| This study examines Julius L. Chambers's role in the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's post-Civil Rights Act of 1964 litigation campaign, particularly as it concerned employment discrimination law under Title VII. Between July 1964, when Chambers opened a small, LDF-supported law practice in Charlotte, NC, and the early 1970s, the young African-American lawyer did more than any other private attorney to vindicate the LDF's ambition to win favorable judicial construction of the Act's key provisions and to desegregate the nation's public schools. Working hand-in-glove with the LDF, Chambers in these years developed numerous suits under the Act's key public accommodations and employment provisions, while also litigating aggressively in education. Chambers's cases culminated in Title VII landmarks Robinson v. Lorillard Corporation (4th Circuit, 1971), Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971), and Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody (1975), as well as Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Supreme Court's famous school busing decision. These cases defined the limits of federal civil rights law in employment and education in that era, and reshaped the nation's workplaces and schools.; This is the first historical examination of Chambers's singular contributions to the evolution of federal civil rights law. Conceived as a social history of American law in the civil rights era, this study views the law as an arena for contesting dominant cultural understandings of race and social justice. Primary themes include the means Chambers and others used to influence judicial construction; the contingent nature of this process; and litigation's efficacy in promoting social change. This study augments efforts by historians who reconceptualize "the civil rights era" as commencing long before Brown (1954) and continuing well past the mid-1960s.; Chambers stands at the center of this account, his efforts situated within an LDF framework. This study relies upon fresh primary sources including case files held by Chambers's firm and a principal corporate adversary, oral histories, and FBI records, as well as judges' papers, additional manuscript collections, and other sources. The decision to limit the present project's scope to Title VII was a pragmatic one, and a more comprehensive monograph is envisioned. |
