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A Lawyer Looks At Civil Disobedience: Why Lewis F. Powell Jr. Divorced Diversity From Affirmative Action, Anders Walker
A Lawyer Looks At Civil Disobedience: Why Lewis F. Powell Jr. Divorced Diversity From Affirmative Action, Anders Walker
University of Colorado Law Review
This Article reconstructs Lewis F. Powell Jr.'s thoughts on the civil rights movement by focusing on a series of littleknown speeches that he delivered in the 1960s lamenting the practice of civil disobedience endorsed by Martin Luther King Jr. Convinced that the law had done all it could for blacks, Powell took issue with King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail," impugning its invocation of civil disobedience and rejecting its calls for compensatory justice to make up for slavery and Jim Crow. Dismissive of reparations, Powell developed a separate basis for supporting diversity that hinged on distinguishing American pluralism from Soviet totalitarianism. …