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The Modjeska Simkins School will hold a Deep Dive Sunday at 4pm with nationally renowned civil rights attorney Armand Derfner, who will talk about the US Supreme Court’s sytemic betrayal of civil rights and how that history informs this moment. 

Join online or in-person at GROW, 1340 Elmwood Ave. in Columbia. To participate on Zoom, register HERE.

Derfner helped shape the Voting Rights Act in numerous Supreme Court arguments, and worked on desegregating state university systems and state legislatures across the South. He co-authored the new book Justice Deferred: Race and the Supreme Court with distinguished historian Dr. Vernon Burton. 

Derfner’s personal story is extraordinary. His Jewish parents fled Poland to Paris, where Armand was born in 1938. He was just two years old when the Nazis marched into Paris, forcing the family to flee again. They managed to get to New York, where Derfner spent most of his youth. He graduated from Princeton and Yale, and went to work for a big law firm. 

In the summer of 1965, Derfner took time off to volunteer in Mississippi during a time of extreme racial violence — and ended up staying in the South. He moved to Charleston in 1969, and has now been practicing civil rights law for nearly 60 years.

For more about Derfner and his legal work, check out these links:

The Post and Courier May 30, 2024: Good Faith? Not in the SC Legislature and not on the US Supreme Court

Champions of SC Civil and Human Rights, oral history, July 2, 2007: Voting Rights Before the United States Supreme Court

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Our Deep Dive series is part of the Modjeska Simkins School’s spring program. The School was launched in 2015 as a project of the SC Progressive Network. To support the school, you can donate HERE. Contributions help provide stipends for guest speakers and scholarships for students across the state.