Earl B. Dickerson: A Voice for Freedom and Equality (Chicago Lives)

About this book

Recipient of 2007 The Hyde Park Historical Society Paul Cornell Award At fifteen Earl Burrus Dickerson stowed away on a train in Canton Mississippi fleeing the racial oppression of his native South. But Chicago the boys destination was no haven of racial fairness and equality. His flight north was in fact the beginning of a journey that would last a lifetime--and would forever pit Dickerson against the forces of racial injustice. Earl B. Dickersons story told here for the first time is one of courage and character of remarkable accomplishment in the face of terrible odds; it is also emblematic of the twentieth-century struggle for civil rights--a crucial chapter of African American history as it was lived by one uncompromising individual. In this book Robert J. Blakely tells how Dickerson (1891-1986) worked his way through preparatory schools and college a segregated officers training school and law school at the University of Chicago. The story follows Dickersons career as general counsel to the first insurance company owned and operated by African Americans; the first African American Democratic alderman elected to the Chicago City Council; a member of FDRs first Fair Employment Practices Committee; leader of the movement that broke the color barrier to membership in the Illinois Bar Association; and perhaps most famously the power behind Hansberry v. Lee the U.S. Supreme Court case that marked the beginning of the end of restrictive real estate covenants--one of the most pernicious legal tools of segregation in the North. Blakely gives us a sense of the man behind the achievements the life that defied conventions and statistics and the world in which "the dean of Chicagos black lawyers" became a pioneering architect for equal opportunity in American life.