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White lawyer, Black power : a memoir of civil rights activism in the deep South / Donald A. Jelinek ; foreword by John Dittmer.

by Jelinek, Donald A. (Lawyer), author.

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Columbia, South Carolina : University of South Carolina Press, [2020]

Jelinek, Donald A. (Lawyer)

Lawyers -- United States -- Biography.

Civil rights workers -- United States -- Biography.

Civil rights movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

xxv, 268 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

One. "Black and white together, we shall overcome": -- 1. Going South -- 2. Lawyers for the movement -- 3. On the road -- 4. Mississippi's newest civil rghts worker -- 5. Novice county leader -- 6. Time to leave...and return -- 7. Full-time civil rights lawyer -- 8. The "rape" of the plantation owner's wife -- Two. Black power Selma: -- 9. A crack in the movement -- 10. White lawyer in black power Selma -- 11. The Cotton Wars -- 12. Black versus Black in the 1966 elections -- 13. The dark side of two federal judges -- 14. No Blacks on Southern juries -- 15. Fired and banished -- 16. Unsung heroes of Selma: the fathers of St. Edmund -- 17. The unimaginable poor -- 18. The fight for food -- 19. Goodbye to SNCC...and the South.

Author Donald Jelinek offers a powerful, first-hand account of his time working as a civil rights attorney in Mississippi and Alabama during a three-year period from 1965-1968. Originally Jelinek, an NYU-trained lawyer in his early 30s, volunteered only to spend a few weeks working pro bono for the ACLU in Mississippi. Instead, he ended up quitting his job with a New York City law firm and staying in the South for several consequential years. Jelinek provides compelling testimony of the work that he and other movement activists did during that time. Perhaps the richest portions of the book come when Jelinek describes his interactions with the local people who formed the core of the Movement in the Deep South. The passages describing conversations with Black sharecroppers and fellow civil rights organizers provide highly readable discussions of the nature of on-the-ground organizing that will be valuable both to scholars of the Movement and interested parties more generally. His account highlights the long, slow, hard work of organizing, work that was built one house at a time, through the cultivation of relationships and trust. (Publisher)

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