Ebook We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill Spottswood Robinson and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow Carter G Woodson Institute Series Margaret Edds 9780813942643 Books
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The decisive victories in the fight for racial equality in America were not easily won, much less inevitable; they were achieved through carefully conceived strategy and the work of tireless individuals dedicated to this most urgent struggle. In We Face the Dawn, Margaret Edds tells the gripping story of how the South's most significant grassroots legal team challenged the barriers of racial segregation in mid-century America.
Virginians Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson initiated and argued one of the five cases that combined into the landmark Brown v. Board of Education, but their influence extends far beyond that momentous ruling. They were part of a small brotherhood, headed by social-justice pioneer Thurgood Marshall and united largely through the Howard Law School, who conceived and executed the NAACP’s assault on racial segregation in education, transportation, housing, and voting. Hill and Robinson’s work served as a model for southern states and an essential underpinning for Brown. When the Virginia General Assembly retaliated with laws designed to disbar the two lawyers and discredit the NAACP, they defiantly carried the fight to the United States Supreme Court and won.
At a time when numerous schools have resegregated and the prospects of many minority children appear bleak, Hill and Robinson’s remarkably effective campaign against various forms of racial segregation can inspire a new generation to embrace educational opportunity as the birthright of every American child.
Ebook We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill Spottswood Robinson and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow Carter G Woodson Institute Series Margaret Edds 9780813942643 Books
"Is this a history book? A civil rights book? A biography of Hill and Robinson? An exploration of culture, oppression, and the call to freedom? An inspiration to keep working for positive change despite all odds? A call to action today?
YES! Margaret Edds invites readers to join her on on this fully engaging exploration of the personalities of two complicated men who changed the the world. Significant research (footnotes to prove it!) grounds the fascinating individual stories of Hill and Robinson in the realities of the larger story of what it meant (means) to be black in America. Yet, this is more than a history book about a period when a pervasive 'whites only' mentality justified barriers to education, jobs, transportation (etc. etc.) and tolerated lynchings. We Face the Dawn is one of those rare books that successfully offers the reader both historical facts gleaned from significant research and an authentic depiction of the psychological depth and humanness of the main characters. Edds never lectures and her writing doesn't come from a soapbox. Her historical analysis of the complexities, atrocities and breakthroughs on the road to equal rights hopefully reminds readers that this is not the story of a distant past. It is the history of many of us who lived through it. Not that long ago.....It is a story that continues to unfold. Especially now. Should be required reading in every high school and college history class! Perfect catalyst for community discussion groups too. We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series)"
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Tags : We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series) [Margaret Edds] on . The decisive victories in the fight for racial equality in America were not easily won, much less inevitable; they were achieved through carefully conceived strategy and the work of tireless individuals dedicated to this most urgent struggle. In We Face the Dawn,Margaret Edds,We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series),University of Virginia Press,0813942640,AFRICAN-AMERICAN STUDIES,African American,General Adult,LAW / Administrative Law Regulatory Practice,Non-Fiction,SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / African American Studies,Social Science/Ethnic Studies - African American Studies,Sociology,UNIVERSITY PRESS,United States
We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill Spottswood Robinson and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow Carter G Woodson Institute Series Margaret Edds 9780813942643 Books Reviews :
We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill Spottswood Robinson and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow Carter G Woodson Institute Series Margaret Edds 9780813942643 Books Reviews
- “We Face the Dawn†will be become the sentinel book in understanding the Virginia struggle to integrate schools. To her credit, Edds presents the Virginia struggle in the context of the National struggle for civil rights. She pays great attention to the two heroes’ Robinson and Hill, as well as the other key Virginia civil rights leaders. This book is for the serious student of these landmark times and will not appeal to a casual reader. “We Face the Dawn†is maliciously researched and yet has many personal stories of courage by litigants and attorneys. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this crucial era of the Americas civil rights journey.
- Margaret Edds tears away the veil that has hidden Virginia's often unhappy racial past. Many know that Virginia closed public schools rather than integrate. The story of Prince Edward County is a travesty in what the state called its "massive resistance" to civil rights. Edds goes back further to disclose how Virginians fought over race decades before those celebrated cases. Tracing the careers of two of the state's brave black lawyers she paints a portrait of a state where racism had infected its political life for decades. What makes the lives of Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson so remarkable is how they fought the Byrd Organization and finally won. Virginians need to be reminded how vicious was the state's opposition to "equal" schools for black children and how slow Virginia was to move toward full equality for all its citizens. This book should be must reading for anyone who believes the state that introduced slavery to the nation had learned the lesson of the Civil War. Margaret Edds makes clear Virginia's mistreatment of blacks prompted yet another monumental battle that the federal courts finally resolved.
- We owe a tremendous debt to these two unsung heroes who painstakingly worked for racial equality. These men leap to life on the page. Without Margaret Edd's thorough research, her steadfast inquiry into their personal and professional lives, and her faithful reporting of historical context, we would not know who they really were nor would we appreciate their contribution to society.
- must-read
- “We Face the Dawn†tells the courageous story of two black Richmond lawyers - Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson – who led the fight to integrate Virginia’s public schools. Their work became an essential part of the Brown v. Board of Education suit that produced the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling banning “separate but equal†public schools for blacks and whites.
Hill and Robinson’s contributions have been touched upon in several broad histories of Brown, which became a merger of school desegregation suits in four states - including Virginia – and the District of Columbia.
“We Face the Dawn†is the first book that focuses on Virginia’s story through Robinson and Hill’s altruistic lives. Author Margaret Edds has deeply researched her subjects, having pored through myriad books, newspaper articles, personal documents, legal briefs and court transcripts. She interviewed many who knew Hill and Robinson, including the lawyers’ surviving children and Doug Wilder, a fledgling law associate of the duo in 1960 who, 30 years later, became the nation’s first elected black governor.
What emerges is the gripping story of black students and parents seeking equal education in Jim Crow Virginia and how Hill and Robinson represented them at considerable peril. The lawyers received death threats. Edds tells of one night when a cross was burned on Hill’s yard. On another night, when Hill was away on business, a policeman and, later, a mortician came to Hill’s house to unnerve his wife with fraudulent news that Hill had died in a car wreck. The lawyers received paltry pay for their civil rights work and often were lucky just to be compensated for expenses.
Edds is a seamless writer and gives readers the sense of having worked with the two law partners. The gregarious Hill was the frontman; indomitable, comfortable in the public eye and disarming, even when entering principals’ offices with groups of black children seeking - unsuccessfully - to enroll in white schools. Robinson, a brilliant and introverted workaholic, preferred to stay in the background, crafting impeccable legal briefs and oral arguments that he would eventually present to the Supreme Court in the Brown hearings. Edds deftly explains his arguments without bogging down her book.
Hill and Robinson’s work did not end with the Brown decision and Edds tells the ugly history the followed. Virginia’s General Assembly adopted a policy of massive resistance to school integration. It authorized a McCarthy-like investigation of the state NAACP and passed laws that threatened civil rights lawyers with disbarment. The massive resistance movement didn’t end until 1964 when the last of Virginia’s holdouts, rural Prince William County, finally integrated its schools.
Readers of “We Face the Dawn†will learn and be grateful for Hill and Robinson’s work. Edds provides an important history of a Virginia not yet vanished. - Is this a history book? A civil rights book? A biography of Hill and Robinson? An exploration of culture, oppression, and the call to freedom? An inspiration to keep working for positive change despite all odds? A call to action today?
YES! Margaret Edds invites readers to join her on on this fully engaging exploration of the personalities of two complicated men who changed the the world. Significant research (footnotes to prove it!) grounds the fascinating individual stories of Hill and Robinson in the realities of the larger story of what it meant (means) to be black in America. Yet, this is more than a history book about a period when a pervasive 'whites only' mentality justified barriers to education, jobs, transportation (etc. etc.) and tolerated lynchings. We Face the Dawn is one of those rare books that successfully offers the reader both historical facts gleaned from significant research and an authentic depiction of the psychological depth and humanness of the main characters. Edds never lectures and her writing doesn't come from a soapbox. Her historical analysis of the complexities, atrocities and breakthroughs on the road to equal rights hopefully reminds readers that this is not the story of a distant past. It is the history of many of us who lived through it. Not that long ago.....It is a story that continues to unfold. Especially now. Should be required reading in every high school and college history class! Perfect catalyst for community discussion groups too. We Face the Dawn Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow (Carter G. Woodson Institute Series)
