]; MARSHALL FRADY, MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. -
A Summary of the Contributions of Four Key African American Female Figures of the Civil Rights Movement
Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Master's Theses Graduate College 12-1994 A Summary of the Contributions of Four Key African American Female Figures of the Civil Rights Movement Michelle Margaret Viera Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Viera, Michelle Margaret, "A Summary of the Contributions of Four Key African American Female Figures of the Civil Rights Movement" (1994). Master's Theses. 3834. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/3834 This Masters Thesis-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A SUMMARY OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF FOUR KEY AFRICAN AMERICAN FEMALE FIGURES OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Michelle Margaret Viera A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts Department of History Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan December 1994 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My appreciation is extended to several special people; without their support this thesis could not have become a reality. First, I am most grateful to Dr. Henry Davis, chair of my thesis committee, for his encouragement and sus tained interest in my scholarship. Second, I would like to thank the other members of the committee, Dr. Benjamin Wilson and Dr. Bruce Haight, profes sors at Western Michigan University. I am deeply indebted to Alice Lamar, who spent tireless hours editing and re-typing to ensure this project was completed. -
Waveland, Mississippi, November 1964: Death of Sncc, Birth of Radicalism
WAVELAND, MISSISSIPPI, NOVEMBER 1964: DEATH OF SNCC, BIRTH OF RADICALISM University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire: History Department History 489: Research Seminar Professor Robert Gough Professor Selika Ducksworth – Lawton, Cooperating Professor Matthew Pronley University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire May 2008 Abstract: The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced Snick) was a nonviolent direct action organization that participated in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. After the Freedom Summer, where hundreds of northern volunteers came to participate in voter registration drives among rural blacks, SNCC underwent internal upheaval. The upheaval was centered on the future direction of SNCC. Several staff meetings occurred in the fall of 1964, none more important than the staff retreat in Waveland, Mississippi, in November. Thirty-seven position papers were written before the retreat in order to reflect upon the question of future direction of the organization; however, along with answers about the future direction, these papers also outlined and foreshadowed future trends in radical thought. Most specifically, these trends include race relations within SNCC, which resulted in the emergence of black self-consciousness and an exodus of hundreds of white activists from SNCC. ii Table of Contents: Abstract ii Historiography 1 Introduction to Civil Rights and SNCC 5 Waveland Retreat 16 Position Papers – Racial Tensions 18 Time after Waveland – SNCC’s New Identity 26 Conclusion 29 Bibliography 32 iii Historiography Research can both answer questions and create them. Initially I discovered SNCC though Taylor Branch’s epic volumes on the Civil Right Movements in the 1960s. Further reading revealed the role of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced Snick) in the Civil Right Movement and opened the doors into an effective and controversial organization. -
Aspects of the Civil Rights Movement, 1946-1968: Lawyers, Law, and Legal and Social Change (CRM)
Aspects of The Civil Rights Movement, 1946-1968: Lawyers, Law, and Legal and Social Change (CRM) Syllabus Spring 2012 (N867 32187) Professor Florence Wagman Roisman Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law Office Hours: Tuesdays and Wednesday – 11:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m. Room 385 Roy Wilkins of the NAACP “reminded King that he owed his early fame to the NAACP lawsuit that had settled the Montgomery bus boycott, and he still taunted King for being young, naïve, and ineffectual, saying that King’s methods had not integrated a single classroom in Albany or Birmingham. ‘In fact, Martin, if you have desegregated anything by your efforts, kindly enlighten me.’ ‘Well,’ King replied, ‘I guess about the only thing I’ve desegregated so far is a few human hearts.’ King smiled too, and Wilkins nodded in a tribute to the nimble, Socratic reply. ‘Yes, I’m sure you have done that, and that’s important. So, keep on doing it. I’m sure it will help the cause in the long run.’” Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963 (Simon and Schuster 1988), p. 849. Welcome to this course in the Civil Rights Movement (CRM). I adore this course, as has almost every student who’s taken it when I’ve taught it before. I have four goals for the course: to increase and make more sophisticated our understanding of what actually happened during the CRM, to consider the various roles played by lawyers and the law in promoting (and hindering) significant social change, to see what lessons the era of the CRM suggests for apparently similar problems we face today, and to promote consideration of ways in which each of us can contribute to humane social change. -
Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr
H-Afro-Am Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1968) Discussion published by Shawn Leigh Alexander on Sunday, April 3, 2016 Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated 48 years ago today (April 4, 1968). Below is a beginning of a bibliography of books by or about Rev. King. Please add and discuss your own favorites. Lerone Bennett, What Manner of Man; a Biography of Martin Luther King, Jr (Chicago,: Johnson Pub. Co., 1964). Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988). Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963-65 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998). Taylor Branch, At Canann's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-1968 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006). James H. Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991). Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr (New York: Free Press, 2000). Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987). David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: Vintage Books, 1988). Drew D. Hansen, The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003). Vincent Harding, Martin Luther King, the Inconvenient Hero (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996). Trudier Harris, Martin Luther King Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2014). -
By Taylor Branch
P OLITICS AND W ITNESS BY TAYLOR BRANCH From Parting the Waters by Taylor Branch. Copyright 1988 by Taylor Branch. Published by Touchstone, $16.00. Reprinted by FIRST permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. TROMBONE ate in the afternoon of L Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat on a public city bus to a white passenger. Over the weekend, leaders of the black community organized a bus boycott to begin on Monday morning. On Monday afternoon, December 5, Martin Luther King, Jr., the young pastor of Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, was chosen to lead the ongoing boycott and to speak at a mass meeting that evening at the Holt Street Baptist Church. King had less than half an hour to prepare his first political address. AP/Wide World Photos World AP/Wide Martin Luther King, Jr., Holt Street Baptist Church, Montgomery,Alabama, December 5, 1955 SPRING 1999 21 P OLITICS AND W ITNESS Take him, Lord—this morning— He paused slightly longer.“And you know,my friends, there Wash him with hyssop inside and out, comes a time,”he cried,“when people get tired of being tram- Hang him up and drain him dry of sin. pled over by the iron feet of oppression.”A flock of “Yeses”was Fill him full of the dynamite of thy power, coming back at him when suddenly the individual responses Anoint him all over with the oil of thy salvation dissolved into a rising cheer and applause exploded beneath the And set his tongue on fire. -
Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics with Taylor Branch
Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics with Taylor Branch 2009 Table of Contents History of the Theodore H. White Lecture .........................................................5 Biography of Taylor Branch ..................................................................................7 Biographies of Nat Hentoff and David Nyhan ..................................................9 Welcoming Remarks by Dean David Ellwood ................................................11 Awarding of the David Nyhan Prize for Political Journalism to Nat Hentoff ................................................................................................11 The 2009 Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics “Disjointed History: Modern Politics and the Media” by Taylor Branch ...........................................................................................18 The 2009 Theodore H. White Seminar on Press and Politics .........................35 Alex S. Jones, Director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy (moderator) Dan Balz, Political Correspondent, The Washington Post Taylor Branch, Theodore H. White Lecturer Elaine Kamarck, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School Alex Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy, Harvard Kennedy School Renee Loth, Columnist, The Boston Globe Twentieth Annual Theodore H. White Lecture 3 The Theodore H. White Lecture com- memorates the life of the reporter and historian who created the style and set the standard for contemporary -
1 REMEMBERING MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. David Levering Lewis
1 REMEMBERING MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. David Levering Lewis NYU Washington 1307 L Street, NW Sunday, 5 PM January 20, 2013 Fifty years ago next August, two hundred fifty thousand Americans gathered in this city to protest racial discrimination as un-American. Martin Luther King, Jr., 34, leader of the successful Montgomery Alabama Bus Boycott, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), engaged in a bitter campaign to desegregate police chief Bull Connor’s Birmingham, Alabama, spoke last. His speech was one for the ages, an oration whose eloquent content matched the Gettysburg Address. Unlike Abraham Lincoln’s address, carefully prepared well in advance of his trip to a battlefield dedication, Martin Luther King’s speech was a masterpiece of eleventh-hour composition and inspired improvisation. He tells us that he only finished it at 4 AM on the morning of the 28th. The famous speech commenced with a Lincolnesque flourish: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.” As his fine baritone rolled over the great crowd, “the audience response was wonderful,” Dr. King recalls. “All of a sudden, this thing came to me.” “I have a dream,” the phrase that he had used many times before. At that point, “I just turned aside from the manuscript altogether and didn’t come back to it., ”he says.[Auto-223] The powerful cadences, 2 the edifying biblical allusions, the hypnotic iteration of the leitmotif---“I Have A Dream”---would spellbind the nation. “Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy. -
A Symbol of Virtue Or a Strategy for Votes? John F. Kennedy's
A Symbol of Virtue Or A Strategy for Votes? John F. Kennedy’s Telephone Call to Coretta King And Its Social And Political Consequences Master’s Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Graduate Program in Comparative History Daniel Thomas Kryder, Advisor In Partial Fullfillment of the Requirements for Master’s Degree by Matthew E. Sullivan May, 2013 ABSTRACT A Symbol of Virtue Or A Strategy for Votes? John F. Kennedy’s Telephone Call to Coretta King And Its Social And Political Consequences A thesis presented to the Graduate Program in Comparative History Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts By Matt Sullivan This thesis examines the effect of a phone conversation between Kennedy and Coretta Scott King concerning Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s unfair imprisonment on the African- American community, and the social and political consequences that followed. By examining Kennedy’s relationship to civil rights before the call, the events surrounding the phone call itself, and the political strategy involved in getting the message of Kennedy’s call to African- Americans, this thesis will attempt to determine Kennedy’s motivations in making the call and if it had any effects. By looking at polling data and voting statistics among African-Americans, this thesis will determine to what extent they supported Kennedy in the election. A chart was developed that examined Kennedy’s motivation for making the call, ranging from instrumental to moral. The effect of the call ranges from a high effect, no effect at all, and a negative effect for Kennedy. -
David J. Garrow, “The Intel Chiefs Did to Trump What Hoover Did to MLK,” Washington Post, 18 January 2017
David J. Garrow, “The Intel Chiefs Did to Trump What Hoover Did to MLK,” Washington Post, 18 January 2017. Once he’s inaugurated, the new president should dismiss them all. U.S. intelligence chiefs James R. Clapper Jr., John Brennan, James B. Comey and Adm. Michael Rogers (with an assist from BuzzFeed) all deserve an award: the J. Edgar Hoover memorial award, if you will. By giving official cognizance to, and personally presenting President-elect Donald Trump with the salacious fruits of sleuth-for-hire Christopher Steele’s anonymously sourced and poorly written opposition research memos intended to smear Trump’s character, the United States’ intelligence officials have reprised what then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and deputies William Sullivan and Cartha “Deke” DeLoach did to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964. President Lyndon B. Johnson should have fired Hoover and his minions for their opprobrious conduct. Clapper and Brennan are already on their way out, but Comey’s and Rogers’s resignations should be the first things Trump requests after taking the oath of office. To anyone who knows memo-by-memo the documentary record of both the FBI and the CIA’s pursuit of King, Steele’s 35-page dossier of memos dating from June 20 through Dec. 13 of last year is replete with echoes. Steele begins his assault on Trump with an anonymous accusation of “perverted sexual acts,” and his insistent obsession with “sexual perversion” mirror the characterizations Hoover and Sullivan flung at their subordinates in marshaling the FBI’s workforce to seek King’s personal destruction, repeatedly using phrases like “moral degenerate” in internal bureau communications about King. -
FBI Investigations Into the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
Columbus State University CSU ePress Theses and Dissertations Student Publications 12-2019 FBI Investigations into the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left Meredith Donovan Follow this and additional works at: https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Donovan, Meredith, "FBI Investigations into the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left" (2019). Theses and Dissertations. 330. https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/theses_dissertations/330 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Publications at CSU ePress. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of CSU ePress. COLUMBUS STATE UNIVERSITY FBI INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND THE NEW LEFT A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE HONORS COLLEGE IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR HONORS IN THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY COLLEGE OF LETTERS AND SCIENCES BY MEREDITH DONOVAN COLUMBUS, GEORGIA 2019 1 Copyright © 2019 Meredith Donovan All Rights Reserved. 2 FBI INVESTIGATIONS INTO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND THE NEW LEFT By Meredith Donovan Committee Chair: Dr. Gary Sprayberry Committee Members: Dr. Sarah Bowman Dr. Ryan Lynch Columbus State University December 2019 3 Abstract This paper examines how the FBI investigated civil rights organizations and social movements from the 1950s through the 1970s. It compares the reasons for the investigations, the investigative methods, and the extent of the investigations. The paper uses FBI files as the basis for the information and to form the argument that the FBI chose its targets based on who posed a significant threat to the status quo.