In 1961, Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd. While 30 percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve African Americans were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case I worked on as one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys. As a newly minted lawyer, I traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. I met with and prepared the government's sixteen courageous black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers handling the trial.
Many years later, thanks to grant from the JFK Library in Boston and the National Endowment for the Humanities, I returned to Mississippi to find these brave men and women I had never forgotten. I interviewed the still-living witnesseses, their children, and friends, and could not have written the book without their help - and that of my wife. The book combines my present-day reflections with vivid commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.
