A new book by Michael Meltsner, The Making of a Civil Rights Lawyer, pro­vides a per­son­al his­to­ry of the civ­il rights move­ment from the per­spec­tive of an attor­ney com­mit­ted to social change. Meltsner’s writ­ings bring to life a sem­i­nal peri­od of legal reform in U.S. his­to­ry. The book dis­cuss­es famous cas­es and the turn­ing points in the civ­il rights and death penal­ty move­ments. Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights notes, ​“Michael Meltsner has per­formed a great pub­lic ser­vice by recall­ing from his per­spec­tive as a lawyer at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund how lawyers helped bring about social change dur­ing the civ­il rights move­ment of the 1960s. This mem­oir will be of great inter­est to a gen­er­a­tion unfa­mil­iar with that remark­able time in American his­to­ry, as well as to those famil­iar with the peo­ple and con­tro­ver­sies he recalls.“

Meltsner is also the author of Cruel and Unusual: The Supreme Court and Capital Punishment, the author­i­ta­tive his­to­ry of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s death penal­ty cam­paign. He is cur­rent­ly the Matthews Distinguished University Professsor of Law at Northeastern School of Law.

(University of Virgina Press, avail­able April 30, 2006). See Books.

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