Katie McCabe, author of "Justice Older Than the Law: The Life of Dovey Johnson Roundtree," will read from her biography of Roundtree, a Charlotte native and pioneering civil rights lawyer, during a program 6-8 p.m. Thursday at the Levine Museum of the New South. Roundtree is pictured (right) with McCabe.
At 95, Charlotte native Dovey Roundtree remains a living part of America's civil rights history. The lawyer and minister was among the first black female World War II military officers. She prevailed in a desegregation case that ended "separate but equal" interstate bus travel and won acquittal for a slow-witted black man accused of murdering a mistress of John F. Kennedy. She now lives in a Charlotte nursing home.
Along with telling Roundtree's remarkable story, McCabe, a Washington writer, manages in her book (University of Mississippi Press; $30) to create a sense of what it was like to live as a black person in segregated Charlotte and the Jim Crow South.
Thursday's program includes a panel discussion of female legal professionals from the region. The event is $5 for museum members, $10 for non-members. To register: 704-375-8624 or email@example.com.