\u00a0\u201cJustice Deferred,\u201d published in 2021 by Harvard University Press, was the topic of a lecture Burton delivered in Plyler Hall in April.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we have done is used the Supreme Court as a lens to look at race in the United States,\u201d Burton said, \u201cfrom before there was a United States through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett (in 2020). I believe that \u2018Justice Deferred\u2019 shines a powerful light on the court\u2019s race record \u2013 a legacy that at times is uplifting, but more often is distressing and sometimes disgraceful.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Justice](\"https:\/\/news.furman.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/JusticeDeferred-Tablet-230x300-1.jpg\")
“Justice Deferred” examines the history of race in the United States through the lens of the Supreme Court.<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cJustice Deferred\u201d examines the Supreme Court\u2019s ruling on pivotal cases such as the Cherokee Trail of Tears, Brown v. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act. The authors pay special attention to the stories of the people who brought those cases and those who formed those rulings \u2013 and those who dissented with them.<\/p>\n
One figure, whom Burton calls \u201can unsung hero,\u201d was Charles Evans Hughes, devout son of an American Baptist preacher, who served on the Supreme Court as chief justice from 1930 to 1941. After the Supreme Court Building was completed in 1935, a guard approached Hughes to let him know that he planned to prevent Black people from eating among white people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Hughes took him outside, turned him around and said, \u2018What does it say over this building? \u201cEqual justice under the law,\u201d\u2019 Burton quoted Hughes: \u201c\u2018If you\u2019re not comfortable with this, I think you ought to get another job.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Burton also took time to express his affection for his alma mater \u2013 an affection that led him and his wife, Georganne Burton, to donate an endowment to Furman\u2019s Department of History to establish the Vera B. Burton Lecture Series. The topics of the lectures in the series will be the history of the American South, focusing on racial, social or economic inequities; the history of religion; and rural studies.<\/p>\n
The lecture series is named in honor of Burton\u2019s mother, who played a crucial role in directing his educational path. The future scholar, author and professor of history, as a young man in Ninety Six, South Carolina, did not originally want to attend Furman, instead planning to enter the U.S. Naval Academy. When news came that his Congressional sponsor was delaying his appointment for a year, Vera Burton saw an opportunity.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mother loved Furman, and she loved Baptists,\u201d Burton said. \u201cShe literally prayed me into Furman, I would say. My mother didn\u2019t finish high school, but she was a smart person and the best educated I\u2019ve ever known.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the right decision, said Burton.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is what I love about Furman: It\u2019s about learning, and learning beyond the classroom,\u201d he said. \u201cFurman University changed my life in extraordinary ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Orville Vernon Burton \u201969, the Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Chair of History and a professor of sociology, anthropology, computer science and pan-African studies at Clemson University, said that \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,42,76],"tags":[1404,1405,574],"class_list":["post-9873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-history","category-top-four-news-3rd-story","tag-justice-deferred","tag-orville-vernon-burton","tag-u-s-supreme-court"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}