If you’ll permit us a brief detour from pop culture into a more scholarly, Supreme Court-loving culture (although the Supreme Court probably does constitute pop culture for many people) we thought it worth highlighting the biography of former Justice William J. Brennan published late last year. While NCRCR Director Juanne Renee Harris has acknowledged that Brennan was ‘no Jimmy Smits,’ there was still a good deal of intrigue to be found in this book...mixed in with a few hundred pages of dense but interesting case history. For those not yet born during the early days of the civil rights movement, the book provides a lot of context for what was going on in the judiciary and around the country during one of the most profound eras of social change in our country and in the decades that followed. So, if you are a Supreme Court watcher, find case law interesting, think Supreme Court justices are pop culture icons, or would just like to try something that looks at the civil rights movement from a different perspective, this book may be for you.
For a more detailed review of the book, see Dahlia Lithwick's piece in the New York Times.
The Culture Corner is a series of blog posts intended to be a forum for discussion of how pop culture treats issues of civil rights, social justice and the courts. Television, movie, theater and musical portrayals inform our understanding of these issues on a daily basis. Are these depictions accurate? Fair? Misleading? We welcome your thoughts. Please join in the discussion.
(Photo by Chattanooga Endeavors Inc.)
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