Customer Reviews

The Passion of My Times: An Advocate's Fifty-Year Journey in the Civil Rights Movement

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William Taylor is a gifted writer and one of the great civil rights lawyers of our time. His leadership/insider view of the multiple dimensions of civil rights advocacy [data and testimony collection, Congressional hearings, the courts, regulation enforcement, executive orders, judicial appointment fights, etc.]is must reading for all, particularly people of color, women, people with disabilities, and others who still aspire to justice and the American dream.

Bill McCrone, Ph.D., J.D.

William L. Taylor spent his lifetime advocating for civil rights, justice and equality. His book tells the story of his lifetime efforts from his days as an outspoken college newspaper editor, his early career as a white lawyer working with Thurgood Marshall and others on the landmark desegregation legal case of Brown V. Board and continues through his forty-year career that spanned the conservative presidential terms of Ronald Reagan and George Bush and centrist era of Bill Clinton.

He takes us behind the headlines ranging from personalities such as Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan, Bush and Clinton and events related to their tenures such as desegregation, busing, school integration, the War on Poverty and The Voting Rights Act. His narrative details how it was people, white and black, men and women, governors and community leaders who moved us from headlines to reality. He reminds us that American laws and government policies are only as good as their actual application in the real world of American cities and states.

He describes his efforts to organize advocacy groups ranging from professionals to community organizers and reminds us that the measure of professional careers is not fame and fortune but persistence in moving the nation towards justice and freedom for the most defenseless members of society. In the traditions of Howard Zinn and Michael Moore, he reminds us that the real treasure and hope for a greater United States will always be its People.