CANR
WORK TITLE: A PLACE OUTSIDE THE LAW
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Berkeley
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COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
LAST VOLUME:
https://www.usfca.edu/law/faculty/peter-honigsberg
RESEARCHER NOTES: Born: June 29, 1943 (age 76 years), New York, NY
PERSONAL
Born June 29, 1943, in New York, NY.
EDUCATION:City University of New York, B.A.; New York University, J.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer, educator, and lawyer. University of San Francisco, CA, professor in the School of Law; Witness to Guantanamo, San Francisco, CA, founder and director. Work experience includes serving as director of the Legal Writing and Research Program, University of San Francisco School of Law and Golden Gate University School of Law; instructor at San Francisco State University; attorney in private practice; staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project, Berkeley, CA.
AWARDS:Recipient of grants.
WRITINGS
Also coauthor with Edith Ho of Gilbert’s Legal Research, Writing, 12th edition, Gilbert Publishing Co., Cleveland, OH. Contributor to law reviews and journals, including Denver University Law Review, Environmental Law Reporter News & Analysis, Georgetown Law Journal, Golden Gate University Law Review, Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy, Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights, UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, and University of San Francisco Law Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Peter Jan Honigsberg is a law professor and writer whose primary research focuses on human rights violations and the rule of law at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a U.S. military prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. He also is interested in the study of terrorism and issues associated with the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the United States. As the director of the Witness to Guantanamo organization, Honigsberg has filmed more than 158 interviews of the prison’s former detainees, as well as prison guards, interrogators, chaplains, medical personnel, and attorneys who have been associated with the prison.
Honigsberg is the author of several books in his areas of interest, as well as memoirs and children’s books. For example, in Armful of Memories, illustrated by Tony Morse, Honigsberg tells the story of Newbery Mole who is overjoyed when he discovers the apartment of his deceased grandparents is full of stuff he can sell so he can become rich. However, later when he cannot remember what his grandparents looked like, he has to buy back for a higher price a picture he sold, learning that there are more important things than money. “The message is a good one, enlivened by Morse’s bright, funny, winning artwork,” wrote Ilene Cooper in Booklist. Honigsberg also collaborated with illustrator Morse for the children’s book Pillow of Dreams.
In Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir, Honigsberg recounts his experience with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Honigsberg was in law school when he joined the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee as a civil rights worker. Honigsberg began his work in Bogalusa, Louisiana, near the border of Mississippi. He eventually found himself fighting the Ku Klux Klan with the Deacons for Defense and Justice, an armed self-defense group made of blacks and based in Jonesboro, Louisiana.
“Honigsberg’s friendships with fellow activists, his reverence for the community leadership and his affection for Louisiana saturate these pages,” wrote a Publishers Weekly contributor. Thomas J. Davis, writing in Library Journal, noted the book provides “a behind-the-scenes view of the daily grassroots struggle of people” who helped to end “de jure segregation.”
Honigsberg examines the consequences of the “war on terror” that began after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in his book titled Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror. Covering from 2001 through 2008, Honigsberg is primarily concerned with what he sees as the officially undeclared war on terror’s catastrophic impact, from human tragedies to judicial law and political issues, such as the erosion of due process, expansion of presidential powers, and disregard for the U.S. Constitution. Throughout, Honigsberg clearly places the blame for these failings on the administration of then-President George W. Bush.
Honigsberg “displays his raw emotions at the manipulation of the US legal system,” wrote J. Michael Bitz in Choice, adding that Honigsberg’s commentary “provides valuable lessons for future scholars.” A Publishers Weekly contributor called Our Nation Unhinged “a powerful indictment Bush’s War on Terror, vivid and horrifying and hard to put down.”
In his 2019 book, A Place Outside the Law: Forgotten Voices from Guantanamo, Honigsberg draws from his research and his work as director of the Witness to Guantanamo organization to provide a human portrait of the people who faced numerous hardships due to the imprisonment of suspected terrorists at the Guatanamo Bay prison. Honigsberg looks both at those who have been prisoners and their loved ones, detailing psychological and physical torments they suffered. Honigsberg, however, also reveals how the prison has taken a toll on those who have worked there, from guards and integrators to lawyers and interpreters.
In some of the stories about people who worked at Guantanamo, Honigsberg reveals that they were disturbed by what they saw as cruel punishments and the fact that some prisoners may not have been terrorists at all. After leaving the military, one prison guard flew to London, England to meet with former detainees so he could give them a hug. A whistleblower in a roundabout way released the names of 500 detainees via a greeting card to a New York lawyer. Honigsberg also reveals how an interrogator at the prison who was known for his torture techniques initially received awards only eventually to undergo prosecution. Calling A Place Outside the Law “a well-documented, hard-hitting, necessary expose,” a Kirkus Reviews contributor also noted that Honigsberg presents a good case that the U.S. government was responsible for “egregious” misconduct so “that readers … could fairly conclude that many individuals have been wrongly incarcerated.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2000, Vernon Ford, review of Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir, p. 1725; January 1, 2002, Ilene Cooper, review of Armful of Memories, p. 865.
Choice, November, 2009, J. Michael Bitzer, J. Michael, review of Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror, p. 589.
Journal of American Ethnic History, volume 1, number 21, 2001, Jason McDonald, review of Crossing Border Street, p. 141.
Journal of Southern History, volume 68 ,number 1, 2002, Adam Fairclough, review of Crossing Border Street, p. 233.
Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2019, review of A Place Outside the Law: Forgotten Voices from Guantanamo.
Library Journal, June 1, 2000, Thomas J. Davis, review of Crossing Border Street, p. 154.
Publishers Weekly, May 22, 2000, review of Crossing Border Street, p. 87.
School Library Journal, November, 2000. Jane S. Drabkin, review of Crossing Border Street, p. 184.
ONLINE
Publishers Weekly Online, https://www.publishersweekly.com/ (October 22, 2019), review of Our Nation Unhinged.
University of San Francisco, https://www.usfca.edu/ (October 22, 2019), faculty profile.
Peter Jan Honigsberg is a professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and the founder and director of Witness to Guantánamo. His research and teaching focuses on the rule of law and human rights violations that occurred in the detention center in Guantánamo, as well as on the study of terrorism and post-9/11 issues. His books include Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror and Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. Honigsberg lives in Berkeley, CA.
Peter Jan Honigsberg
Professor
Full-Time Faculty
honigsbergp@usfca.edu
(415) 422-6478
Biography
Professor Peter Jan Honigsberg’s current research focuses on the rule of law and human rights violations that occurred in the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and on the study of terrorism and other post–9/11 issues.
Honigsberg is the founder and director of Witness to Guantanamo, which began in fall 2008. He has filmed over 158 full–length and in–depth interviews in twenty countries of former detainees and others who have worked in or are associated with the prison in Guantánamo, including prison guards, interrogators, interpreters, chaplains, medical personnel, prosecutors, habeas and JAG attorneys, high–ranking government and military officials, and family members of former prisoners. In May 2007, Honigsberg visited the detention center at Guantánamo. He teaches Legal Issues of Terrorism, Administrative Law, International Criminal Law, and Legal Drafting.
He is the author of Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror (University of California Press, 2009) and Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir (University of California Press, 2000).
His articles include, “Linguistic Isolation: A New Human Rights Violation Constituting Torture, and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment” (Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights); “Chasing Enemy Combatants and Circumventing International Law: A License for Sanctioned Abuse” (UCLA International Law and Foreign Affairs Journal); “Inside Guantanamo,” (Nevada Law Journal); “In Search of a Forum for the Guantanamo Disappeared” (University of Denver Law Review); and “The Evolution and Revolution of Napster” (University of San Francisco Law Review).
Honigsberg has contributed pieces to the Washington Post, the Huffington Post and other media sources and blogs. He is currently writing a book on his work with Witness to Guantánamo, A Place Outside the Law: Post 9/11 Guantánamo, to be published in fall 2019 by Beacon Press.
Education
BA, City University of New York
JD, New York University
Experience
Director, Legal Writing and Research Program, USF School of Law and Golden Gate University School of Law
Instructor, San Francisco State University
Attorney/Author, Private Practice
Staff Attorney, National Housing Law Project, Berkeley
Expertise
Administrative Law
Guantanamo Bay
Human Rights
International Criminal Law
International Human Rights Law
International Humanitarian Law
National Security
Terrorism
Awards & Distinctions
Sigrid Rausing Trust Grant, Witness to Guantanamo project
Left Tilt Fund Grant, Witness to Guantanamo project
Roddick Foundation Trustees Grant, Witness to Guantanamo project
Open Society Institute (Soros) Grant, Witness to Guantanamo project
Levinson Foundation Trustees Grant, Witness to Guantanamo project
Samuel Rubin Foundation Trustees Grant, Witness to Guantanamo project
Books
Straying from Honor, Untold Stories of Guantanamo ( Beacon Press , Forthcoming 2019) )
Gilbert's Legal Research, Writing & Analysis ( Gilbert Publishing Co , 12 Edition , Cleveland, Ohio) (Co-Authored with Professor Edith Ho.)
Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror (Berkeley: University of California Press , 2009) )
Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir ( : University of California Press , 2000) )
Law Review and Journal Articles
“The Consequences Today of the United States' Brutal Post-9/11 Interrogation Techniques,” 31 The Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy (2017). SSRN
“"I Still Live in Guantanamo," Human rights abuses continue after detainees leave Guantanamo",” 30 Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics & Public Policy (2016). SSRN
“Linguistic Isolation: A New Human Rights Violation Constituting Torture, and Cruel, Inhuman And Degrading Treatment,” 12 Northwestern University Journal of International Human Rights (2014). Read More
“Linguistic Isolation: A New Human Rights Violation Constituting Torture, and Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment,” (2013). SSRN
“In Search of a Forum for the Families of the Guantanamo Disappeared,” 90 Denver University Law Review 433 (2012). SSRN
“Conflict of Interest that Led to the Gulf Oil Disaster,” 41 Environmental Law Reporter News & Analysis 10414 (2011). SSRN
“Inside Guantanamo,” 10 Nevada Law Journal 82 (2009). SSRN
“Chasing Enemy Combatants and Circumventing International Law: A License for Sanctioned Abuse,” 12 UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs 1 (2007). (Symposium: Protecting the Nation at the Expense of Individuals? Defining the Scope of U.S. Executive Power at Home and Abroad in Times of Crisis) SSRN
“Pursuing Dignity Through Three Tumultuous Decades: Reporting Civil Rights: American Journalism 1941-1973,” 44 Santa Clara Law Review 335 (2003). SSRN
“The Evolution and Revolution of Napster,” 36 University of San Francisco Law Review 472 (2002). SSRN
“A Barbie Doll Story: How the Doll Study in Brown v. Board of Education led Berkeley High School Students to Question the World of Barbie Dolls,” Phi Delta Kappan (1995).
“When the Client Harasses the Attorney — Recognizing Third-Party Sexual Harassment in the Legal Profession,” 28 University of San Francisco Law Review 715 (1994). (With Marilyn Tham and Gary Alexander)
“Unfairness in Access to and Citation of Unpublished Federal Court Decisions,” 18 Golden Gate University Law Review 277 (1988). (With James A. Dikel)
“Tenant Union-Landlord Relations Act: A Proposal,” 58 Georgetown Law Journal 1013 (1970). (With Myron Moskowitz)
Honigsberg, Peter Jan A PLACE OUTSIDE THE LAW Beacon (Adult Nonfiction) $28.95 11, 12 ISBN: 978-0-8070-2698-4
The founder and director of Witness to Guantanamo shares his research on nearly 20 years of lawlessness there.
Since the military prison was founded in 2002, this "detention center for alleged terrorists" has housed inmates who have been held indefinitely without being charged and without legal representation or recourse for enduring extralegal torture. (Most have since been released from custody.) Honigsberg (Univ. of San Francisco School of Law; Our Nation Unhinged: The Human Consequences of the War on Terror, 2009, etc.) and a crew of researchers have conducted 158 videotaped interviews (more than 300 hours of film across 20 countries) with detainees; their distraught family members; Guantanamo guards and interrogators from the U.S. military; civilian and military lawyers; and interpreters hired by the federal government to deal with the mixture of languages spoken by those incarcerated. The author presents factual accounts based on the videotaped interviews and wide-ranging supplemental research. Honigsberg combines his impressive research with his persistent advocacy for detainees who clearly played no role in the 9/11 attacks and who almost certainly never posed any threat to American citizens. In easily understood lay terms, the author explains how the George W. Bush administration ignored federal court rulings regarding humane treatment, how Congress furthered the lawlessness, how federal lawyers invented the status of "enemy combatant," and how the Obama administration never observed promises to shut down Guantanamo. Some of the most unforgettable profiles in the narrative focus on detainee Mourad Benchellali, interpreter Rushan Abbas, military defense attorney Matt Diaz, civilian defense lawyer Gita Gutierrez (on the staff of the Center for Constitutional Rights), military guard Brandon Neely, journalist Carol Rosenberg, and Damien Corsetti, the so-called "King of Torture." As presented convincingly by the author, the misconduct by the U.S. government is so egregious that readers with a moral compass could fairly conclude that many individuals have been wrongly incarcerated.
A well-documented, hard-hitting, necessary expose.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Honigsberg, Peter Jan: A PLACE OUTSIDE THE LAW." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Sept. 2019. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A599964385/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=ac34c531. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A599964385
Honigsberg, Peter Jan. Armful of Memories. Illus. by Tony Morse. Jan. 2002. 32p. RDR, $17.95 (1-57143-089-X).
Ages 5-7. Newbery Mole wants to get rich, and his dream comes true when he fortuitously falls down a mole tunnel into his deceased grandparents' apartment, which is chock full of things he can sell. Tools, cooking utensils, even family photographs --Newbery sells them all and revels in his newfound wealth. One night he dreams about his grandparents, but he can't see their faces. Heartbroken, he hunts for the photos, finding them in the possession of a relative who has purchased them from a second-hand store. The relative makes Newbery pay for them, charging him more than he earned at his sale. It doesn't matter, though, because, "I may have no money but ... my memories are my real treasures." Despite the heavy-handedness, the message is a good one, enlivened by Morse's bright, funny, winning artwork with accent on the well-drawn animals. For larger collections.
Cooper, Ilene
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Cooper, Ilene. "Armful of Memories. (Fiction)." Booklist, 1 Jan. 2002, p. 865. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A82513627/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=07438356. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A82513627
Honigsberg, Peter Jan. Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. Univ. of California. Jun. 2000. c.200p. permanent paper. photogs. index. ISBN 0-520-22147-8. $24.95. HIST
University of San Francisco law professor Honigsberg recalls his 1960s self-discovery when, after his first year at New York University Law School, he went South as a civil rights worker for the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee in New Orleans. He worked in Bogalusa, near the Mississippi border, where he joined hands with the black, gun-toting Deacons for Defense and Justice as they battled the Ku Klux Klan. Looking back, Honigsberg lays bare the facts that led to such landmark laws as the 1968 right-to-jury trial decision in Duncan v. Louisiana. What he contributes mostly is a behind-the-scenes view of the daily grassroots struggle of people the national audience never heard about but who made all the difference in moving the nation along the road to ending de jure segregation. Comparable to Marvin Caplan's Farther Along: A Civil Rights Memoir (Louisiana State Univ., 1999) and a readable complement to David Halberstam's The Children (LJ 2/15/98) or Tom Dent's Southern Journey: My Return to the Civil Rights Movement (LJ 12/1/96), this is recommended for collections on law and lawyers in U.S. society, as well as civil rights, Southern, and U.S. history.
--Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Davis, Thomas J. "Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir." Library Journal, 1 June 2000, p. 154. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A62924539/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=17c0c148. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A62924539
PETER JAN HONIGSBERG. Univ. of California, $24.95 (200p) ISBN 0-520-22147-8
"We were doing God's work, we were on the side of the angels." In the poetic language of a starry-eyed activist, the mature Honigsberg candidly describes the passion he felt for the civil rights movement and the violent reality he witnessed in rural Louisiana during the late 1960s. Now a law professor at the University of San Francisco, Honigsberg went to New Orleans as a student to provide legal representation for civil rights workers battling Jim Crow laws. At the time, he admits, he was a bit "na[ddot{i}]ve and perhaps even self righteous," but he was forced to deepen his thinking when confronted with the "complex and multilayered" nature of black-white relations. Still, his fervor for social justice was never doused. Using a winning combination of vivid description and youthful musings, the author recalls the funky, sordid New Orleans nightlife, the sleepy mornings at a small town cafe, the hair-raising terror of close calls with the Klan and the practical wisdom of activists like Marian Wright Edelman. Sent to Bogalusa, La. (rumored to contain the largest population of Ku Klux Klan members per capita of any Southern town), the young Honigsberg encountered the little known Deacons for Defense and Justice, who drew the wary respect of the white community as one of the first African American organizations to forcefully retaliate against the KKK. Honigsberg's friendships with fellow activists, his reverence for the community leadership and his affection for Louisiana saturate these pages. In acknowledging how the civil rights movement changed the world and his life, Honigsberg has given the reader a glimpse of the past and a rare, remarkable book. B&w photos. (June)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"CROSSING BORDER STREET: A Civil Rights Memoir." Publishers Weekly, 22 May 2000, p. 87. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A62527857/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3ed9edd3. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A62527857
Honigsberg, Peter Jan. Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. June 2000. 200p. index, illus. Univ. of California, $24.95 (0-520-22147-8). DDC: 976.3
Honigsberg, a law professor, traces and reflects upon his formative years as an idealistic civil-rights worker in the South. In 1966, as a law student at New York University, he ventured into Paris, Louisiana, as a civil-rights volunteer and experienced the dangers and exhilarations of challenging the U.S. to meet its ideals. Honigsberg, a Jew, recalls the support and appreciation of his efforts by black civil-rights workers. But for those who opposed the movement, he and the other volunteers were treated as outside agitators. He also recalls a shift in sentiments within the corps of civil-rights volunteers when the movement attracted a more black nationalist element. At that point, the goal of integration took a back seat to an emphasis on black participation in the movement, creating discomfort for white volunteers. Honigsberg later shifted attention to the antiwar and peace movements, continuing his activism even today. But he recalls that it was his experience as a civil-rights worker in the South that laid the foundation for his commitment to struggles for human rights.
YA/C: Powerful personal narrative will support high-school studies of the movement. GE.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Ford, Vernon. "Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir." Booklist, 15 May 2000, p. 1725. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A62724556/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=403a698a. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A62724556
47-1700
KF9625
2008-52272 CIP
Honigsberg, Peter Jan. Our nation unhinged: the human consequences of the war on terror. California, 2009. 311p bibl index afp ISBN 9780520254725, $27.50
At times, Honigsberg's analysis reads as two separate works: one a thorough analysis of the events and characters at the center of the war on terror, the other a stinging indictment of what the author contends is an extralegal and unconstitutional crusade against the rule of law. The reader could be left grappling with these two contrasting approaches, but the author deftly combines the development and commentary to create a powerful case. Much like Howard Ball's analysis (Bush, the Detainees, and the Constitution, CH, Mar, 08, 45-4053) of the expansion of presidential power during the war on terror, Honigsberg (law, Univ. of San Francisco) scrutinizes the legal and procedural aspects of the period, providing a comprehensive review of everything from the Geneva Conventions and the detainees at Guantanamo Bay to the rulings of the US Supreme Court. Throughout the book, the author displays his raw emotions at the manipulation of the US legal system and acknowledges that, in the future, other scholars may bring a more dispassionate review of this period in US history. Along with Bali's work, Honigsberg presents a powerful indictment of the George W. Bush administration's use of the law that provides valuable lessons for future scholars. Summing Up: Highly recommended. *** All readership levels.--J. Michael Bitzer, Catawba College
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Bitzer, J. Michael. "Honigsberg, Peter Jan. Our nation unhinged: the human consequences of the war on terror." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Nov. 2009, p. 589+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A266634448/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=bb4e48a6. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A266634448
HONIGSBERG, Peter Jan. Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. 177p. photos. index. notes. Univ. of California. 2000. Tr $24.95. ISBN 0-520-22147-8. LC 99-087300.
YA--As a law-school student, Honigsberg left New York City to volunteer for the Lawyers of Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC), a group that defended black civil rights activists in the 1960s. Each time he visited Bogalusa, LA, he had a covert rendezvous with the Deacons of Defense, who escorted him to safety across Border Street to the side of town where blacks were allowed to live. In addition to providing legal assistance, he found himself demonstrating, confronting sheriffs, impersonating a lawyer, and participating in a 10-day march from Bogalusa to Baton Rouge. He assisted in a case that was finally decided by the Supreme Court, which established that states could not deny defendants jury trials in serious criminal cases. Honigsberg makes palpable the tension, fear, and courage of both black and white activists. He clearly explains the social, political, and economic currents of the time and reinforces the narrative with over a dozen photographs. He emphasizes the rise of the "Black Power Movement," which eventually caused the end of his direct participation in the cause. As he crossed Border Street, he joined the freedom movement to end segregation and gained insights into his own soul and the soul of America.
--Jane S. Drabkin, Potomac Community Library, Woodbridge, VA
Chaired by Jackie Gropman & Susan Woodcock, Fairfax County Public Library System VA
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2000 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Drabkin, Jane S. "Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir." School Library Journal, Nov. 2000, p. 184. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A67329275/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3209d0c3. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A67329275
Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. By Peter Jan Honigsberg. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, c. 2000. Pp. xvi, 177. $24.95, ISBN 0-520-22147-8.)
Peter Jan Honigsberg, a native of New York City, the son of Jewish refugees from Austria, was a first-year law student at NYU when he volunteered to spend a summer in the South working for the New Orleans office of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC), which had been formed in 1964 to provide legal assistance for the civil rights movement. For the next two years, Honigsberg "commuted between law school and the South" (p. 3), finding self-discovery, self-fulfillment, and adventure in his encounter with an alien culture in the throes of painful transformation. This short book is a straightforward account of Honigsberg's "freedom summers," written in simple, unadorned prose and with no attempt to exaggerate the significance of the author's relatively minor contribution to history. Indeed, to anyone with more than a passing knowledge of the 1960s South, Honigsberg's memoir will be of limited interest. The author first went South after the civil rights movement had peaked. As a law student rather than a lawyer, he was on the fringe of the LCDC's activities (although he does furnish some useful information about those activities). The numerous passages evoking the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of New Orleans--new to the author in 1966 but familiar to most of his readers three decades later--are somewhat redundant.
Still, Crossing Border Street yields a number of insights into aspects of the civil rights movement. The most important is the information that it provides on the Bogalusa Voters League and its shadowy reflection, the Deacons for Defense and Justice. One of the most militant black movements of the 1960s, the civil rights struggle in Bogalusa became nationally famous for organizing armed self-defense in the face of violence by the Ku Klux Klan and police indifference to attacks on demonstrators. However, because the Deacons shunned publicity, and because some of the principal black leaders in Bogalusa--notably Robert Hicks--have been reluctant to discuss their roles, Honigsberg's recollections help to throw light on the internal workings of the civil rights movement there. (Those seeking a detailed account of the Deacons for Defense, however, should consult Lance E. Hill's 1997 Tulane University Ph.D. dissertation, "The Deacons for Defense and Justice: Armed Self-Defense and the Civil Rights Movement.")
Second, Honigsberg illuminates the civil rights movement at a time of transition, when it was abandoning the idealistic rhetoric of nonviolence in favor of the aggressive sloganeering of Black Power. Hard-headed black activists like Robert Hicks and Gayle Jenkins refused to embrace the notion that whites had no place in the struggle, and they continued to work with the white lawyers of the LCDC. In a chilling passage, however, Honigsberg describes the palpable fear he felt when he sensed, at a rally in Baton Rouge in 1967, that the black crowd was bristling with hostility to white people. The realization that being a civil rights worker conferred no exemption from that hostility, and the experience of fearing black southerners rather than white southerners, left him "stunned and numbed" (p. 146). Like many of his white coworkers, Honigsberg left the civil rights movement and joined the burgeoning opposition to the war in Vietnam. Crossing Border Street is a salutary reminder of both what the civil rights movement achieved and how much was lost when Black Power repudiated its principles.
ADAM FAIRCLOUGH
University of East Anglia
Fairclough, Adam
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Fairclough, Adam. "Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. (Book Reviews)." Journal of Southern History, vol. 68, no. 1, 2002, p. 233+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A83280774/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=3377e078. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A83280774
Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir. By Peter Jan Honigsberg. Berkeley; University of California Press, 2000. xvi + 177 pp. Photographs, notes, and index. $24.95.
In this slim yet sententious autobiographical work, Peter Jan Honigsberg provides a white participant's view of the civil rights movement in Louisiana during the late 1960s. The memoir essentially deals with the author's experiences as a volunteer working for the New Orleans office of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee (LCDC) and his involvement in the high profile struggle for racial equality in Bogalusa. Honigsberg uses a crisp narrative, interspersed with brief, but pithy, biographical sketches to address some compelling questions. Why did law students, like himself, forsake their college vacations and the comfort of their northern and western homes to engage in potentially dangerous civil rights work in the South? What tasks did they perform? How important was their contribution to the movement? How did they get on with local African Americans? What effect, at a personal level, did the civil rights movement have upon its participants?
Honigsberg answers these questions with candor and discernment. He reveals that, while most white volunteers genuinely believed in racial equality and were committed to advancing social justice, the motivations of others ranged from well-meaning paternalism to youthful adventurism. Black activists, suggests Honigsberg, were generally welcoming towards LCDC's white staff, and he depicts the Bogalusa movement as being a co-operative interracial endeavour, with "the local African American community in charge of tactics [and] the lawyers in charge of litigation" (p. 7). However, the rise of Black Power, observes the author, was a "very unsettling experience" (p. 128), with white civil rights workers increasingly feeling themselves to be the "targets of intense hostility" (p. 145). Nonetheless, Honigsberg argues convincingly that working for LCDC was a profoundly inspirational and regenerative experience for all but a few of the white students, concluding that "the real differences we made were not to others but to ourselves" (p. 130).
Jason McDonald De Montfort University Leicester, England
McDonald, Jason
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2001 University of Illinois Press
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Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
McDonald, Jason. "Crossing Border Street: A Civil Rights Memoir." Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 21, no. 1, 2001, p. 141+. Gale General OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A403785825/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=2c891d81. Accessed 6 Oct. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A403785825
Law professor Honigsberg, who documented his 1960s civil-rights work in the memoir Crossing Border Street, brings his considerable knowledge and steadfast values to document the U.S. government's abuses of domestic and international law in the name of combating terrorism. His unflinching descriptions of detainee treatment make difficult reading: prisoners are kept in isolation for years and subject to sensory deprivation (Brooklyn native Jose Padilla was held in complete isolation for 21 months), confined to ""dog boxes"" designed to prevent standing and induce ""learned helplessness,"" plied with ""truth serum"" (which may have been LSD or PCP), and much worse. Honigsberg does not deny that prisoners may well be ""extremely bad guys,"" but contends that, regardless, ""civilized society declines in direct relation to the ascendancy of torture."" Honigsberg charges the Bush administration with ""abandoning... our core values of due process and justice,"" but even if one does not agree, Honigsberg insists, ""we should all know what responses our nation chose"" to 9/11. Inspired by a 2007 visit to Guantanimo, Honigsberg has penned a powerful indictment Bush's War on Terror, vivid and horrifying and hard to put down.