Description

Douglas Crockett recalls his work with Neighborhood Legal Services in Hartford, a non-profit civil law firm to assist low-income clients, where he began in 1968. Together with attorney Ray Marcin, they filed the Lumpkin vs Dempsey (later renamed Lumpkin v Meskill) school desegregation lawsuit in federal court in 1970, which charged that Connecticut laws erected unnatural barriers to racial integration between the city and suburban school districts. While the Lumpkin case failed due to an adverse US Supreme Court ruling in the Milliken v Bradley metropolitan Detroit case in 1974, it informed the legal strategy of Sheff v O’Neill school desegregation plaintiffs, who filed their case in state court in 1989. Crockett also recounts his role in other cases regarding discrimination by the police department and tenants’ rights.

Record Contributed By

Trinity College, Hartford, CT

Record Harvested From

Connecticut Digital Archive