The Cochran Firm Huntsville

06/12/2022

“I'm a big believer in the fact that life is about preparation, preparation, preparation.” - Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. (1937-2005)

06/12/2022

“The journey to justice is a journey that’s not always easy, but it’s a fascinating journey.” - Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr.

01/04/2022

01/04/2022

We hope everyone had a joyous holiday season!

According to weather.gov, a normal amount of snowfall in Huntsville is 1.1" total for the month of January. Yesterday, 4-6" were reported in different parts of Huntsville. Our office sure looks beautiful under all that snow!

As always, call 1-800-442-7791 for a free consultation. We hope you do not need it, but we are here in case you do.

11/14/2021

In August of 2020, NASA announced that astronaut Jeanette Epps will make history as the first Black woman to live and work long-term aboard the International Space Station. Her flight to the station will take place on the first operational flight of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, and is scheduled for 2021. Jeanette, a native of Syracuse, New York, earned her bachelor’s degree in physics from LeMoyne College in 1992, and her master’s degree in science from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1994. In 2000, she earned her doctorate in aerospace engineering and worked as a CIA technical intelligence officer for 7 years before being selected to NASA’s 2009 astronaut class.

02/23/2021

In October of 2020, Harvard Medical School approved the renaming of the Oliver Wendell Holmes Academic Society, in honor of Dr. William Augustus Hinton, a former Harvard Medical School professor of bacteriology and immunology. The Society’s former namesake, Holmes, was one of the first American intellectuals to espouse the racist doctrine of eugenics, and in 1850, he revoked the acceptances of the medical school’s first three black students. Dr. Hinton was a 1905 graduate of the college, and later the Medical School, and created a new diagnostic blood test for syphilis that was later adopted by the U.S. Public Health Service. He became the first black full professor at Harvard University.

02/16/2021

At the age of 22, Amanda Gorman captured the hearts and minds of Americans across the country when, on January 20, 2021, she became the youngest known inaugural poet during the 59th Presidential Inauguration. Her original composition, “The Hill We Climb”, was performed at the Capitol in front of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, and televised across the entire nation. Gorman has said that the Capitol Insurrection on January 6th, 2021, changed her poem and the message she wanted to deliver. “I wanted it to be a message of hope and unity. And I think that Wednesday for me really underscored how much that was needed, but to not turn a blind eye to the cracks that really need to be filled.”

02/12/2021

Sojourner Truth, born as Isabella “Belle” Baumfree in c. 1797, is an iconic American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, she escaped with her daughter to freedom in 1826, but had to leave her other children behind because of details in the state emancipation order. After learning that her son, Peter, had been illegally sold to an owner in Alabama, she took the issue to court, and in 1828, she won back her son and became one of the first black women to win a court case against a white man. After being convinced that God was calling her to move from the city to the countryside ‘testifying the hope that was in her”, she changed her name to Sojourner Truth and became a Methodist. Famous for her many speeches, she was wildly talented in her ability to read the room and adjust her speech to respond to how a crowd was behaving or responding. In 1844 in Northampton, Massachusetts, she was participating as a traveling preacher when a group of young men disrupted the meeting. Her first instinct was to hide, but she steadied her resolve, walked to a small hill and began to sing. As she sang “It was Early in the Morning” the riotous crowd gathered around her, calming them. They urged her to preach and sing and she was able to bargain with them to leave. Her most famous speech “Ain’t I a Woman” was off-the-cuff and demanded equal human rights for women and black people. Truth was so composed on the stage that it confused the crowd and led to the naming of the speech, as some in the crowd doubted a woman could carry herself in such a way. Over the next decade she spoke in front of dozens, if not hundreds, of crowds. She was cared for by two of her daughters in the last years of her life, and she passed on November 26, 1883. She has been commemorated in numerous busts, statues, and plaques across the country. She was honored with her own U.S. postage stamp in 1986. The NASA Mars Pathfinder mission’s robotic rover was named “Sojourner” in 1997, and in 2014 asteroid 249521 was named in her honor, among dozens of other commemorations and accolades.

02/11/2021

Martin Luther King, Jr. is an iconic American Civil Rights figure who was at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968. Known for his nonviolent activism that stemmed from his Christian faith, King led marches and nonviolent protests that were frequently disrupted by racists and segregationist authorities. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover claimed that King was a radical and made King a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO beginning in 1963. In 1964, MLK won the Nobel Peace Prize for combating racial inequality through nonviolent resistance, and in 1965, King organized two of three marches from Selma, AL to Montgomery, AL. Before his assassination, King was planning a national occupation of Washington, D.C. that was to be called the Poor People’s Campaign. On April 4, 1968, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In the years and decades following his assassination, King has had a national holiday named in his honor, as well as hundreds of streets across America, and he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. His impact on the Civil Rights Movement continues to be felt over 50 years since his death.

02/09/2021

On January 20, 2021, Raphael Warnock was sworn in as the first African American Senator from the state of Georgia and the eleventh to ever serve in the Senate. As pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the church where Martin Luther King frequently preached, Rev. Warnock will bring a focus on social justice issues, homelessness, police reform, and healthcare issues to the United States Senate.