Events

The personal account of a community and a lawyer united to battle one of the most recalcitrant bastions of resistance to civil rights   You are invited to an evening with Gordon A. Martin, Jr., a retired Massachusetts trial judge who as a young lawyer for the Justice Dept during the Kennedy administration prepared the first big voting rights case brought in Mississippi. He will discuss and sign his new book about the people involved in the case. In 1961, Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd.  While 30 percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys.  Gordon Martin, then a newly minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government's sixteen courageous black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial. Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi to find these brave men and women he had never forgotten.  He interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Martin intertwines these current reflections with vivid commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South. As a young lawyer Judge Gordon Martin, Jr. was one of many quiet heroes, Black and White, who worked together in the South to change the world.  In this compelling book he tells the story of the people behind United States v. Theron Lynd with vivid detail, preserving a key piece of American and civil rights history. -Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children’s Defense Fund, who litigated in Mississippi in the 1960s To know the reality of the Deep South 50 years ago is to understand that a miracle has occurred in this country. Gordon Martin dramatically shows us that reality in "Count Them One by One": cynical officials ruling that black college graduates were not qualified to register as voters, Americans murdered for trying to vote.  The idea that a black man would be President in our lifetime was simply unimaginable then.  It changed because incredibly brave black citizens of the South risked their lives to win their rights, and the national government eventually responded. Martin shows how difficult the change was, what courage and determination were required. -Anthony Lewis, Pulitzer Prize Winner, former Supreme Court Reporter of the New York Times Gordon A. Martin, Jr., Boston, Massachusetts, is a retired trial judge and an adjunct professor at New England Law Boston. His work has been published in the Boston Globe, Commonweal, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, various law reviews, and other periodicals. He has co-authored a civil rights casebook, and is a graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law.