Thursday, October 6, 2011
A LIFE OF MEANING AND WORTH: In addition to Steve Jobs' death yesterday, we should also note the passing of two major figures in the Civil Rights movement--Fred Shuttlesworth, who helped Martin Luther King, Jr. organize the demonstrations in Birmingham, and Derrick Bell, who introduced critical race theory into the legal academy as well as giving the legal academy a new way of seeing and analyzing problems. I was lucky enough to take Constitutional Law with Professor Bell my 2L year, and, while I didn't agree with all of his views (a common joke was that "racism" was the answer to any and every question that might be asked), his class was genuinely engaging and challenging, particularly at a school where so many folks (myself included) ultimately find their way into BigLaw.
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Important not to think of Rev. Shuttlesworth as an aide to Rev. King, but as a key civil rights figure in his own right. (The popular narrative of the civil rights movement is dominated by King, which is just not accurate. Not to take anything away from King, but it's a great deal more complicated than that.) He was a towering figure in the Southern civil rights movement, and we all owe him a great deal.
ReplyDeleteI had no idea Bell was that old. Long ago, I taught a class on science fiction to two groups of high school students. I could only use short stories, because there was no chance they would read novels (it was a summer program). I used "The Space Traders" (which one could argue is only nominally science fiction) in class. I found it really opened the students' eyes and, unsurprisingly, led to some of the most heated discussions in the class.
ReplyDeleteMy husband had occasion to meet Rev. Shuttlesworth when he was in college and he was profoundly influenced by that relationship. RIP Rev. Shuttlesworth.
ReplyDeleteNPR's Debbie Elliott did an especially thoughtful, long piece on Rev. Shuttlesworth that largely avoided the traditional MLK-centric narrative and emphasized just how central Shuttlesworth was to the civil rights movement. Worth a listen.
ReplyDeleteExcellent, I'll go listen to that.
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