cover image Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution

Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution

Jack Greenberg. Basic Books, $30 (634pp) ISBN 978-0-465-01518-4

While this rich memoir/history covers some of the same ground as Mark Tushnet's recent Making Civil Rights Law , it adds the perspective and anecdotes of Greenberg, who from 1961 to 1984 headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and is now professor of law at Columbia University. Valuable are personal glimpses of his boss, Thurgood Marshall, and colleagues like Constance Baker Motley, and his reflections on how his own ``moderate iconoclasm'' led this Jewish youth from the Bronx to support black causes. Greenberg provides solid background on the strategies behind landmark civil rights cases, the growth of the LDF and its break with its parent NAACP. The black press largely supported Greenberg's appointment to succeed Marshall as counsel to the LDF, with the Pittsburgh Courier stating, ``hardly anyone remembers that he is white.'' He later split with some of his staff on defending '60s radicals like Angela Davis and was picketed by black students at Harvard Law School. The somewhat disjointed narrative conveys how Greenberg and the LDF have contributed immeasurably to bettering American life by fostering integration, attacking the death penalty, helping birth rights organizations for Mexican-Americans and other groups and promoting human rights abroad. Greenberg judiciously weighs the victories and defeats in the civil rights struggle. Photos not seen by PW. (May)