Gordon Martin – Count Them One by One

The icons of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s are celebrated and well-known, but there were countless foot soldiers working for justice alongside Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Medgar Evers. One of the Justice Department’s foot soldiers was Gordon Martin. In the early 1960s, he was a young, idealistic lawyer who was sent down to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to interview blacks who had been denied the right to vote by a Forrest County clerk of court. Martin helped prepare the case against Theron Lynd and wanted to celebrate the brave witnesses who stood up for their democratic rights years before the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Martin’s book about his experiences is titled Count Them One by One: Black Mississippians Fighting for the Right to Vote. The book also follows Martin as he finds and talks with the witnesses on how things have changed over the past 50 years.