Joan Mellen

Jim Garrison: His Life and Times, the Early Years Joan Mellen 1st edition

A new biography of the former District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana from his 1922 birth in Iowa and service in World War II - he was among those assigned to Dachau Concentration Camp the day after its liberation - to his years confronting the corrupt politics of Louisiana. Jim Garrison would become the only public official ever to bring anyone before the bar of justice for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. This is the story of the man who took on that task. It explores Garrison's populist and democratic values, and how he attempted to reform the critical political system of New Orleans in the 1960s, particularly the abuses of B-drinking and other crimes rampant in the French Quarter. Garrison's life story includes the landmark case of Garrison v. Louisiana, which extended the free speech protection of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), and the Dombrowski case, where three New Orleans civil rights activists were arrested for bringing Communist ideas to the movement for racial equality led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Jim Garrison emerges as a defender of the victims of racial inequality, and of censorship. His actions reveal him to be a supporter of the defendant, and a fierce proponent of the rights of the individual. It also reveals him to have been, in many ways, a man of his generation."The last perfect person walked the earth two thousand years ago," Garrison once said. This volume takes us to the moment in 1966 when Jim Garrison began to investigate the Kennedy assassination.