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

Title White lawyer, black power : a memoir of civil rights activism in the deep South / Donald A. Jelinek ; foreword by John Dittmer
Published Columbia, South Carolina : The University of South Carolina Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource (xxv, 268 pages) : illustrations
Contents Going South -- Lawyers for the movement -- On the road -- Mississippi's newest Civil Rights worker -- Novice county leader -- Time to leave ... and return -- Full-time Civil Rights lawyer -- The "rape" of the plantation owner's wife -- A crack in the movement -- White lawyer in black power Selma -- The Cotton Wars -- Black versus black in the 1966 elections -- The dark side of two federal judges -- No blacks on southern juries -- Fired and banished -- Unsung heroes of Selma : the fathers of St. Edmund -- The unimaginable poor -- The fight for food -- Goodbye to SNCC ... and the south
Summary "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"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on November 10, 2020)
Subject Jelinek, Donald A. (Lawyer)
SUBJECT Jelinek, Donald A. (Lawyer)
Jelinek, Donald A. (Lawyer) fast
Subject Lawyers -- United States -- Biography
Civil rights workers -- United States -- Biography
Civil rights movements -- United States -- History -- 20th century
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs
Civil rights movements
Civil rights workers
Lawyers
United States
Genre/Form Biographies
History
Form Electronic book
Author Dittmer, John, 1939- writer of foreword.
LC no. 2020026459
ISBN 9781643361192
1643361198