Gil Venable

Mississippi & After Gil Venable

An inspirational book for those who want to use their legal interests, skills and talents to bring about greater social justice. Gil Venable began his "practice" of law in Jackson, Mississippi, summer 1965, as a first-year Pitt Law School student assisting now famous civil rights lawyers in support of groups including SNCC, COFO, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in the fight for basic rights for blacks. This memoir frankly recounts that exhilarating, gritty, sometimes harrowing experience and how it led Gil into a lifelong dedication to equal justice, environmental and other public interest law in his native Pittsburgh, Boston and Phoenix. The book is a primer on the legal tools of social justice and how they are applied. Gil traces his own values and activism back through those of his Ohio ancestors since the days of the Underground Railroad. Finally, this book is a joyful remembrance of great mentors such as Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, and ACLU leader Tom Kerr who inspired him at every stage.