The Judge

The Judge
Author: Frank Sikora
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2007-08-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1603061401

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the black drive for civil rights, but the changes he sought came largely in legal opinions issues by federal judges. Foremost of these was Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., of Montgomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the rights movement—hearings brimming with dramatic and poignant testimony from the black people who cried out for the freedoms that are the legacy of all Americans. Beginning with Judge Johnson’s coming-of-age in the hill country of Winston County, Alabama, this book covers many of his notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo, as well as Johnson’s work for prisoners, women, and the mentally ill. Much of the book is comprised of interviews and direct quotes from Johnson himself, making this recounting of Judge Johnson’s life dynamically autobiographical. Includes a new introduction and afterward by the author, Frank Sikora.

Defending Constitutional Rights

Defending Constitutional Rights
Author: Frank Minis Johnson
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2001
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780820322858

Federal Judge Frank M. Johnson of Alabama decided many of the most important civil rights and liberties cases in twentieth-century American history. During the 1950s and 1960s, his decisions supported Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights fighters in their struggles for justice and equality. Johnson extended the Constitutional defense of individual rights for women, students, prisoners, mental health patients, poor criminal defendants, and voters during his active judicial career in Alabama and the South, which lasted until 1991. This collection assembles some of Johnson's most thought-provoking and insightful essays, many of which explain and defend a number of his decisions. Also included in this volume is the first published transcript of a 1980 public television interview with Bill Moyers. Meticulously detailed and documented, yet accessible to a wide range of readers, this book explores the constitutional ideals that Johnson forged and defended as he persistently overcame public officials' resistance to constitutional rights and social change.

Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr

Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr
Author: Robert Francis Kennedy
Publisher: Putnam Publishing Group
Total Pages: 304
Release: 1978
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

A biography of the federal judge who fought for the cause of civil rights in Alabama.

The Informant

The Informant
Author: Gary May
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2005-05-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300129998

An FBI’s informant’s role in the murder of a civil rights activist by the KKK is explored in this “suspenseful and vigorously reported” history (Baltimore Sun). In 1965, Detroit housewife Viola Liuzzo drove to Alabama to help organize Martin Luther King’s Voting Rights March from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery. But after the march’s historic success, Liuzzo was shot to death by members of the Birmingham Ku Klux Klan. The case drew national attention and was solved almost instantly, because one of the Klansman present during the shooting was Gary Thomas Rowe, an undercover FBI informant. At the time, Rowe’s information and testimony were heralded as a triumph of law enforcement. But as Gary May reveals in this provocative book, Rowe’s history of collaboration with both the Klan and the FBI was far more complex. Based on previously unexamined FBI and Justice Department Records, The Informant demonstrates that in their ongoing efforts to protect Rowe’s cover, the FBI knowingly became an accessory to some of the most grotesque crimes of the Civil Rights era—including a vicious attack on the Freedom Riders and perhaps even the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. A tale of a renegade informant and a tragically dysfunctional intelligence system, The Informant offers a dramatic cautionary tale about what can happen when secret police power goes unchecked.

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights

From Jim Crow to Civil Rights
Author: Michael J. Klarman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 670
Release: 2004-02-05
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0199880921

A monumental investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow To Civil Rights spells out in compelling detail the political and social context within which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of their decisions for American race relations. In a highly provocative interpretation of the decision's connection to the civil rights movement, Klarman argues that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. Brown unquestioningly had a significant impact--it brought race issues to public attention and it mobilized supporters of the ruling. It also, however, energized the opposition. In this authoritative account of constitutional law concerning race, Michael Klarman details, in the richest and most thorough discussion to date, how and whether Supreme Court decisions do, in fact, matter.

The Judge

The Judge
Author: Frank Sikora
Publisher: NewSouth Books
Total Pages: 322
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1588381587

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., led the black drive for civil rights, but the changes he sought came largely in legal opinions issued by federal judges. Foremost of these was Frank Minis Johnson, Jr., of Montgomery, Alabama, who presided over some of the most emotional hearings and trials of the rights movement--hearings brimming with dramatic and poignant testimony from the black people who cried out for the freedoms that are the legacy of all Americans. Beginning with Judge Johnson's coming-of-age in the hill country of Winston County, Alabama, this book covers many of his notable cases: the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides, school desegregation, the Selma-to-Montgomery march, and the night-rider slaying of Viola Liuzzo, as well as Johnson's work for prisoners, women, and the mentally ill. Much of the book is comprised of interviews and direct quotes from Johnson himself, making this recounting of Judge Johnson's life dynamically autobiographical. Includes a new introduction and afterword by the author, Frank Sikora.

Freedom’s Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)

Freedom’s Dominion (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize)
Author: Jefferson Cowie
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 496
Release: 2022-11-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 154167281X

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY An "important, deeply affecting—and regrettably relevant" (New York Times) chronicle of a sinister idea of freedom: white Americans’ freedom to oppress others and their fight against the government that got in their way. American freedom is typically associated with the fight of the oppressed for a better world. But for centuries, whenever the federal government intervened on behalf of nonwhite people, many white Americans fought back in the name of freedom—their freedom to dominate others. In Freedom’s Dominion, historian Jefferson Cowie traces this complex saga by focusing on a quintessentially American place: Barbour County, Alabama, the ancestral home of political firebrand George Wallace. In a land shaped by settler colonialism and chattel slavery, white people weaponized freedom to seize Native lands, champion secession, overthrow Reconstruction, question the New Deal, and fight against the civil rights movement. A riveting history of the long-running clash between white people and federal authority, this book radically shifts our understanding of what freedom means in America.