|
|
|
History > USA > Civil rights > Activists
Richard Sobol 1937-2020
Mr. Sobol’s booking photo after he was thrown in jail on bogus charges in 1967 while representing a black defendant who had been denied a jury trial after being charged with assault for touching a white youth’s arm.
Photograph: Plaquemines Parish Louisiana Prison, via Associated Press
Richard Sobol, Civil Rights Lawyer in the South, Dies at 82 Unlike other Northern lawyers who joined the struggle in the South, he stayed, and won a landmark case. NYT April 23, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/
Mr. Sobol with his former client Gary Duncan in 2016 in Venice, La.
Mr. Sobol represented Mr. Duncan in a 1966 case that led to a landmark Supreme Court decision that established the right to a jury trial in state criminal cases.
Photograph: Anne Sobol/Anne Sobol, via Associated Press
Richard Sobol, Civil Rights Lawyer in the South, Dies at 82 Unlike other Northern lawyers who joined the struggle in the South, he stayed, and won a landmark case. NYT April 23, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/
Richard Barry Sobol 1937-2020
Unlike other Northern lawyers who joined the struggle in the South, he stayed, and won a landmark case.
In 1966, on a swampy strip of land south of New Orleans, a young black man named Gary Duncan was defusing a potential fight between white and black teenagers outside a newly integrated school when he touched an arm of one of the white boys, who recoiled.
The police later arrested Mr. Duncan on a charge of battery.
His request for a jury trial was denied, and he was sentenced to 60 days in prison and fined $150.
Mr. Duncan and his mother asked a young, white civil rights lawyer, Richard Sobol to represent him, which he did.
Mr. Sobol fought the case all the way to the United States Supreme Court.
In a landmark 1968 decision, the court ruled for Mr. Duncan and established the right to a jury trial in state criminal cases.
The ruling was a major victory for the civil rights movement and for Mr. Sobol, who was 29 at the time and just beginning his legal career.
Over the next half-century, he would file scores of challenges involving racial and sexual discrimination in employment, education, voting and housing.
He became one of the nation’s busiest and most successful — if unsung — champions of civil rights.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/
Related > Anglonautes > History
20th century > USA > Civil rights
17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century
Related > Anglonautes > Vocapedia
Anglonautes > Arts > Photographers > 20th century > USA > Civil rights
James "Spider" Martin 1939-2003
Ralph Waldo Ellison USA 1913-1994
Related > Anglonautes > Arts > Books > 20th century > USA
James Arthur Baldwin 1924-1987
|
|
|
