The Conscience of a Lawyer: Clifford J. Durr and American Civil Liberties, 1899-1975

Clifford Judkins Durr was an Alabama lawyer who played an important role in defending activists and other accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras. His uncompromising commitment to civil liberties and civic decency caused him to often take unpopular positions. In 1933, at the behest of his brother-in-law, Hugo Black, Durr moved to Washington to work as a lawyer for the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, a creation of Roosevelt's new Democratic administration, becoming a dedicated New Dealer in the process. He resigned from that agency in 1941 after disagreements with his superiors over their approval of agreements with defense contractors that allowed them to concentrate their monopoly position and derive windfall profits from war preparation efforts.

He was then appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a politically sensitive position as FDR sought to counter the increasing power and concentration of broadcasters, many of whom were opponents of the New Deal. Durr resigned from the FCC in 1948 after dissenting from its adoption of a loyalty oath demanded by the Truman administration.

After brief employment with the National Farmers Union in Colorado, the Durrs eventually returned to Montgomery, Alabama in the hope of returning to a more prosperous, less controversial life. That was not to be, He continued to practice in Montgomery as counsel for black citizens whose rights had been violated and was ready in December, 1955, when police arrested Rosa Parks for refusing to give her bus seat to a white man. He eventually closed his firm in 1964 and began to lecture in the United States and abroad. He died at his grandfather's farm in 1975.