Burke Marshall has died.
Burke Marshall, the government’s legal strategist on civil rights in the era of freedom rides, the Birmingham church bombing and the March on Washington, died yesterday at his home in Newtown, Conn., near Danbury. He was 80.
The cause was myelodysplasia, a bone marrow disorder, said his daughter Catie Marshall.
As assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s civil rights division in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, Mr. Marshall was a chief contributor to rights victories that included the government’s 1961 ban on segregation in interstate travel, the desegregation of the University of Mississippi the following year and adoption of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred discrimination in public accommodations.
His name appears quite a lot in Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, which I just finished reading.
Via Eric Muller.
Zack, Re to your comment…
Zack Sez: First, a lot of stuff like rape, adultery etc. etc. happens in Pakistan if you go outside Islamabad. I also used to live in Islamabad for some time and someone was correct in saying that “Islamabad is a city 10 miles outside Pakistan.”
Abez Sez: No society is perfect, let alone Pakistan. It does not at all represent the practice of preventative social medicine (modesty, taqwa, anything) at its best. I probably should’ve used the Middle East as an example of how more clothes means less rape, but then you’d probably have a problem with the ME too.
Zack Sez: 2. The analogy with a diamond lying on the street is not correct. A woman when she wears revealing clothing is not inviting you to rape her in any way. The worst you can say about her is that she doesn’t mind anyone seeing parts of her body that she has exposed. So unless she is stark naked (very difficult to find in the US), you can’t see everything, let alone touch.
Abez Sez: A woman wearing few clothes is showing off her attractive bits. Not surprisingly, attractive bits attract sexual attention. Sexual attractive translates into desire, which not all men control/choose to control. If this isn’t true, then tell me why Pamela Anderson had her clothes torn off by teenage boys when she went to an MTV autograph signing party a few years back. If you’re trying to argue that nudity/immodesty is not desirable, then you’ve got the entire advertising industry, dirty mag industry and film industry to fight against. Skin is sexy. End of story.
Zack Sez: Another problem with the analogy is that if I find a diamond on the road is that a diamond is an object and hence we can’t blame it. However, in the direction you are going, you can blame the woman. I know it’s not your intention, but that also means some legal consequences for her if she is raped. THAT is an unmitigated disaster for society. Prosecution for rape should not depend on what the woman was wearing or if she was being seductive.
Abez Sez: I’m not talking about blaming the inanimate diamond, I’m talking about the responsibility of the diamond’s owner. The diamond represents the woman’s sexual sanctity, if she leaves it lying around like it’s worthless, it may get stolen or abused. Btw I am NOT saying that the woman is responsible for being raped if she was wearing alluring clothes. The man is 100% responsible for his actions, but the woman is responsible for what she was wearing. It’s like a traffic accident where a speeding car hits a pedestrian walking in the middle of the road. The pedestrian (woman) is not responsible for the fact that the driver (man) was speeding (raping), but she is responsible for the fact that she was walking in the middle of the road, is she not?
Zack Sez: Finally, what you have done is laid down a hypothesis that says that one of the reasons for rape is immodest clothing. A good social scientist would actually study this problem, do surveys, collect data and try to find out if that is actually true or not. Is there any correlation btween the two? Even if there is, there might not be a causal relation. Your hypothesis presumes a causal relation. Unless you can point to studies, your idea is just a hypothesis, one among many. I can set up a wildly different one and it would be no worse than yours.
Abez Sez: I maintain that my hypothesis is common sense. One of the reasons for rape (forced sex) is sexual attraction. I’m just going to copy what I had in the post itself. To say that rape has nothing to do with lust and desire is like saying theft has nothing to do with acquisition, or murder has nothing to do with killing.
Would a man rape a woman that he found to be absolutely revolting? The thought of whom made his skin crawl? Probably not. Would a man rape a woman he found to be extremely desirable, the idea of which excited him? Probably. One would argue that there are weirdos who rape old ladies. Well, apparently these weirdoes find old ladies sexy. Just because you don’t doesn’t mean they don’t.
For those of you wondering what Abez’s comment is about, we are having a discussion about hijab vs revealing clothing and its effect on sexual attraction and rape on her blog. Sorry she has no permalinks; read the May 30 and June 2 entries.
I wondered what this had to do with Burke Marshall!
What do you two make of studies suggesting that rape is often committed by a man that the woman knows, including her husband or boyfriend? Islamically, a woman can show everything that she wants to her husband; so how would provocative dress relate to this situation?
I did point it out but I think it got completely lost in the discussion. I have elaborated about it again on her blog.
Whoa man, tis a full fledged debate goin on in here. Abez dear, allow me to remind you that you cannot change someone’s opinion unless they choose to have it changed.
Question: You mention having lived in Islamabad. Would that make you a Pakistani? If yes, how’d you end up with a name like Zack? Is it short for something, like Zakir? Why am I asking? Cuz I’m always asking dumb questions. Its my thang.
Owl: If only you had clicked on the “Who are we?” link on the sidebar!
My name is Zakaria. Friends, both Pakistani and American, have always called me Zack. I was born in Wah Cantt, a town 25 miles west of Islamabad. Out of my 1st 26 years, I lived 20 in Pakistan, the last 3 yrs in Islamabad. I did my undergrad in Pakistan and worked for almost 4 yrs after that before coming to the US.
Satisfied now?
Yep, curiousity assuaged, if thats what ye mean. Now I shall proceed to make horrible generalizations about you judging from your pedigree. Or not.
“someone was correct in saying that ‘Islamabad is a city 10 miles outside Pakistan.’”
Hey! — I said that. Well, I didn’t say it first. Islamabad is a Pakistani bureaucrat’s dream of what a Pakistani city should be. Clean. Organized. Boring.
Ikram: Hav eheard something similar from a number of sources. The first one was the advisor of a friend.
Nasir Aamir
address=Sialkot-Paksitan
email=nasir_aamir@yahoo.com
comments=I’m a 31-old man living in PAKISTAN, I want to have friendship and marry with a lady aged about myself,divorced or having children from any country worldwide.I’ll be glad of hearing from you soon.
Islamabd is very nice city.
Nasir: Whatever gave you the idea that this is match.com or some marriage bureau?
i am working on crap for school on burke marshall…. and i find a forum that i thought was a website about burke marshall… and am scared that i will be attacked by terrorists… hmmmm burke marshall.. yale… new haven university… pff wtf where am i??? lol yeh yeh match.com… what a loser… also i need a islamic wife… maybe she is less prone to cheating on me :)) peace yall and dont get mad..
punczky: Sorry, all I have about Burke Marshall on this webiste is his orbituary. Guess you’ll have to search somewhere else.
i want to ask you sir what is sex ,,and why we mean teen ager are attracted to womens and girls , and we attracted too much , because they exposs them selved ,and when we attract to them and want to talk , they insult us and we fee it very much and decided not to do again ,but again we do it ,sir i want to ask you what is the solvation of this problem ,tell me .
ok sir bye .with best wishes.
atif.
atif: I have no idea what you are asking.