Before his death at age 64 in March 2021, Kansas City civil rights icon Alvin Sykes reached out to historian Monroe Dodd to assist him in writing his autobiography.
"Over the course of the next several years, we spent many, many hours together, I recording and listening to him and he talking about it," Dodd told KCUR's Up To Date. "I was honored to do it for a guy like Alvin Sykes."
The result of this collaboration is the new book “Show Me Justice: The Happy Life Journey of Alvin Lee Sykes," which will be recognized with a book launch at the Black Archives of Mid-America this Saturday, May 25.
A self-taught legal scholar, Sykes studied law at the Kansas City Public Library and went on to reopen murder cases from the civil rights era, including the 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till.
His work on the Till case pushed Congress to pass the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act in 2008, which authorized the government to reopen racially-based cold cases.
"He had that zeal for justice," Ajamu Webster, friend and trustee of Sykes' estate, recalled on Up To Date. "Alvin was laser focused."
- Monroe Dodd, historian and author
- Ajamu Webster, trustee of Sykes' estate
