National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Description
A collection of over 900 maps used by William Lamson in his role as an expert witness in dozens of court cases involving school desegregation, voting rights, judicial redistricting, gerrymandering, and housing-discrimination cases. He was often called as an expert witness by the ACLU and NAACP, but also by numerous others including the Department of Justice and local school boards all over the country. The maps cover his entire career from 1970-1991.
Type
Map
Format
TIFF
Identifier
mwchcac.ar.2022.map
Rights
All rights held by the Margaret Walker Center. For permission to publish, distribute, or use this image for any other purpose, please contact Margaret Walker Center, Jackson State University, 601-979-3935 Attn: Center Director
William D. Lamson was a demographer and cartographer and served as an expert witness for the NAACP, ACLU, United States Department of Justice, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and numerous private plaintiffs. He was an architect/planner and demographic analyst for court cases dealing with school desegregation, voting rights, housing discrimination, and judicial redistricting. He performed three functions for his clients: director and coordinator of factual research; principal factual analyst; and evidence presentation consultant. In those capacities he provided factual and expert testimony, and graphic representations of the research results (most notably with large maps with his illustrations presented in court rooms).
William D. Lamson was a native of Detroit, Michigan (b. September 14, 1941) and was living in Jackson, Mississippi at the time of his death (February 8, 1995).
While in Michigan, he attended the University of Michigan, the Detroit Institute of Technology, and the Lawrence Institute of Technology, and was also a founding faculty member of Wayne County Community College. He was also a veteran of the United States Army.
Lamson worked on over 20 legal cases and served as an expert on voting rights, housing discrimination, and demographics in more than 10 other cases.