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The authors of the recently released Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court<\/em><\/strong>, will lead a seminar March 27 at 4pm on Zoom. The session is part of the Modjeska Simkins School<\/a>\u2019s public series. The recent book from Harvard University Press is the first comprehensive accounting of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s race-related jurisprudence and a legal legacy too often blighted by racial injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Participants must register in advance <\/strong>HERE<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Written by distinguished historian Vernon Burton<\/strong> and renowned civil rights lawyer Armand Derfner, the book is a timely rejoinder to the latest racial dog-whistles emanating from the SC State House. Manufactured outrage that a Critical Race Theory is making white children feel guilty for the sins of their ancestors has spawned legislation and inflamed school board fights across the country and here in the Palmetto State. Bills mandating a curriculum that denies the racist elements in our state and national constitutions are reminiscent of the 1925 arrest of John Scopes, the high school teacher who dared to teach evolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burton and Derfner highlight South Carolina court rulings\nthat made their way to the US Supreme Court and forced changes in race\nrelations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Armand Derfner<\/strong>, a\ngraduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, has been a civil rights\nlawyer for more than 50 years, helping shape the Voting Rights Act in a series\nof major Supreme Court cases and working with Congress to help draft voting\nrights and other civil rights laws. He has presented arguments at the US\nSupreme Court and won, five times. He started his legal career in Mississippi\nin the 1960s and has been practicing law in Charleston for the past 50 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne thing I\nhave learned, and this applies in South Carolina as much as anywhere, is that\nalmost everything boils down to race. This is not surprising, since African\nAmericans have been in this country for about 16 generations. For 14 of them,\nthe relationship between white and Black people was based on slavery and Jim\nCrow,\u201d he told the Post & Courier<\/a> in 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes people say I\u2019m overdoing it, but after we talk a\nlittle, they often start nodding their heads in agreement. The bottom line is\nthat even though most of us are trying hard to overcome the past, it will take\na lot longer and a lot of mutual understanding. But if we can overcome the\npast, we\u2019ll see we are all on the sameteam and, as President Kennedy\nliked to say, \u2018a rising tide lifts all boats.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burton knocked on Modjeska Simkins’ door at 2025 Marion St. in Columbia in 1974. He wanted to interview her for South Carolina insights to include in the PhD. dissertation on Reconstruction he was working on at Princeton. When she discovered he didn’t have accommodations, she invited him to be her guest for the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. Burton is now the inaugural Judge Matthew\nJ. Perry Distinguished Chair of History and Professor of Pan-African Studies,\nSociology and Anthropology at Clemson University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Burton\nhas written more than 100 articles, and penned or edited 14 books. His books\ninclude In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in\nEdgefield<\/em>, South Carolina that was the subject of sessions at the Southern\nHistorical Association and the Social Science History Association\u2019s annual\nmeetings. It was also submitted for a Pulitzer. He also wrote The Age of\nLincoln<\/em>, winner of the 2007 Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for non-fiction.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nhis Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln promised that the nation\u2019s sacrifices\nduring the Civil War would lead to a \u201cnew birth of freedom.\u201d Lincoln\u2019s\nUnfinished Work<\/em> analyzes how the United States has tried to realize\u2014or\nsubvert\u2014that promise over the past century and a half. His 2014 book Penn\nCenter: A History Preserved<\/em>, captures the 156-year history of Penn\u2019s role\nin the long struggle for equality at the still vibrant location of the 1996\nfounding of SC Progressive Network. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Burton was born in Georgia, and grew up in Ninety Six, South Carolina. He earned a B.A. in 1969 for his undergraduate studies at Furman University,and received his Ph.D. in 1976 in American History from Princeton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Justice Deferred <\/em>is\navailable at Harvard University\nPress<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Participants must register in advance <\/strong>HERE<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The authors of the recently released Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court, will lead a seminar March 27 at 4pm on Zoom. The session is part of the Modjeska Simkins School\u2019s public series. The recent book from Harvard University … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/Armand-Derfner.jpg\")