page_title: William Kunstler
section_title: Rise to prominence (1957–1964)
hierarchical_section_title: William Kunstler / Civil rights career / Rise to prominence (1957–1964)
caption_attribution_description: Photograph of the New York World's Fair 1964/1965 as viewed from the Observation Towers of the New York State Pavilion. By Max Mordecai (deceased). Summer, 1964. Placed in GFDL for Wikipedia by his son, Glen Mordecai, July 19, 2005. Image appears on the internet website
context_page_description: William Moses Kunstler was an American radical lawyer and civil rights activist, known for his politically unpopular clients. Kunstler was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a board member of the American Civil Liberties Union and the co-founder of the Law Center for Constitutional Rights, the "leading gathering place for radical lawyers in the country".
  Kunstler's defense of the Chicago Seven from 1969–1970 led The New York Times to label him "the country's most controversial and, perhaps, its best-known lawyer". Kunstler is also well known for defending members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Catonsville Nine, Black Panther Party, Weather Underground Organization, the Attica Prison rioters, and the American Indian Movement. He also won a de facto segregation case regarding the District of Columbia's public schools and "disinterred, singlehandedly" the concept of federal criminal removal jurisdiction in the 1960s. Kunstler refused to defend right-wing groups such as the Minutemen, on the grounds that: "I only defend those whose goals I share. I'm not a lawyer for hire. I only defend those I love."
context_section_description: Kunstler first made headlines in 1957 when he defended William Worthy, a correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American, who was one of forty-two Americans who had their passports seized after violating the State Department's travel ban on Communist China (after attending a Communist youth conference in Moscow). Kunstler refused a State Department compromise which would have returned Worthy's passport if he agreed to cease visiting Communist countries, a condition Worthy considered unconstitutional.
  Kunstler played an important role as a civil rights lawyer in the 1960s, traveling to many of the segregated battlegrounds to work to free those who had been jailed.  Working on behalf of the ACLU, Kunstler defended the Freedom Riders in Mississippi in 1961. Kunstler filed for a writ of habeas corpus with Sidney Mize, a federal judge in Biloxi, and appealed to the Fifth Circuit; he also filed similar pleas in state courts. Judge Leon Hendrick in Hinds County refused Kunstler's motion to cancel the mass appearance (involving hundreds of miles of travel) of all 187 convicted riders. The riders were convicted in a bench trial in Jackson and appealed to a county jury trial, where Kunstler argued that the county systematically discriminated against African-American jurors.
  In 1962, Kunstler took part in efforts to integrate public parks and libraries in Albany, Georgia. Later that year, he published The Case for Courage (modeled on President Kennedy's Profiles in Courage) highlighting the efforts of other lawyers who risked their careers for controversial clients as well as similar acts by public servants. At the time of the publication, Kunstler was already well known for his work with the Freedom Riders, his book on the Caryl Chessman case, and his radio coverage of trials. Kunstler also joined a group of lawyers criticizing the application of Alabama's civil libel laws and spoke at a rally against HUAC.
  In 1963, for the Gandhi Society of New York, Kunstler filed to remove the cases of more than 100 arrested African-American demonstrators from the Danville Corporation Court to the Charlottesville District Court, under a Reconstruction Era statute. Although the district judge remanded the cases to city court, he dissolved the city's injunction against demonstrations. In doing so, Judge Thomas J. Michie rejected a Justice Department amicus curiae brief urging the removal to create a test case for the statute. Kunstler appealed to the Fourth Circuit. That year Kunstler also sued public housing authorities in Westchester County.
  In 1964, Kunstler defended a group of four accused of kidnapping a white couple, and succeeded in getting the alleged weapons thrown out as evidence, as they could not be positively identified as those used. That year he also challenged Mississippi's unpledged elector law as well as racial segregation in primary elections; he also defended three members of the Blood Brothers, a Harlem gang, charged with murder.
  Kunstler went to St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 during the demonstrations led by Dr. Martin Luther King and Dr. Robert B. Hayling which put added pressure on Congress to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. Kunstler brought the first federal case under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which allowed the removal of cases from county court to be appealed; the defendants were protestors at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
caption: Kunstler represented the first Title IX federal removal cases under the Civil Rights Act of 1964: protesters at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
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