Oral history with Mr. R. Jess Brown, lawyer, Jackson, Mississippi

              Oral history with Mr. R. Jesse Brown, lawyer, Jackson, Mississippi
This oral history is provided through a cooperative project of University of Southern Mississippi Libraries and USM's Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage.
Funding provided by a National Leadership Grant for Libraries from the Institute for Museum and Library Services
The transcript is presented here for reference purposes only. Interviews in this collection are protected by copyright. PERMISSION TO PUBLISH MUST BE REQUESTED from the Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage. Please call ( 601) 266- 4574 for more information.
Biography
Mr. R. Jess Brown was born in Coffeeville, Kansas, on September 2, 1912, and was reared in Oklahoma. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Illinois State Normal University and a Master of Science in Education degree from Indiana University. In 1946, he moved to Mississippi where he taught school for five years. He then attended law school at Texas Southern University; and after passing the Mississippi Bar Examination, he began to practice law in 1954. Mr. Brown was quite active in the civil rights movement in the 1960' s particularly in providing legal counsel for civil rights workers and organizations.
Abstract
Mr. Brown begins this interview by briefly relating his family and personal background. He then recalls his first years in Mississippi as a teacher and traces the development of his interest in civil rights. Explaining how he became interested in the law, he reviews his entry into the legal profession and then reveals some of the problems which face a black lawyer in Mississippi.
Mr. Brown was very much involved in civil rights activity in Mississippi, particularly its legal aspects. Analyzing the various civil rights organizations, he relates his own participation in the events of freedom summer, 1964. He comments on the strategy followed and speculates upon how much influence civil rights activism had upon subsequent legislation.
In a discussion of his own particular legal specialty, Mr. Brown discusses the objectives and problems of various civil rights legal defense organizations. He also describes the types and degree of intimidation and harassment which he has encountered and attempts to gauge the impact of the events of the 1960' s upon local black citizens who were affected. Mr. Brown closes the interview with a review of his association with the Kinard case in 1961.
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