Deep Delta Justice: A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South

In 1966 in a small town in Louisiana, a 19 year old black man named Gary Duncan pulled his car off the road to stop a fight between a group of four white kids and two of Gary's own cousins. After putting his hand on the arm of one of the white children, Duncan was arrested for assault. A member of the local branch of the NAACP, Duncan used his contacts to reach Richard Sobol, a 29 year old born and bred New Yorker working that summer in a black firm ("the most radical law firm") in New Orleans, to represent him.

In this powerful work of character-driven history that benefits from the author's deep understanding of the law, Van Meter brings alive how one court case changed the course of justice in the South, and eventually the entire country. The events that Gary Duncan set in motion brought to an end a form of injustice that had incarcerated thousands of poor and mostly black Americans. Duncan vs. Louisiana changed America, but before it did it changed the lives of the people who litigated it. PROFOUND JUDGMENT both of these stories.