"Fifteen years ago I wrote an essay analyzing how music can empower social change in the wake of the law's failure - When the Law Needs Music, published as part of a Fordham Urban Law Journal symposium on the music of Bob Dylan. My focus there was on a case called NAACP v. Button, where the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protected the NAACP's legal assistance to individuals for the enforcement of constitutional and civil rights."
"The decision was a victory for the NAACP, yet success in the courtroom did not translate entirely to success on the ground. Indeed, in the same year, NAACP Mississippi Field Secretary Medgar Evers was assassinated, and the Birmingham Sixteenth Street Baptist Church was bombed. These events serve as reminders of law's inadequacies, in that the constitutional protection of legal services in the Button case did little to stop the needless loss of life and violence that was characteristic of racial desegregation efforts."
Recent events in Minneapolis underscore the limits of legal remedies in addressing urgent social harms. Music can mobilize collective emotion and action when the law proves inadequate. Bruce Springsteen's 'Streets of Minneapolis' was written in a day, performed within a week at a Minneapolis rally, and reached iTunes charts in at least 19 countries. Historical examples show that constitutional victories, such as NAACP v. Button protecting legal assistance, did not prevent violent backlash including assassinations and church bombings during desegregation. Protest music of the 1960s captured struggles that legal decisions alone could not resolve and can meet moments of crisis today.
Read at Above the Law
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