Civil Rights and Wrongs for December 28, 2021

Continuing the tradition, Tuesday we present the “Best of 2021.”  We’ll hear excerpts from five of our favorite episodes from the year past:

• Jeffrey Littlejohn, Professor of History at Sam Houston State.  Jeff heads up the Lynching in Texas project, and was our guest on February 23^rd.  He and his students collaborate with local officials and nationally with the Equal Justice Initiative to ensure that Texas history is not whitewashed.
• Beth Schwartzapfel, Staff Writer at the Marshall Project.  We learned about “qualified immunity,” a legal doctrine that makes it very difficult to sue police officers for misconduct.  Excerpts are from the July 6^th show, which was motivated by an article that Beth co-authored in the Austin American-Statesman.
• Stephen Vladeck, Faculty in the UT Law School.  Steve joined us for our annual Supreme Court wrap-up on July 13^th.  We heard about changes in the make-up of the Court with an eye toward future cases.  
• Alison Alter, District 10 Representative to the Austin City Council, and Neil Blumofe, Senior Rabbi at Congregation Agudas Achim.  On November 30^th they discussed the civic impact and community response to arson at Congregation Beth Israel, along with defacement and expressions of hatred that had taken place in Northwest Austin. 
• Benjamin Johnson, Professor of History at Loyola University of Chicago, and John Morán Gonzalez, Professor of American and English Literature at the University of Texas at Austin.  They are co-founders of Refusing to Forget, an award-winning educational nonprofit that works to increase public awareness of an often-forgotten period in the history of the United States.  Ben and John were with us just two weeks ago, on December 14^th. 

As usual, you’ll also hear Jim Harrington, retired founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, and Michelle Manning-Scott, Associate Producer of the show.  Austin Sanders, Staff Writer at the Austin Chronicle, will be back next week.