Standing Against Dragons examines the careers of three exceptional lawyers who championed civil liberties and fought for civil rights in the two decades after World War II. John Coe of Pensacola, Florida, Clifford Durr of Montgomery, Alabama, and Benjamin Smith of New Orleans became southern dissenters, resisting both the excessive zeal of the anti-Communist right and southern segregation laws.

Coe, Durr, and Smith all appeared with their clients in the much-publicized 1954 investigation of the Southern Conference Educational Fund and defended persons subpoenaed by the House Un-American...