Until Justice Rolls Down Like Waters: Retracing the Civil Rights Pathways

William Cooper, BA New Testament, Lincoln Christian College; BA Sociology, MS Criminology, Arizona State University; taught Sociology at Cypress College, California for twenty years. An epiphany-like experience with the Maya Lynn designed Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama drew him to the Civil Rights movement and five lengthy trips along its southern pathways resulted in numerous treasured memories of its people and places. Interviews, analysis and reminisces of the South of the Civil Rights years.

William Cooper, born of southern parents in Memphis, Tennessee, spent his childhood between Memphis and southern Missouri. The family moved to Illinois where he graduated high school and received a Bachelor's degree in New Testament from Lincoln Christian University in central Illinois. Following early years as a preacher to a number of rural churches in Illinois and Indiana, he became the minister of an historic old church outside Lexington, Kentucky. Following a disappointing two years as senior minister at a large church near downtown Los Angeles, he left the pulpit ministry and became what was then called the college-career minister to large churches in Long Beach and Phoenix, Arizona. He received a Bachelor's degree in Sociology and a Master's in Criminology from Arizona State University. After several years with the Arizona Department of Corrections he accepted a contract to teach Sociology at Cypress College, California. A number of years into his tenure at Cypress, an epiphany-like experience drew him to the Civil Rights Movement. Over the next years he made five lengthy trips to the South along the pathways of that Movement. These stories of the people, places and the Memorial Stones encountered, are offered to people of all ages, especially the young.