Blacksher, Menefee, and Stein Records The law firm of Blacksher, Menefee, and Stein (BMS) was established in 1980 when James Blacksher, Larry Menefee, and Greg Stein struck out on their own. The three men had been involved with the Vernon Z. Crawford law firm, Blacksher as early as 1973. Acting as NAACP Legal Defense Fund cooperating attorneys, Vernon Crawford's firm was instrumental in launching a number of important civil rights cases. When BMS left Crawford's firm, they remained as attorneys of record on open civil rights cases and retained the files on other cases they had litigated while at the Crawford firm. Both James Blacksher and Larry Menefee later left the BMS law firm, leaving Greg Stein as the only remaining original partner. Stein, on behalf of BMS, donated the firm's old case files to USA Archives in Febrary 1989. The files remained closed for ten years, after which time a thorough examination of the law files was conducted. Only that material appearing to be related to civil rights or important issues such as the environment were kept. The remainder of the files were shredded. The cases within BMS have been listed in two ways. First, alphabetically by case name. Secondly, alphabetically by type of lawsuit (e.g., job discrimination, housing discrimination, etc.). Interested parties may also want to check out an oral interview conducted with James Blacksher in 2001. Related collections include those of Vernon Crawford, John LeFlore, Lambert Mims, and the Non-Partisan Voters League. Alphabetical Listing of Cases: * indicates not a civil rights-related case; ** indicates has box inventories but no abstract; # indicates a particularly important civil rights case
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Lawsuit type: (Some of those cases listed as being "other school related" could also qualify as "job discrimination." They were not so listed because they were not directly related to the issue of race, as those cases listed in "job discrimination" were. The cases listed in "gender discrimination" also could have been listed in "job discrimination" because most of those related to gender discrimination in employment. For the sake of brevity and because they did not always revolve around gender and race, they were not cross listed.)
Researchers may also want to check out the Miscellaneous Material, which has maps and other documents related to many of these cases. |