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New York Times v. Sullivan: Civil Rights, Libel Law, and the Free Press by Kermit Hall and Melvin Urofsky Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011, 222 Pp.

The landmark case of New York Times v. Sullivan has long been explored for its importance to both the civil rights movement as well as freedom of the press. As such, the case has often been used to exemplify the repressive environment in which the civil rights movement took place, along with many southerners' attempts to prevent the realities of segregation from reaching the rest of the nation through media coverage. These attempts, including multiple libel suits against the outside press, have traditionally been explained as a byproduct of southern racism. However, in New York Times v. Sullivan: Civil Rights, Libel Law, and the Free Press, authors Kermit Hall and Melvin Urofsky look beyond the simple defense of segregation to analyze the case, and Alabama libel law, in the context of southern conceptions of reputation, honor, and civic discourse. Hall and Urofsky begin with an analysis of the challenges to southern traditions of honor and deference in Montgomery, Alabama. The city's white upper-class social and power structure not only faced opposition from civil rights activists but also from an ongoing class struggle within the white community as lower-class whites emerged as leaders of anti-integration efforts. Allegedly biased outside press coverage of the civil rights movement compounded these tensions as the South and southern traditions were ostensibly disparaged. "Heed Their Rising Voices," the 1960 fullpage advertisement at the center of the libel lawsuit, stood as only the most recent example of these outside attacks on southern reputations and way of life, vilifying the "traditions of decency and mutual respect that had always been the hallmark of southern society" (p. 28). Hall and Urofsky do not discount the influence of racism in the segregationist response, but instead contend that an analysis of libel, and of the Sullivan case specifically, also requires an understanding of how libel law in the South was used to maintain honor, order, and hierarchy. In the South, the authors argue, there existed a notion that "habits and manners of civility" should regulate civic discourse (p. 206). This in turn influenced the use of libel law to more stringently protect honor and reputation. It was from this perspective that southerners approached libel law and utilized it not only to defend segregation but also