Carl Maxey: A Fighting Life
Hardback, 288 pages,
25 illustrations
$27.95
ISBN: 978-0-295-98846-7
University of Washington Press, August, 2008
Buy Online
Links
- The Inlander
- Excerpts, Spokesman-Review (requires subscription)
Also by Jim Kershner
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(HistoryLink and Documentary Media, 2019)
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Force and Finesse: A History of Service Employees International Union Local 775
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The Northwest Power Pool
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The Human Comedy, Plus Other Species at No Extra Charge
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From Jim Kershner:
Carl Maxey: A Fighting Life
a finalist for the 2009 Washington State Book Award
Preface and Acknowledgments
- An Orphan's Fire
- A Father in Black Robes
- The Count and the Club
- Walking Right into Trouble
- King Carl Wins the Crown
- Eastern Washington's First Black Lawyer
- Stirrings from the South
- The Haircut Uproar and a Perfunctory Execution
- Freedom Summer in the Tail End of America
- "The Sickness of Our Nation"
- A Right Hook to Scoop Jackson
- The Seattle Seven Circus
- The Maxey Temper
- Ruth Coe's Greek Tragedy
- "No Goddamned Award"
- "Living through All This B.S."
- Type-A Gandhi
Notes on Sources
Index
Carl Maxey was, in his own words, "a guy who started from scratch - black scratch." He was sent, at age five, to the scandal-ridden Spokane Children's Home and then kicked out at age eleven with the only other "colored" orphan. Yet Maxey managed to make a national name for himself, first as an NCAA championship boxer at Gonzaga University, and then as eastern Washington's first prominent black lawyer and a renowned civil rights attorney who always fought for the underdog.
During the tumultuous civil rights and Vietnam War eras, Carl Maxey fought to break down color barriers in his hometown of Spokane and throughout the nation. As a defense lawyer, he made national headlines working on lurid murder cases and war-protest trials, including the notorious Seattle Seven trial. He even took his commitment to justice and antiwar causes to the political arena, running for the U.S. Senate against powerhouse senator Henry M. Jackson.
In Carl Maxey: A Fighting Life, Jim Kershner explores the sources of Maxey's passions as well as the price he ultimately paid for his struggles. The result is a moving portrait of a man called a "Type-A Gandhi" by the New York Times, whose own personal misfortune spurred his lifelong, tireless crusade against injustice.
Jim Kershner is a journalist for the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington and staff historian at HistoryLink.org.