Three Profiles in Judicial Courage Chronicled in New Book from the University of Arkansas Press

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — At the beginning of the 20th century the future looked bright for most of the citizens of America. Unfortunately for blacks, the difficult situation they faced had been made possible by the rulings of the American judiciary. Led by the U.S. Supreme Court, the judiciary did much to encourage and little to prevent oppression of blacks by the majority under the banner of white supremacy.  

At this same time three southern federal judges demonstrated tremendous judicial courage trying to protect the civil rights of African Americans. A Rift in the Clouds: Race and the Southern Federal Judiciary, 1900-1910, by Brent J. Aucoin, published by the University of Arkansas Press (cloth, $34.95), chronicles the efforts of Jacob Treiber of Arkansas, Emory Speer of Georgia, and Thomas Goode Jones of Alabama when few in the American legal community were willing to do so. Their decisions all challenged the Supreme Court's reading of the Reconstruction amendments that were passed in an attempt to make disfranchised and exploited African Americans equal citizens of the United States.

These unpopular white southerners, two of whom had served in the Confederate Army and had themselves helped to bring Reconstruction to an end in their states, asserted that the amendments not only established black equality, but authorized the government to protect blacks. Although their rulings won few immediate gains for blacks and were overturned by the Supreme Court, their legal arguments would be resurrected and meet with greater success over half a century later during the civil rights movement.

Christopher Waldrep of San Francisco State University says, “Aucoin provides excellent information on three southerners generally overlooked by history. They need to be considered by all historians, those interested in the South as well as those looking at the law and the Constitution and those concerned with how reform happens in America."

And Alfred L. Brophy of the University of Alabama Law School says, "Aucoin’s book contributes to our understanding of how courageous, visionary people at the local level interpreted the Constitution. It's a part of popular constitutionalism. It’s part of the diversity of opinions in legal thought which held promise even if it did not develop as we would have liked.”  

Brent J. Aucoin is an associate professor of history at Southeastern College at Wake Forest.