Justice Older than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies) - Hardcover

McCabe, Katie; Roundtree, Dovey Johnson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 160473132X ISBN 13: 9781604731323

Publisher: University Press of Mississippi, 2009

Synopsis

Winner of the Association of Black Women Historians' 2009 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize

From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation's capital, from the white male bastion of the World War II Army to the male stronghold of Howard University Law School, from the pulpits of churches where women had waited for years for the right to minister-in all these places Dovey Johnson Roundtree (b. 1914) sought justice. Though she is a legendary African American figure in the legal community of Washington, D.C., she remains largely unknown to the American public.

Justice Older than the Law is her story, the product of a remarkable, ten-year collaboration with National Magazine Award winner Katie McCabe. As a protégé of Mary McLeod Bethune, Roundtree became one of the first women to break the gender and color barriers in the United States military. Inspired by Thurgood Marshall and James Madison Nabrit, Jr., at Howard University Law School, Roundtree went on to make history by winning a 1955 bus desegregation case, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company. That decision demolished "separate but equal" in the realm of interstate transportation and enabled Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to combat southern resistance to the Freedom Riders' campaign in 1961.

At a time when black attorneys had to leave the courthouses to use the bathrooms, Roundtree took on Washington's white legal establishment and prevailed. She led the vanguard of women ordained to the ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1961 and merged her law practice with her ministry to fight for families and children being destroyed by urban violence. Hers is a vision of biblical and social justice older by far than the law, and her life story speaks movingly and urgently to our racially troubled times.

About this title

Book Description:

The autobiography of a groundbreaking civil rights crusader, lawyer, and ordained minister

From the Author:

A 1995 Washington Post piece drew me to Dovey Roundtree. Actress Cicely Tyson was raving about her, calling her passion for justice "astounding," and explaining why she'd based her television depiction of a maverick civil rights lawyer on Dovey. I'd been drawn to stories of African American heroes ever since I discovered surgical pioneer Vivien Thomas, who was the inspiration for my Washingtonian article "Like Something the Lord Made" and the Emmy-winning HBO film of the same name. But Dovey's life, personality and voice captivated me in a new way. Though I originally conceived this book as a standard biography, I concluded that only a first-person approach to Dovey's life could convey the force of her spirit. That she and I were separated by 40 years in time and the divide of race that even now splits America seemed to me insignificant in comparison to what we shared.

Dovey's story raises critical questions at a critical time in our history: What is justice? What sort of society are we aiming toward? How can we recapture values we seem to have lost? Dovey's answer is embedded in the story of her life, and the fight she took to the streets and jailhouses, the churches, and ultimately, the hearts of individuals.

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 160473132X
• ISBN 13: 9781604731323
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288