A new exhibit titled “Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement” is on display in The University of Texas School of Law's Susman Godfrey Atrium. The Tarlton Law Library is hosting the exhibit along with two other new exhibits—all open to the public through Feb. 27—to celebrate Black History Month.
The MLK exhibit tells the story of the civil rights movement from the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 to his death in 1968.“The MLK exhibit captures the determination and passion of the civil rights movement, its moments of triumph in the mid-sixties, and its unfortunate fragmentation in the latter half of the decade,” said Professor Roy Mersky, Harry M. Reasoner Regents Chair in Law and Director of Research of the Tarlton Law Library at UT Law. “The Library felt it was the perfect exhibit to honor Black History Month,” he said.
The MLK exhibit was created and produced by the Texas Council for the Humanities. It consists of 65 black and white action photographs, facsimiles of landmark documents, quotations from speeches and writings of Dr. King, and brief narrative texts.
To celebrate Black History Month, the Tarlton Law Library is showing two other new exhibits in addition to the MLK exhibit. The first exhibit, prepared by the Thurgood Marshall Legal Society, is titled “Pioneers Paving the Way: African-American ‘Texas Longhorns'.” The exhibit traces the lives of the first African-American graduates of The University of Texas School of Law. It draws from the Law School History collection in Tarlton Law Library's Rare Books & Special Collections department.
The second exhibit, titled "Black, White, and Burnt Orange," covers the integration movement at The University of Texas during the 1960s. The exhibit focuses on the period following the admittance of blacks to The University of Texas, when students worked toward full integration of the campus community through desegregation of campus housing, lunch counters and theaters along the Drag, and university athletic teams. The exhibit also discusses law faculty involvement in the movement for integration.
Addy Sonder, the assistant archivist at the Tarlton Law Library, designed, researched and coordinated the Law Library's Black History Month exhibits, with assistance from Michelle Garza, Abigail Schultz, Scott Webel and Michael Widener. All three exhibits will be open to the public in the Susman Godfrey Atrium and will be on view from Feb. 6 - 27.Related links
Daily Texan article
Law School press release