Pretender in paradise.

• Date: 22 March 2003
• Author: Cohen, J. Richard
• Published date: 22 March 2003
• Author: Cohen, J. Richard

I was thirty-one years old and had been at the Southern Poverty Law Center for only two months when the legendary Morris Dees walked into my office and delivered the news: The Supreme Court had decided to hear our case against the Alabama State Troopers. The lawyer who had been handling it most recently was leaving the Center. Morris wanted to know if I was up for taking it over. Having been at the Center for such a short time and having never appeared in a case of any kind before any appellate court, I said the only sensible thing: "Of course!" The date was July 7, 1986, and the case was United States v. Paradise. (1)

The stakes were high. We had won an affirmative action order in the lower courts that required the Troopers--an organization with a notorious history of racism--to promote one black trooper for each white trooper promoted until fair tests were developed. Now, the United States Justice Department--under the leadership of unsympathetic Reagan Administration...