Representing the Race

Kenneth W. Mack

Published by Harvard University Press 2012

Representing the Race

The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer

Kenneth W. Mack

https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674065307

Overview
Contents

About this book

Representing the Race tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations, through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation. Practicing the law and seeking justice for diverse clients, they confronted a tension between their racial identity as black men and women and their professional identity as lawyers. Both blacks and whites demanded that these attorneys stand apart from their racial community as members of the legal fraternity. Yet, at the same time, they were expected to be “authentic”—that is, in sympathy with the black masses. This conundrum, as Kenneth W. Mack shows, continues to reverberate through American politics today.

Mack reorients what we thought we knew about famous figures such as Thurgood Marshall, who rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was—as nearly as possible—one of them. But he also introduces a little-known cast of characters to the American racial narrative. These include Loren Miller, the biracial Los Angeles lawyer who, after learning in college that he was black, became a Marxist critic of his fellow black attorneys and ultimately a leading civil rights advocate; and Pauli Murray, a black woman who seemed neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, who helped invent sex discrimination as a category of law. The stories of these lawyers pose the unsettling question: what, ultimately, does it mean to “represent” a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics?

Author information

Mack Kenneth W. :

Kenneth W. Mack is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Introduction: The Problem of Race and Representation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Idea of the Representative Negro Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	12
2. Racial Identity and the Marketplace for Lawyers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
3. The Role of the Courtroom in an Era of Segregation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
4. A Shifting Racial Identity in a Southern Courtroom Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
5. Young Thurgood Marshall Joins the Brotherhood of the Bar Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
6. A Woman in a Fraternity of Lawyers Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	131
7. Things Fall Apart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
8. The Strange Journey of Loren Miller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
9. The Trials of Pauli Murray Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
10. A Lawyer as the Face of Integration in Postwar America Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	234
Conclusion: Race and Representation in a New Century Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 352
Illustrations
- Other: 20 halftones

eBook

Published: May 1, 2012
ISBN: 9780674065307