J.L. Chestnut

Who was J.L. Chestnut?

J.L. Chestnut was an author, attorney, and a figure in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. He was the first African-American attorney in Selma, Alabama, and the author of the autobiographical book, Black in Selma, which chronicles the history of the civil rights struggle in Selma, including Bloody Sunday and the Selma to Montgomery marches. The New York Times review of Chestnut's autobiography says that "As the paradoxical "n*gger lawyer," Mr. Chestnut was in a privileged position to see into the souls of white folk."

Chestnut was born in Selma, and attended Howard University Law School. He returned home as Selma's only black attorney, and represented civil rights demonstrators at trial there when the Selma movement began in the 1960s.

In 1986, Chestnut was one of the founders of the New South Coalition, along with Birmingham, Alabama Mayor Richard Arrington, when the Alabama Democratic Party refused to endorse Jesse Jackson for president.

In 1994, Chestnut was active in protesting the jailing of political activist Lyndon LaRouche. He was interviewed in the Tuscaloosa News saying that when he met LaRouche, "I told him that he might as well be black and in Alabama."