The account of the landmark constitutional law decision on racial redistricting. "Bernard Taper's small but meaty book . . . is an example of how the human considerations that lie behind a Supreme Court decision can be brought to life. . . . By applying the microscope to a single case, Mr. Taper has said a great deal about how and why issues reach the Supreme Court, and how they are decided." New York Times This book was first published in 1962 to critical acclaim. It details the lawsuit that Charles C. Gomillion, chairman of Tuskegee Institute's Division of Social Sciences and president of the Tuskegee Civic Association, filed against that Alabama city's mayor, Philip M. Lightfoot, to protest the black community's loss of voting rights. Because Tuskegee's black population in 1957 (5,300) far outnumbered its white population (1,400) and because the highly educated black community had made persistent and successful efforts to register as voters, the Alabama Legislature redrew the city's boundaries to exclude most of the African-American districts, effectively converting Tuskegee to a white city. Gomillion's lawsuit, which was lost twice in lower courts, alleged that Tuskegee's black citizens had been illegally gerrymandered out of their constitutional right to vote. In 1960 the U.S. Supreme Court agreed, writing, "The inescapable human effect of this . . . is to despoil colored citizens, and only colored citizens, of their theretofore enjoyed voting rights." As a result of Gomillion vs. Lightfoot, the Supreme Court unanimously questioned the constitutionality of redistricting voting precincts along racial lines, not only in Tuskegee but nationwide. Taper's well-written, thorough account will be welcomed by students and scholars of constitutional law, Alabama and southern history, and civil rights.

Originally published in 1962, this book is the true account of Gomillion v. Lightfoot, a case concerned with the denial of Negro voting rights in Tuskegee, Alabama in order to politically manipulate that township’s boundaries, and the first case of its kind to be argued before the Supreme Court. Brilliantly and accurately documented, this is a probing report by Bernard Taper, one of the leading reporters for The New Yorker magazine, who traveled first to Tuskegee and later to Washington, in order to skilfully weave together the background material and the entire case. Taper followed the case from its inception in 1957, through to the personal reactions of Tuskegee’s citizens as they became involved, and finally to the Supreme Court in 1960, where he provides a remarkable portrait of the court action and of the Justices as they worked toward their final decision... A gripping read. “Bernard Taper has done an extraordinary job of reporting not only the tangled facts of the Tuskegee Affair, but the feelings of those who were involved in it. With discernment and sympathy he deals with the deep currents of emotion that are eroding the sense of community that once marked the small towns of the South—a far more significant phenomenon than the occasional spectacular flares of racial violence.”—Harry Ashmore, Pulitzer prize-winning newspaper editor, author of An Epitaph for Dixie, and editor of the Encyclopaedia Britannica “I only wish that every great constitutional cause could be illuminated by such a valuable and absorbing account of its background as the one Mr. Taper has given us for the Gomillion case.”—Professor Charles L. Black, Jr., Yale Law School

Faced with winning efforts of Negroes in the Tuskeegee Institute neighborhood to register as voters, in 1957 Mayor Lightfoot and the Alabama legislature redrew the boundaries to convert it into a very nearly lily-white town. Three years later the United States Supreme Court questioned the constitutionality of this gerrymandering act.

Plaintiff in Gomillion v. Lightfoot, the Tuskegee gerrymandering case which eliminated all but ten Black voters from the city limits. Discusses this case, as well as activities of the Tuskegee Civic Association in school desegregation and voter registration. No tape available. Interviewer: Stanley H. Smith.

Winner of the Anne B. & James B. McMillan Prize in Southern History Examines the legacies of eight momentous US Supreme Court decisions that have their origins in Alabama legal disputes Unknown to many, Alabama has played a remarkable role in a number of Supreme Court rulings that continue to touch the lives of every American. In Alabama Justice: The Cases and Faces That Changed a Nation, Steven P. Brown has identified eight landmark cases that deal with religion, voting rights, libel, gender discrimination, and other issues, all originating from legal disputes in Alabama. Written in a concise and accessible manner, each case law chapter begins with the circumstances that created the dispute. Brown then provides historical and constitutional background for the issue followed by a review of the path of litigation. Excerpts from the Court's ruling in the case are also presented, along with a brief account of the aftermath and significance of the decision. The First Amendment (New York Times v. Sullivan), racial redistricting (Gomillion v. Lightfoot), the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Frontiero v. Richardson), and prayer in public schools (Wallace v. Jaffree) are among the pivotal issues stamped indelibly by disputes with their origins in Alabama legal, political, and cultural landscapes. In addition to his analysis of cases, Brown discusses the three associate justices sent from Alabama to the Supreme Court--John McKinley, John Archibald Campbell, and Hugo Black--whose cumulative influence on the institution of the Court, constitutional interpretation, and the day-to-day rights and liberties enjoyed by every American is impossible to measure. A closing chapter examines the careers and contributions of these three Alabamians.