The best books featuring trail-blazing lawyers passionately fighting for social justice

I recommend Ginger’s book because it inspired so many college students to go into law as well as young lawyers interested in effecting societal change. In one chapter, Ginger interviews Fay Stender, a source I consulted in writing Stender’s biography. Ginger also interviewed Fay’s law partner Charles Garry about his representation with Stender of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton in the case I consider the trial of the century. Fay’s husband Marvin Stender was also interviewed about his progressive law practice. Ginger’s book, and my interviews of Ann Ginger herself, proved essential to my understanding of the circle of Movement lawyers in the Bay Area to which they all heavily contributed during an extraordinary period of activism from the ‘50s through the ‘70s.     

Charles Garry was a legendary Bay Area criminal defense lawyer from the 1940s through the 1980s, most famous for his aggressive courtroom tactics and for never losing a client to the death penalty. I was fascinated by Garry’s early cases that resulted in establishing a “diminished capacity” defense to murder in California. Garry’s reputation prompted the leadership of the Black Panther Party to reject calls for a black lawyer and instead turn to this white Lefty to represent their co-founder Huey Newton faced with execution for killing a white policeman. Streetfighter in the Courtroom proved a great source for me as I wrote two books on the Newton trial and the biography of Garry’s pioneering female co-counsel in the Newton trial, Fay Stender. 

I contacted Gilbert Moore in 2014 to share how valuable his book Rage was to my perspective as an author writing about the ground-breaking defense in the 1968 “trial of the century”, People v. Newton. Moore covered that headliner for LIFE magazine as its first black reporter. He agreed to be interviewed for our documentary project American Justice on Trial. Tragically, he died before the interview occurred. Watching that extraordinary trial caused Moore to engage in soul-searching, quit his plum job, and write his critically acclaimed book about the epiphany he experienced. Rage is considered a classic in African-American literature – an unparalleled window into the impact of that unprecedented Movement trial on pioneering black professionals in a white supremacist environment – through the eyes and pen of a firsthand observer.   

Michelle Alexander launched her book with the ringing endorsement of a mutual friend of us both, Eva Paterson, the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Society. Both of them are civil rights lawyers whom I greatly admire for their extraordinary accomplishments. Alexander’s bestseller has been hugely influential in opening eyes to the deplorable racial disparity in incarceration rates in the United States and in galvanizing ongoing efforts to effect meaningful reforms.

I met Bryan Stevenson through my daughter who took his class on the death penalty at NYU Law School. He has been called America’s Nelson Mandela for his work heading the Equal Justice Initiative. We interviewed him for our film project American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton. He is an inspiring speaker and indefatigable advocate for clients railroaded to death row – as both his book Just Mercy and the movie based on it reveal. Stevenson exhibits a similar passion for justice to that displayed by Movement lawyer Fay Stender, co-counsel with Charles Garry in the defense of Panther leader Huey Newton. Stevenson considers their accomplishments in that potentially explosive case a pivotal point in addressing systemic racism in American jury trials – though much work must still be done.