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A Black Teen, His Lawyer, and Their Groundbreaking Battle for Civil Rights in the South
by Matthew Van Meter
The unforgettable story of one lawyer and his defendant who together changed American law during the height of the Civil Rights era.
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 -- denial of trial by jury-- that led to the incarceration of 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.
"Timely reading as Americans continue to reckon with an unreliable, sometimes racist criminal justice system." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A seminal work of impeccable scholarship. Recommended to all working in the intersections of law, criminal justice, and social activism, along with readers of African American history and Southern history." - Library Journal (starred review)
"An examination of a 1966 racial confrontation and its aftermath, which 'would help dismantle the infrastructure of white supremacy that had strangled [a rural Louisiana] community for centuries'... Will appeal to admirers of Bryan Stevenson ... Timely reading." - Kirkus Reviews
"Matthew Van Meter dives into great detail through interviews, research and a rich knowledge of the law to reveal the society as well as the men subject to a justice system in need of systemic change." - The Observer (UK)
"Deep Delta Justice is an uncommonly good true story told uncommonly well. Based on extensive reporting and first-rate historical research, it presents an unforgettable account of a landmark civil rights lawsuit that culminated in a Supreme Court decision affirming the right to a jury trial in most criminal cases. Van Meter's narrative, which takes more twists and turns than the Mississippi, is suspenseful, infuriating, and sometimes funny. This is a wonderful book, worthy of a permanent place in the literature of the American civil rights movement." - Patricia O'Toole, The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made and When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House
"Deep Delta Justice provides the arresting, astonishing history of a racial conflict that began on Louisiana's backroads and resulted in a momentous Supreme Court victory for all Americans. Pairing an investigative journalist's probing research with a novelist's eye for detail, Matthew Van Meter offers the definitive backstory of an all-too-often overlooked civil rights milestone." - Justin Driver, Yale Law School, author of The Schoolhouse Gate
"In the spirit of Melissa Fay Greene's classic Praying For Sheetrock, Matthew Van Meter takes readers to one of the most indelible yet obscure battlegrounds of the Civil Rights Movement and shows how grassroots heroism can topple even one of segregation's most fearsome tyrants." - Samuel G. Freedman, Columbia University Professor of Journalism, author of Breaking the Line
"In his vivid new book Matthew Van Meter takes us into the world of injustice Jim Crow created, where the smallest of touches could destroy a man's life. From that darkness he draws an absorbing story of courage, resistance, and the promise of profound change. Read Deep Delta Justice for the history it recovers - and the hope it holds for our own dark time." - Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age
This information about Deep Delta Justice was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Matthew Van Meter, raised a Quaker, is a graduate of the M.F.A. nonfiction program at Columbia University, and he's written about criminal justice for the Atlantic, Longreads, and The Awl. Prior to his M.F.A., he wrote about the former Soviet Union for Forbes and Russia, and he was a columnist for Russia Profile. He lives with his wife, a public defender, in Detroit, Michigan.
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