Deborah Johnson was selected to receive the 2015 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The prize is administered by the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal. Johnson is the first woman and the first African American to win the prize.
Johnson will be recognized September 3 at a ceremony held at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. She is being honored for her book The Secret of Magic (G.P Putnam & Sons, 2014). The novel is the story about a young woman attorney who works for Thurgood Marshall in 1946. She is asked to investigate the murder of a young Black war hero in Mississippi.
Johnson is a native of Missouri but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. She currently resides in Columbus, Mississippi.
article via jbhe.com
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Born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska and known mainly as Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz was an African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist who rose to national prominence in the 1960s. To his admirers, he was a courageous advocate for the rights of blacks, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its crimes against black Americans. Detractors accused him of preaching racism, black supremacy, and violence. He has been called one of the greatest and most influential African Americans in history.
Malcolm X’s father died—killed by white supremacists, it was rumored—when he was young, and at least one of his uncles was lynched. When he was 13, his mother was placed in a mental hospital, and he was placed in a series of foster homes. In 1946, at age 20, he went to prison for breaking and entering. In prison, Malcolm X became a member of the Nation of Islam; after his parole in 1952, he quickly rose to become one of its leaders. For a dozen years, Malcolm X was the public face of the controversial group, but disillusionment with Nation of Islam head Elijah Muhammad led him to leave the Nation in March 1964. After a period of travel in Africa and the Middle East, he returned to the United States, where he founded Muslim Mosque, Inc. and the Organization of Afro-American Unity. In February 1965, less than a year after leaving the Nation of Islam, he was assassinated by three members of the group.
Malcolm X’s expressed beliefs changed substantially over time. As a spokesman for the Nation of Islam he taught black supremacy and advocated separation of black and white Americans—in contrast to the civil rights movement’s emphasis on integration. After breaking with the Nation of Islam in 1964—saying of his association with it, “I did many things as a [Black] Muslim that I’m sorry for now. I was a zombie then … pointed in a certain direction and told to march”—and becoming a Sunni Muslim, he disavowed racism and expressed willingness to work with civil rights leaders, he continued to emphasize Pan-Africanism, black self-determination, and self-defense.
article via wikipedia.org