cjrc-sponsored research

  • Project:
  • Rising Road: A Tale of Race, Religion, Law and Fear in America

  • Investigator:
  • Sharon L. Davies (Law & Kirwan Institute)

  • Abstract:
  • This project involves the development of a book that involves a case study that provides lessons regarding the intersection and implications of race, religion, law and fear in U.S. society. Specifically, the book concerns the 1921 trial of a Methodist minister in Birmingham, Alabama for the murder of a Catholic priest. The minister shot the priest about an hour after the priest officiated the wedding of the minister's 18-year-old daughter to a Catholic Puerto Rican over the minister's objections. The defendant minister was a Klansman--as were a number of other central figures in the case. In the 1920s, the imperial brotherhood targeted not only Blacks, but Catholics, Jews and "foreigners" as well. The book explores the social and legal backdrop against which the killing occurred, and the judicial response to the minister's act. Hugo L. Black, a young attorney in Birmingham at the time, was hired to lead the defense team. The final chapters of the book explore the strategic decisions Black and his co-counsel made on their client's behalf to exploit the deeply-entrenched social animosities and commitments of the day-religious suspicion, racial hatred, nativism, male dominance, and patriarchy--all in an effort to persuade the jury to forgive the priest's murder.