Civil Rights, Legal History, African American legal status, Race discrimination, Collective biographies 

"This book is both a powerful personal memoir and the definitive history of an organization that helped change American society. Jack Greenberg was a key figure at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) for some thirty-five years. Most of the cases we associate from that period--school integration, equal employment, fair housing, voter registration--were LDF cases, either argued by Greenberg himself or litigated under his direction. Greenberg represented Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham and won for him the right to march from Selma to Montgomery. Under Greenberg's leadership, the LDF forced the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith and integrated the University of Alabama when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door. Greenberg won the cases in which the Supreme Court repudiated the "all deliberate speed" doctrine, which had made school desegregation intolerably slow. Through the 1970s and 1980s, LDF tackled most of the important cases that enforced the new civil rights legislation of the 1960s involving public accommodations, employment, education, and health care, and started the campaigns for prisoners' rights and against capital punishment. More than a history of the litigation that made the LDF so important, the book offers unique insights into its strategies, courtroom techniques, values, and personal relationships. Filled with stories only Greenberg could tell of his experiences with Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Lani Guinier, Roy Wilkins, Vernon Jordan, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Lyndon Johnson, and scores of others, Crusaders in the Courts is an epic saga of a critical period in American history as well as the poignant personal story of the evolution of a white Jewish lawyer into a major civil rights advocate." - Voila 

Content:

pt. I. Preparing the ground : The Moses of the journey ; Sowing seeds ; Freedom house, 1949 ; Why me? ; The ground is hard ; Law schools in the Supreme Court -- pt. II. Edging toward a showdown: Brown v. Board of Education : An end to segregation, nothing else ; Groveland ; Preparing for battle ; Jim Crow and the voice of God in Kansas ; Groveland, Delaware, and dancers dressed in feathers ; The school segregation cases and bulldogs ; In the house of the law ; Back to the drawing board -- pt. III. Brown decided: eyes on the future : A historic turn ; The spirit of Black revolt stirs and Jim Crow fights back ; Lucy and Little Rock: war of all men against all men ; Trench warfare ; Vivid memories -- pt. IV. The movement takes off : Out of the courts and into the streets ; New clients, new cases, new theories ; The new chief counsel: I succeed Thurgood ; Completing the circle: freedom fighters free themselves ; Jim Crow crushed in Mississippi ; Freedom rides, freedom summer, fighting among freedom fighters ; From Selma to Montgomery -- pt. V. The era of the Civil Rights Act : LDF grows as an institution ; Education following the defeat of "all deliberate speed" ; Angela Davis, the San Rafael shootout, and turmoil at LDF ; Winning jobs ; The war on poverty: Martin Luther King, Jr., and NORI ; NORI and criminal justice ; Affirmative action ; LDF goes to Washington ; Final separations ; Beyond the rights of Blacks -- pt. VI. Changing the guard again : My last years at LDF ; A summation: victories and defeats -- The people of LDF. 

Includes bibliographical references and index.