From Library Journal
Although her subjects were based in separate states, Brown (history, Florida Atlantic Univ.) considers white Southern lawyers John Coe, Clifford Durr, and Benjamin Smith together as leaders defending civil liberties when America was intolerant of social protest and political dissidence, from the 1940s into the 1960s. Brown discusses their activism with the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, National Lawyers Guild, and other organizations that espoused racial equality and civil liberties. She explores their civil libertarian battles against the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), American Bar Association, FBI, and others who equated anti-communism and patriotism with racial segregation and the legal suppression of black Southerners, union organizers, and political leftists. Brown superbly interweaves Coe's, Durr's, and Smith's professional lives with post-World War II American history. Her well-written analysis, based on primary sources, is highly recommended for academic and large public libraries.?Charles L. Lumpkins, Pennsylvania State Univ., State College
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Long before Henry Wallace's quixotic run for president in 1948, and years before Brown v. Board of Education changed forever America's idea that segregation was the way things ought to be, there were three southern lawyers whose careers are chronicled here. John Coe of Pensacola, Florida, was a tireless defender of black causes in the pre^-World War II South; Cliff Durr of Montgomery, Alabama, was one of few lawyers to take on cases of self-confessed ex-Communists; and Ben Smith of New Orleans was probably the most complex figure of the three, a genuine nonconformist who constantly defended unpopular causes. In charting their early careers, Brown looks into what propelled them into their liberal, "radical" stances, and views some of their toughest battles against southern policies while walking a tightrope as they and their clients were fingered as Communists by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Scholarly but readable, Brown's portrayal escapes being labeled as hagiography of the three lawyers by a journalistic, largely objective approach; it is an impressive account of the pre-Brown fight against segregation. Joe Collins
