Representing the Race

By Kenneth W. Mack,

Book cover of Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer

Book description

"A wonderful excavation of the first era of civil rights lawyering."-Randall L. Kennedy, author of The Persistence of the Color Line

"Ken Mack brings to this monumental work not only a profound understanding of law, biography, history and racial relations but also an engaging narrative style that brings each of…


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Why read it?

1 author picked Representing the Race as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Kenneth Mack, a professor at Harvard Law School, has chronicled the lives and careers of a series of African American lawyers, most totally unknown to white America, who, although forced to ply their trade in a legal system that was totally white and aggressively unwelcoming, managed to permanently impact American jurisprudence. Some, like Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall’s mentor, and the founder of the prestigious Howard University Law School, saw their impact ripple out nationally; others, merely by demonstrating competence and dedication, fought bigotry on a more local scale. Each of these men and women was forced to navigate between…

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