Civil-rights history comes alive for local students
Nearly 25 years after G. Douglas Jones watched a historic case unfold as a law student, the former federal prosecutor found himself in the same third-floor courtroom.
He was no longer a lawyer in training seeking tips on how to try a case. He was the lead prosecutor, and the case was a historic sequel to the one he had watched from a balcony seat decades earlier.
The case of the 1963 bombing deaths of four young girls in a Birmingham, Ala., church yielded a conviction in 1977. Jones and his team were seeking the same for defendant No. 2.
"When I became U.S. attorney, my staff said, 'Don't get your hopes up,' " said Jones, 55. "I said, if we don't do this now, we may never get another chance."
Jones set the stage for his second encounter with civil-rights history at a presentation yesterday before students at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington. The lecture and slide show were history teacher Robert Moyer Jr.'s way of bringing a sense of immediacy to a time that some students might know only from books and movies...
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He was no longer a lawyer in training seeking tips on how to try a case. He was the lead prosecutor, and the case was a historic sequel to the one he had watched from a balcony seat decades earlier.
The case of the 1963 bombing deaths of four young girls in a Birmingham, Ala., church yielded a conviction in 1977. Jones and his team were seeking the same for defendant No. 2.
"When I became U.S. attorney, my staff said, 'Don't get your hopes up,' " said Jones, 55. "I said, if we don't do this now, we may never get another chance."
Jones set the stage for his second encounter with civil-rights history at a presentation yesterday before students at Germantown Academy in Fort Washington. The lecture and slide show were history teacher Robert Moyer Jr.'s way of bringing a sense of immediacy to a time that some students might know only from books and movies...