Civil Rights

Septima Clark

/ The Old Crank
Septima Clark

Septima Clark (center). Date/source of photo unknown.

Septima Poinsette Clark was born on this day 115 years ago. Without question one of most important figures in the American Civil Rights movement, the story of her role in  advancing adult literacy in the U.S.—and in drawing attention to the connections between education, poverty, and political power—should be mandatory reading for anyone interested or involved in adult literacy or education—especially the “education is the civil rights movement of our time” folks who seem to believe that the relationship between civil rights and education began sometime around the year Teach for America was founded.

Clark is best known for her role in developing the Citizenship Schools of the 1950s and 60s, where thousands of disenfranchised African Americans across the southern U.S. learned to read and write in order to pass the literacy tests required by southern states to register to vote. But while voting was the focus, the schools also emphasized the role of literacy as an instrument of empowerment more broadly.

And unlike today, this was at a time—not that long ago—when teaching reading in such a context was truly dangerous. Classes often had to be taught in back rooms of stores and other hidden places. Teaching people how to read helped countless Black Southerners push for the right to vote, but beyond that, it developed leaders across the country that would help push the civil rights movement long after 1964.

Clark wrote two autobiographies during her lifetime: Echo in My Soul and Ready from Within: Septima Clark & the Civil Rights Movement, A First Person Narrative. A  collection of her papers is archived here, although none of it seems to be accessible online. But there is a great online “scrapbook” of  images, newspaper clippings, and correspondence related to her life at the Lowcountry Digital Library site.

Keeping Juveniles in Juvenile Courts

/ The Old Crank

I wasn’t surprised to learn recently that there are still some states where the age of juvenile jurisdiction is less than 18, but I was surprised to learn that one of them is Massachusetts.

Putting aside the the serious health and safety risk to young offenders when you lock them up in an adult prison (which is reason enough to keep them out of them), ruining the employment and educational prospects of a 17-year-old who commits a nonviolent drug or property crime is pretty shortsighted public policy.

Detained Immigrants Facing Prospect of Solitary Confinement Often Have No Access to Counsel

/ The Old Crank

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a proposal by Robert Katzmann, a federal appellate judge in New York, to develop an “immigrant justice corps” program that would recruit and train young lawyers to assist illegal immigrants. I speculated in that post about whether the problem of inadequate legal representation for immigrants in general (especially low-income immigrants) might acquire greater urgency in the near future, once an immigration reform bill is passed.

Last week, in case you missed it, the New York Times reported on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s horrific use of solitary confinement on detained immigrants. (If you read the article—and you should—I think you’ll agree that my choice of the word “horrific” is not hyperbole.) One has to wonder whether better and more widely available legal representation would keep this practice in check. As the author of the piece notes, immigrant detainees are not automatically represented by legal counsel, and about 85% have none, and the consequences can be dire. I wish the piece would have made the connection between this problem and the efforts that Judge Katzman and others are making to address the adequate counsel issue.

I can’t imagine why anyone facing the potentially devastating psychological effects of long-term solitary confinement should not have access to counsel.

Could Immigration Reform Draw Greater Attention to the Legal Needs of Low-Income Immigrants?

/ The Old Crank

Kirk Semple, writing for the New York Times’ City Room blog, reports that a federal appellate judge in New York is proposing an “immigrant justice corps” program that would recruit and train young lawyers to assist illegal immigrants navigate the pathway to legal residency status and citizenship—under the assumption that the immigration reform legislation anticipated sometime this year will provide one. Most expect it will.

The judge, Robert A. Katzmann, envisions something that would look a lot like AmeriCorps VISTA and the Peace Corps. According to Semple, the program would recruit 50 young immigration lawyers every two months for two-year periods of service. Like the programs modeled on Teach for America I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, it would give graduating law students an opportunity for work in what is a tight job market right now for lawyers. Katzmann estimates that he would need $5 million to support the program for a year. Authorizing a few million dollars of federal money in the immigration reform bill itself to provide legal assistance to those trying to meet the requirements of the law should be a no-brainer, but in the current budget-cutting climate, that may not be possible.

As Semple notes, Judge Katzmann has been a longstanding critic of the quality of the legal representation provided to immigrants, and was the leader of a group in New York group that proposed a plan last year to create a network of legal service providers to represent low-income immigrants in the New York City region.

One of the biggest problems facing immigrants in any legal proceeding is lack of English proficiency. I’ve seen firsthand defendants brought before judges in criminal courtrooms, for example, who don’t read or speak English and have no experience navigating the U.S. legal system. Last year, I noted on this blog that the National Center on Access to Justice (NCAJ) at the Cardozza School of Law had concluded that many courts “have little or no way to communicate with the growing number of Americans who have only limited proficiency in English.” As a result, “innocent people have been sent to prison, children have been sent to foster care unnecessarily, and women have found it impossible to get court orders to protect them from domestic violence.” As I argued in that post, this is a problem not just for non-native English speakers but for native English speakers with low levels of literacy as well.

I agree with Judge Katzmann that the problem of inadequate legal representation for immigrants (especially low-income immigrants) will acquire even greater urgency once an immigration reform bill is passed, but the problem isn’t limited to immigration status issues. Perhaps his proposal will draw greater attention to the need to address language access and low literacy in our justice system generally.