The James Turner Papers details Turner's career with the Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. A small portion of the collection also includes materials from Turner's education and his personal research, such as the work he did for his two published books. Because most of this collection details the Civil Rights Division, it has been arranged to mirror the sections of the Civil Rights Division, with an additional section for materials that span across the Division. The majority of the collection are paper documents, with a small collection of cassette tapes, VHS, and photographs. This is not a complete history of the Civil Rights Division, but are the records of a former employee and so is focused on the work that Turner participated in for the Division. Significant topics include: the Viola Liuzzo Murder, the Rodney King trial, Gary T. Rowe, Kent State, and COINTELPRO.
James Turner was the deputy attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice from 1969-1994. Throughout his career, he was responsible for protecting the civil rights of American citizens, such as the right to vote and protection against discriminatory practices. His career spanned one of the most important periods in the Civil Rights Movement and he played a major role in many of the most important cases during this time.
Jim began his career in the Department of Justice in the Tax division as an honors hire in 1956, before transferring to the Civil Rights Division in 1965. He was one of a group of lawyers hired to help enforce the new Civil Rights Act of 1964 and would stay in the Civil Rights Division until his retirement in 1994. In 1969, Jim became the career deputy assistant attorney general, the role he would keep for 25 years. During this time, he worked under seventeen different attorneys general and seven different presidents. Additionally, he often worked alongside some of the Division's strongest leaders, including: John Doar, Burke Marshall and Steve Pollack.
Jim was a highly respected member of the Civil Rights Division, and worked on some of the Division's most important cases. He started his career working on the Viola Liuzzo case, a civil rights activist who was killed by members of the KKK. Turner worked with John Doar on the two unsuccessful state prosecutions and then finally the successful federal prosecution of the klansmen responsible for her death. He believed this was one of the most important cases of his entire career. Turner also supervised many police misconduct cases, including the inconclusive grand jury investigation of the Chicago Police killing of two Black Panther members, the Los Angeles trial for the officers that beat Rodney King, and the unsuccessful 1973 case against the National Guardsmen who killed students at Kent State. While not every case was successful, Turner continued to work hard, guided by the principle that the Division's mission was to enforce civil rights.
There were many times throughout his career that Jim was recognized for his excellence. Turner had long stints as acting assistant attorney general during both the Bush and Clinton administrations, and was nominated by Jimmy Carter for a Presidential Distinguished Service Award that was later presented to him by Ronald Reagan. He became one of the rare career lawyers to represent the United States before the Supreme Court not once, but four times. And one of Turner's proudest career moments was when he personally presented the first government apologies and reparation payments to Japanese-American citizens who were interned during the Second World War.
Post retirement, Turner kept strong ties to the Division, establishing the Civil Rights Division Association and serving as Chair for many years. He wrote on civil rights issues in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and other publications, often lamenting the politicization of civil rights and the role of assistant attorney general. Jim would also go on to write two books, an autobiography, "This Side of the Mountain" (2008), and "Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials" (2018).
Citations: Going Home Cremation and Funeral Care by Value Choice. (2021). Goinghomecares.com. https://www.goinghomecares.com/obituaries/James-Philip-Turner?obId=21412620
The Justice Department. (2022, May 13). Passing the Torch: An Event Celebrating the Life of James P. Turner (1930-2021), Model Career... YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oni83jzdxDA
The collection has been arranged into eleven series: Civil Rights Division, Appellate Section, Criminal Section, Disability Rights Section, Educational Opportunities Section, Employment Litigation Section, Housing and Civil Enforcement Section, Policy and Strategy Section, Special Litigation Section, Voting Section, and Personal and Professional. These series, except for Personal and Professional, are based on how the Civil Rights Division is divided into different sections. Materials in each section are arranged either topically, alphabetically, or chronologically.
