Screen LibraryA bridge to justice : the life of Franklin H. Williams /
"Documents the life of a gifted African-American leader whose contributions were pivotal to the movement for social justice and racial equality Franklin Hall Williams was a visionary and trailblazer who devoted his life to the pursuit of civil rights-not through acrimony and violence and hatred...
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Fordham University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | New York, NY : |
| Publication Dates: | 2022. |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Edition: | First edition. |
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| Summary: |
"Documents the life of a gifted African-American leader whose contributions were pivotal to the movement for social justice and racial equality Franklin Hall Williams was a visionary and trailblazer who devoted his life to the pursuit of civil rights-not through acrimony and violence and hatred, but through reason and example. A Bridge to Justice sheds new light on this practical, pragmatic bridge-builder and brilliant yet complex individual whose life reflected the opportunities and constraints of an intellectually elite Black man in the 20th century. Franklin H. Williams was considered a "bridge" figure, someone whose position outside the limelight allowed him to navigate both Black and white circles, span the more turbulent racial waters below, and persuade people to see the world in a new way. During his prolific lifetime, he was a civil rights leader, lawyer, diplomat, organizer of the Peace Corps, United Nations representative, foundation president, and associate of Thurgood Marshall on some of the seminal civil liberty cases of the past hundred years, though their relationship was so fraught with tension that Marshall had Williams sent to California. He worked in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, served as a diplomat, and became an exceptionally persuasive advocate for civil rights. Even after enduring the segregated Army, suffering cruel discrimination, and barely escaping a murderous lynch mob eager to make him pay for zealously representing three innocent Black men falsely accused of rape, Franklin was not a hater. He believed that Americans, in general, were good people who were open to reason and, in their hearts, sympathetic to fairness and justice. Dr. Enid Gort, an anthropologist and Africanist who conducted hundreds of hours of exclusive interviews with Williams, his family, friends, colleagues and compatriots, and John M. Caher, a professional writer and legal journalist, have co-authored an exhaustively researched and scrupulously document |
| Carrier Form: | xiii, 231 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: |
9781531500863 1531500862 |
| Index Number: | KF373 |
| CLC: | K837.125.19 |
| Call Number: | K837.125.19/W723G |
| Contents: | Roots -- Coming of age -- An "ole lady" at Lincoln -- The real world -- The American Veterans Committee -- Civil rights lawyer -- In the courts -- Legal lynching -- Passion and power plays -- California deliverance -- The Washington years -- After Washington. |