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Southern Center for Human Rights


Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass

Life is the great primary and most precious and comprehensive of all human rights . . . whether it be coupled with virtue honor, and happiness, or with sin, disgrace and misery, the continued possession of it is rightfully not a matter of volition; . . . [it is not] to be deliberately or voluntarily destroyed, either by individuals separately, or combined in what is called Government.
- Frederick Douglass

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Death Penalty

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The Right to a Lawyer (Indigent Defense)

Children Accused of Crimes

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The mood and temper of the public in regard to the treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing
tests of any country. A calm,
dispassionate recognition of the
rights of the accused and even of the convicted criminal, ... [and] the treatment
of crime and the criminal mark and
measure the stored-up strength of a
nation, and are the sign and proof of the living virtue within it. - Winston Churchill

Inmates sleeping on the floor
Inmates (at right) crammed into cells at the Morgan County Jail, in Decatur, Alabama. A federal judge said in April, 2001, that "[t]he sardine can appearance of its cell units more nearly resemble the holding units of slave ships during the middle passage of the eighteenth century than anything in the twenty-first century."
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