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Rwu Law Alumni Newsletter April 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

RWU Law

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Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

Scholarly Works

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Pink Franklin V. South Carolina: The Naacp’S First Case, W. Lewis Burke

Faculty Publications

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Next Generation Of Civil Rights Lawyers: Race And Representation In The Age Of Identity Performance, Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Anthony Alfieri

Faculty Scholarship

This Book Review addresses two important new books, Professor Kenneth Mack’s Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer and Professors Devon Carbado and Mitu Gulati’s Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America, and utilizes their insights to both explore the challenges that face the next generation of civil rights lawyers and offer suggestions on how this next generation of civil rights lawyers can overcome these difficulties. Overall, this Book Review highlights one similarity in the roles of black civil rights attorneys past and present: the need for lawyers in both generations to perform their identities in ways …

Maryland Lawyers Who Helped Shape The Constitution: Father Of Freedom - Charles Hamilton Houston, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

For most Americans, Charles Hamilton Houston is barely a footnote in history. Born in 1896, this Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and Harvard educated African-American lawyer went on to win eight of nine cases in the United States Supreme Court. He designed the legal strategy for the historic Brown v. Board of Education 347 U.S. 483 (1954). He was the first African American to be elected to the Harvard Law Review and the first to earn the degree Doctor of Juridical Science Degree

By 1950 he would be laid to rest, exhausted by his brutal multi-state law reform …

Associational Privacy And The First Amendment: Naacp V. Alabama, Privacy And Data Protection, Anita L. Allen

All Faculty Scholarship

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Freedom Of Association, The Communist Party, And The Hollywood Ten: The Forgotten First Amendment Legacy Of Charles Hamilton Houston, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

Charles Hamilton Houston, the most important civil rights lawyer of the first half of the 20th century who developed the legal strategy in Brown v. Board of Education, ended his fabulous legal career representing a group of Hollywood screen writers known as the Hollywood Ten. See Lawson and Trumbo v. United States, 176 F.2d 49 (D.C. App.1949). In that case convictions and jail sentences were upheld for the defendants' failure to answer questions from the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) about their views on communism and whether or not each was members of the Communist Party. The matters in …

Blackboard Jungle: Delinquency, Psychiatry, And The Bio-Politics Of Brown, Anders Walker

Studio for Law and Culture

In 1955, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released a controversial film about juvenile delinquency entitled Blackboard Jungle. Georgia Governor Ernest Vandiver subsequently used the film as a metaphor for what would happen to southern schools were Brown enforced, marking the beginnings of a much larger campaign to articulate southern resistance to integration in popular terms. Taking Blackboard Jungle as a starting point, this article recovers the intersection between discourses of delinquency and desegregation at mid-century, showing how civil rights groups and segregationists alike both drew from mass culture and social psychiatry to advance their constitutional agendas. It concludes by showing that even as …

The Sweet Trials: An Account, Douglas O. Linder

Faculty Works

The automobile and manufacturing boom that began in Detroit about 1915 made the city a magnet for blacks fleeing the economic stagnation of the South. In the decade from 1915 to 1925, Detroit's black population grew more than tenfold, from 7,000 to 82,000. A severe housing shortage developed, as the city's compact black district could not accommodate all the new arrivals. Blacks brave enough to purchase or rent homes in previously all-white neighborhoods faced intimidation and violence. The spring and summer of 1925 saw several ugly housing-related incidents. It was in this violent summer of 1925 that a black doctor …

Review: Robert L. Carter, A Matter Of Law: A Memoir Of Struggle In The Cause Of Equal Rights, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

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Title Vi And The Warren County Protests, Bradford Mank

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

One part of the 1982 civil rights struggle against building a Polychlorinated Biphenyls ("PCB") landfill in Warren County, North Carolina, was a suit by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People ("NAACP") under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Although the suit was unsuccessful, the Warren County protests led to a 1983 General Accounting Office study and a 1987 United Church of Christ's Commission on Racial Justice (CRJ) study, both of which found that hazardous waste facilities were more likely to be located in minority communities. The Warren County protests and the two studies helped build …

Naacp V. The Attorney General: Black Community Struggle Against Police Violence, 1959-68, Jay Stewart

Journal Articles

On March 30, 1959, the U.S. Supreme Court issued two decisions which set the stage for a new era in police-community relations. In Abbate v. United States. I and Bartkus v. Illinois,2 the Court gave the U.S. Justice Department the power to prosecute police officers under federal civil rights laws for acts of racist violence - even when they were already under state or local investigation - without fear of violating states' rights. These decisions - had they been enforced - would have been welcome news at the New York headquarters of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored …

Lena Olive Smith: A Minnesota Civil Rights Pioneer, Ann Juergens

Faculty Scholarship

Lena Olive Smith and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) created a spirited partnership in the public interest during the 1920s and 1930s. Throughout their long collaboration, this woman lawyer, her clients, and the Minneapolis branch of a national grassroots organization faced similar challenges: to stay solvent, to end segregation and increase equality, and to live with dignity. This article is divided into four sections. The first three roughly correspond with stages in Smith’s life and work. Part II briefly chronicles Smith’s first thirty six years, 1885 to 1921, as a single African-American woman in the …

Drum Majors For Justice, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

Many lawyers worked with the legendary Thurgood Marshall to overturn the Supreme Court's infamous separate but equal doctrine, which had permitted racial segregation in schools and public accommodations. But while most Marylanders are aware of Marshall's contribution, few recognize the name of his colleague, William I. Gosnell.

At that time, Gosnell was one of only 32 black lawyers in the state of Maryland. In fact, due to the state's racial segregation policy, both he and Marshall had received scholarships to attend out- of-state law schools. They were denied entry to the University of Maryland because of their skin color. While …

The Imposition Of The Death Penalty In The United States Of America: Does It Comply With International Norms?, Beverly Mcqueary Smith

Scholarly Works

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Book Review. Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall And The Supreme Court, 1936-1961, Kevin D. Brown

Articles by Maurer Faculty

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Thurgood Marshall: Legal Strategist For The Civil Rights Movement, F. Michael Higginbotham, José F. Anderson

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief article covers the career of attorney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, covering his early days as an attorney working for the NAACP, up to his career on the nation's highest court. Of particular interest are the hardships of his early days as a lawyer, as one of only 32 African American lawyers in Maryland in 1935. The key cases during his career are touched upon, along with the legal strategies used to further the cause of civil rights.

An Old Debate Continues Over Integrated Schools, Davison M. Douglas

Faculty Publications

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Groveling At The Feet Of Football's Greedy Lords, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

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A Tribute To Thurgood Marshall, Peter N. Simon

Publications

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National Association For The Advancement Of Colored People V. Claiborne Hardware Company, Lewis F. Powell, Jr.

Supreme Court Case Files

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