Speak Truth to Power brings civil-rights fight to life
By ROBERTA MACINNIS Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Oct. 22, 2010, 5:33PM
http://www.chron.com.nyud.net:8090/photos/2010/10/19/23768566/260xStory.jpgCOURTESY OF CHARLES AND RUTH PATRICK
Charles Patrick, seen in this 1946 photo, took his
civil-rights fight to the courts in Birmingham, Ala.In Birmingham, Ala., in 1954, it didn't take much for a black man to get in trouble. All Charles Patrick had to do was complain to the woman who had cut him off for a downtown parking spot. That woman happened to be the chief of police's wife, and by the end of the day, Patrick, then 36, had not only been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, but also beaten in the city jail by the police chief and two more officers.
But what happened next was unusual: Patrick fought back, legally, first to have his name cleared, then to have the officers punished for their behavior. In her new book, Speak Truth to Power: The Story of Charles Patrick, a Civil Rights Pioneer (University of Alabama Press, 130 pp., $16)Houston writer and teacher Mignette Patrick Dorsey, provides a meticulously researched account of how her father's case united a racially divided city, if even only for a time. I spoke with Dorsey about her father, who turns 92 today. Here are excerpts from that conversation.
Q: Why, after so many years of being familiar with the story, did you decide write the book now?
A: I actually started researching the book while I was still at the Houston Post in the mid- '90s. (Because of work commitments) it took a long time. When you're dealing with someone in their late 80s, you have to go at their pace.
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