Events Calendar

Join us for a special discussion featuring Jim Harrington, Retired Founder of the Texas Civil Rights Project, in conversation with Professor Helen Gaebler. Together, they will explore Harrington’s career and new book, The Texas Civil Rights Project: How We Built a Social Justice Movement.  

The event will take place in the Eidman Courtroom (CCJ 2.306) from 11:50 AM to 12:50 PM. Lunch will be provided in the Jamail Pavilion immediately following the discussion.  

Please RSVP  for lunch by noon on Oct 13: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/a-discussion-with-jim-harrington-author-of-the-texas-civil-rights-project-tickets-1693521260679?aff=oddtdtcreator

About the Author:  

Jim Harrington grew up in Michigan and received his law degree in 1973 from the University of Detroit. Prior to that, he worked seven summers with migrants in southwest Michigan, most of whom traveled from the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.  

After law school, Jim served as Director of the South Texas Project for ten years in the Rio Grande Valley. His legal work, some of it class actions, included the rights of farm workers and poor people in Valley to organize, McAllen police brutality, grand jury discrimination in Hidalgo and Willacy Counties, ending the exclusion of farm laborers from the state’s worker compensation and unemployment compensation laws, abolishing the use of “el cortito,” requiring portable toilets and drinking water in the fields during harvest time, and including farm workers under “right-to-know pesticide regulations. He served as César Chávez’ Texas attorney for 18 years. 

In 1983, Jim became Legal Director of the Texas Civil Liberties Union in Austin. In 1990, Jim founded the Texas Civil Rights Project, a non-profit foundation that promotes social, racial, economic justice, and civil liberty for low income and poor persons. By the time he retired in March 2016, the Project had grown to a staff of 40 with offices in six Texas locations, including along the border in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso, and established itself as a strong, community-based proponent of civil rights.  

Jim has handled a wide array of civil rights cases, some precedent-setting, involving voting, free speech and assembly, immigration, capital punishment, police misconduct, student rights, privacy, racial and ethnic discrimination, labor unions, and the rights of persons with disabilities. His suit against the Texas Supreme Court was instrumental in establishing state funding for legal aid programs.  

Jim was an adjunct professor at University of Texas Law School for 27 years and taught undergraduate civil liberties courses at UT. He has served on human rights delegations to Central and South America and Israel and Palestinian territories.