On Thursday, May 11, 2005,
Alberta Brown Murphy -- lawyer, teacher, civil rights activist, staunch Democrat, friend to 1,000s -- passed away at a nursing home in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Alberta was 94 years old. The world has lost a strong, yet genteel; savvy, yet humble; wizened, yet easy-going Saint. Or, better put, we've a new Saint looking down upon us. The legacy of Alberta and husband Jay (who predeceased her several years ago) is too broad and deep to describe in a few paragraphs -- suffice to say that they touched and bettered innumerable lives throughout the world.
I met Jay and Alberta in 1988, while working in a humble, local role, on the Dukakis (alas!) campaign. Jay was in his 80's and Alberta almost 80, and I found being with them was like being with age-old sages who had the hearts of children. I invite, no, beg you to read and meditate upon excerpts from Alberta's Obituary, published today in The Tuscaloosa News.
If you have a heart, you will be taken-aback by the life and accomplishments of such a rare, husband-wife team. see below . . .
Alberta Brown Murphy
May 15, 2005
TUSCALOOSA | Alberta Brown Murphy, age 94 . . . died on May 11, 2005. . . She was born in Harrisonville, Missouri on October 31, 1910 . . . and grew up in San Benito, Texas, near Brownsville in the Rio Grande Valley, where she learned to speak fluent Spanish.
NOTE: Unlike Condi-the-Poseur, Alberta really could speak another language.
Alberta received her undergraduate degree from Mary Hardin-Baylor College in Belton, Texas, a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University law school, and an LLB degree from the University of Alabama School of Law. While in Washington, D.C., Alberta was an attorney in the office of the Solicitor of the United States Department of Agriculture and then practiced law [NOTE: a woman, in the '40s..., no mean feat there] in the firm of McFarland and Sellers. In 1947 she and her husband, Jay W. Murphy, moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama where her husband was on the faculty of the University of Alabama School of Law.
Already, think about what a tough and pioneering woman Alberta was. . . But her career's just beginning. . .
From 1961 to 1971 she
taught in the political science department at the University of Alabama. As a long-time member and president of the Tuscaloosa League of Women Voters, Alberta
worked on voter registration throughout the state. She was
a founding member and served for four years as president of the Tuscaloosa Council on Human Relations, a group established in 1956 to promote improved race relations. In 1968
she was a challenge delegate of the National Democratic Party of Alabama at the Chicago convention. She
ran twice, in 1972 and 1974, for the Democratic Party nomination for Alabama's 7th Congressional District.
As a Fulbright Scholar in 1966, Alberta traveled throughout Korea with her husband, studying legal services in Korea. She co-authored with her husband the book, Legal Profession in Korea. [In Korea, Alberta] . . . also lectured on American government at Ewha University, and on constitutional law at Seoul National University.
In 1972 . . . [Federal] Judge Frank Johnson [NOTE: Judge Frank Johnson was the U.S. District Court Judge who ORDERED George C. Wallace to protect Civil Rights Marchers marching from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, following the infamous events of "Bloody Sunday" at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma] appointed Alberta to serve on the Bryce [Hospital] Human Rights Committee, a group that oversaw compliance with the court's order requiring sweeping reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill in Alabama. Those reforms were based on a "constitutional right to treatment" for residents of mental institutions, a legal theory she helped to develop.
In her law practice, Alberta represented plaintiffs in some of the first employment discrimination and civil rights lawsuits in the Tuscaloosa area [actually, in the country]. She also successfully represented Thomas Reed of Macon County, then president of the Alabama NAACP, before the Alabama Supreme Court.
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Wherever you are, Democrats, progressives, lovers of Civil Rights and the Rule of Law and Human Rights, you stand on the shoulders of persons like Alberta and Jay Murphy (one of the wisest, deepest and funniest men I've ever met in my life). The torch has been passed. What will we do with it???
BenGoshi
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