David E. Lowe retired as Vice Pres­i­dent for Gov­ern­ment Rela­tions and Pub­lic Affairs for the bipar­ti­san Nation­al Endow­ment for Democ­ra­cy in 2016, which he joined in 1989. Dr. Lowe has taught at three uni­ver­si­ties, con­sult­ed for the Unit­ed States Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Muse­um and UN Watch, and worked in the Civ­il Rights Divi­sion of the Anti-Defama­tion League. He won the 2019 Nation­al Jew­ish Book Award for Biography.

 

Touched with Fire: Mor­ris B. Abram and the Bat­tle against Racial and Reli­gious Discrimination

Morris B. Abram emerged from humble origins in a rural South Georgia town to become one of the leading civil rights lawyers in the United States during the 1950s. While unmasking the Ku Klux Klan and serving as a key intermediary for the release of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. from prison on the eve of the 1960 presidential election, Abram carried out a successful fourteen-year battle to end the discriminatory voting system in his home state, which had entrenched racial segregation. The result was the historic “one man, one vote” ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963.
In Touched with Fire David E. Lowe chronicles the professional and personal life of this larger-than-life man. Encompassing many of the contentious issues we still face today—such as legislative apportionment, affirmative action, campus unrest, and the enforcement of international human rights— Abram’s varied career sheds light on our own troubled times.