A01=Peter Jan Honigsberg
activism
Author_Peter Jan Honigsberg
autobiography
biography
black organizations
bogalusa
bogalusa voters league
boycott
Category=DNBH1
Category=JBFA
Category=JBFA1
Category=JBSL
Category=JPVC
Category=NHK
civil disobedience
civil rights
civil rights movement
deacons for defense and justice
demonstrations
discrimination
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
hate
integration
klan
ku klux klan
lake pontchartrain
law student
legal system
louisiana
marches
memoir
national guard
new orleans
peter jan honigsberg
plaquemines parish
prejudice
protest
protests
race
racial justice
racism
social issues
social justice
social movements
us history
violence
Product details
- ISBN 9780520234598
- Weight: 318g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 22 Feb 2002
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In 1966 Peter Jan Honigsberg - a young, idealistic law student - arrived in the South to help provide legal representation for civil rights workers. Although based in New Orleans, most of his work was in the city of Bogalusa and in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Bogalusa was the heart of the Louisiana movement and the home of one of the most formidable but little-known black organizations in the country - the Deacons for Defense and Justice, the first modern-day African American organization to carry weapons and to respond with force against the Ku Klux Klan. This riveting memoir, one of only a handful of first-person full-length accounts of the civil rights movement, is both a stirring coming-of-age story and a thrilling chronicle of a remarkable era in United States history. Honigsberg's engaging narrative conveys the emotions and personal dangers activists faced.He describes how the Deacons worked with the Bogalusa Voters League to boycott the white-owned businesses in the downtown area and to integrate the local schools, restaurants, parks, and paper mill.
Unlike many law students, Honigsberg not only worked on legal issues; he participated directly in marches and demonstrations.His narrative includes lively firsthand accounts of his attempt - with a group of black and white demonstrators - to integrate a beach on Lake Pontchartrain, his experience marching through hostile Ku Klux Klan territory under the eye of the National Guard, and his witnessing a prominent civil rights leader lift his car's trunk to display a cache of carbines and grenades to a station attendant who refused to fill the tank with gas. This memoir provides a unique glimpse into the civil rights movement and the people who were forever changed by its struggle for human dignity and its vision of racial justice and equality.
Peter Jan Honigsberg is Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco.
