Maatman on Lawyers and Resistance to the End of White Supremacy

Speaking Truth to Memory: Lawyers and Resistance to the End of White Supremacy is a recent article by Mary Ellen Maatman, Widener University School of Law. It appeared in the Howard Law Journal (2006). Here's the abstract:

This article critically examines how elite lawyers built and defended the legal framework for White Supremacy in the Deep South both before and after Brown v. Board of Education. Although turn of the century commentators freely discussed how lawyers blocked African Americans' access to the ballot box, time has largely obliterated that story from our profession's memory. Some recent legal commentators have discussed post-Brown massive resistance, but few have specifically considered the role of lawyers qua lawyers in that movement. In contrast, this article analytically connects these eras to a decades-long program of legal work dedicated to defending and attempting to save White Supremacy. The elite lawyers of the Deep South who most deeply engaged in this work began by opposing the Supreme Court's 1944 Smith v. Allwright decision that outlawed the white primary, and ended with assisting the defense of anti-miscegenation laws at issue in the Court's 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision. Throughout two decades, the legal work I describe stemmed from the lawyers' belief in the racist assumptions underlying White Supremacy, and their desire to embed those assumptions in the law of the land.

I believe it is time for the legal profession to take full stock of its role in the progress of racial justice. Failure to do so falsely depicts the profession as a monolithic champion of justice. In turn, we are hobbled in our analysis of the role of law in hindering or promoting the progress of civil rights. To better understand our profession's history and our nation's civil rights progress, we must learn of, and challenge, the work of segregationist lawyers.