Overton: The Story of a Black Civil Rights Lawyer in the Rural South
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$18.99
Regular price $22.99
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Overton: The Story of a Black Civil Rights Lawyer in the Rural South
Sale price
$18.99
Regular price $22.99
Blacks Were Everywhere Except on the Courtroom Floor.
Born in 1941 to a farm family in rural Louisiana, Marion Overton White started picking cotton when he was just seven years old. He went to a segregated, all-black school consisting of a wooden building with no indoor toilets and heat provided by a potbelly stove.
As a teenager, he attended the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Sitting with his father in the black section of the courtroom balcony, watching as the defendant and his lawyers—the only black people allowed on the courtroom floor—faced angry white spectators, white police, a white judge, and a white jury, he resolved to become a lawyer.
Author Doris M. White, Overton’s wife of fifty-two years, has documented her husband’s extraordinary life in a narrative complemented by thirty of her own full-color illustrations depicting, among other things, Overton’s humble origins, his battle to eliminate Jim Crow laws in the South, and his involvement in scores of school desegregation lawsuits in Louisiana.
Born in 1941 to a farm family in rural Louisiana, Marion Overton White started picking cotton when he was just seven years old. He went to a segregated, all-black school consisting of a wooden building with no indoor toilets and heat provided by a potbelly stove.
As a teenager, he attended the trial of a black man accused of raping a white woman. Sitting with his father in the black section of the courtroom balcony, watching as the defendant and his lawyers—the only black people allowed on the courtroom floor—faced angry white spectators, white police, a white judge, and a white jury, he resolved to become a lawyer.
Author Doris M. White, Overton’s wife of fifty-two years, has documented her husband’s extraordinary life in a narrative complemented by thirty of her own full-color illustrations depicting, among other things, Overton’s humble origins, his battle to eliminate Jim Crow laws in the South, and his involvement in scores of school desegregation lawsuits in Louisiana.