
Representing the Race
The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer
Kenneth W. Mack(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 17. April 2012
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-674-04687-0 (ISBN)
Description
"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.
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.
Reviews / Votes
Richly compelling and impressively astute...One of Mack's most original and insightful themes is his argument that African American lawyers saw themselves as "members of a fraternity that crossed the color line" and that "cross-racial professional norms" allowed "black men to cross over into the white world" inside courtrooms both North and South...Representing the Race examines the pre-Brown [v. Board of Education] world of black lawyers with a perceptive, critical thoughtfulness that sets Mack's work above all previous treatments. By eschewing celebratory homage in favor of tough-minded honesty, he addresses the hardest questions about representativeness and "racial authenticity" with an acuity and freshness that resonate forward to the present day...Representing the Race will be a prize-winning book that profoundly alters and improves our understanding of civil rights history. -- David J. Garrow Washington Post 20120907More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With printed dust jacket
Illustrations
20 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
666 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-04687-0 (9780674046870)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Kenneth W. Mack
Representing the Race
E-Book
05/2012
1st Edition
Harvard University Press
€38.59
Available for download
Person
Kenneth W. Mack is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.