Justice You Shall Pursue: Jewish Lawyers Against Jim Crow

The civil rights movement transformed the American South in the 1960s, reshaping the region-and with it, the nation-into a more visibly democratic society.Yet the odds of dismantling legally enforced racial segregation were extraordinarily long.Among those who helped to shorten them were outside attorneys who came to the aid of activists on the ground.Northern lawyers freed protesters from jail, preserving their ability to continue the struggle, and carried civil rights cases to the highest levels of the federal judiciary.In so doing, these attorneys helped expand the constitutional meanings of "free expression," "freedom of assembly," "due process," and "equal protection of the laws." At the height of the freedom struggle, most of these northern lawyers were Jewish.Their prominence reflected the near absence of Black attorneys-who made up barely one percent of the American bar in the early 1960s-and the reluctance of white Southern lawyers to challenge segregation through constitution