Confronting Racism

Explores how and why an elite member of the legal profession, Arthur Garfield Hays, confronted and fought against the ingrained racism of his society, illuminating key aspects of the long civil rights era.

Beginning in 1925 the corporate lawyer and civil libertarian Arthur Garfield Hays began battling segregation. This book details Hays’s work on the Mayor's Commission that investigated the1935 Harlem riot; his role in a 1937 restrictive covenant case in Westchester, County; his representing a challenger to the segregated draft in World War II; his part in ending the exclusion of African Americans from the American Bar Association; and his opposition to strong fair employment legislation. Motivated by his conception of a good society that valued civil liberties, democracy, and individualism, Hays fought for African Americans’ legal rights under the Constitution. His activism was limited by his conservative economic views and his fear of an active state that intervened in private matters. His career illuminates the potential and perils of interracial co-operation during the long civil rights movement. Because the issues he confronted continue today—police mistreatment of African Americans, housing discrimination, limits on African Americans in the professions, racial discrimination in the military, and how to build government structures to limit discrimination—this book speaks to our time as well as his.