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

by Matthew Van Meter

Overview

The book that inspired the documentary A Crime on the Bayou

2021 Chautauqua Prize Finalist

The "arresting, astonishing history" of one lawyer and his defendant who together achieved a "civil rights milestone" (Justin Driver).

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. Duncan was arrested a few minutes later for the crime of putting his hand on the arm of a white child. Rather than accepting his fate, Duncan found Richard Sobol, a brilliant, 29-year-old lawyer from New York who was the only white attorney at "the most radical law firm" in New Orleans. Against them stood one of the most powerful white supremacists in the South, a man called simply "The Judge."

In this powerful work of character-driven history, journalist Matthew Van Meter vividly brings alive how a seemingly minor incident brought massive, systemic change to the criminal justice system. Using first-person interviews, in-depth research and a deep knowledge of the law, Van Meter shows how Gary Duncan's insistence on seeking justice empowered generations of defendants-disproportionately poor and black-to demand fair trials. Duncan v. Louisiana changed American law, but first it changed the lives of those who litigated it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316435031
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	07/28/2020
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	298,422
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Matthew Van Meter works with people whose voices have been ignored or silenced, both as a journalist and as the Assistant Director of Shakespeare in Prison. His reporting on criminal justice has appeared in The Atlantic and The New Republic, and he is currently editing the first critical edition of Shakespeare written entirely by incarcerated people. Raised Quaker on the East Coast, he now lives in Detroit.

Table of Contents

Prologue-Down the Road 3

1 A Dirty Storm 7

2 The Boss 19

3 What Is Ours 29

4 Contact 40

5 Going to War 48

6 Determination and Unity 59

7 Dire Straits 64

8 Cruelty 71

9 Klantown, USA 78

10 The Case for the Prosecution 86

11 The Case for the Defense 96

12 Investigation 101

13 Trouble 107

14 No Error of Law 111

15 The Chief Engineer 117

16 Bailing Out 122

17 Where Is Your Law? 128

18 Absent and Unrepresented 133

19 The Fruits of Benevolence 137

20 Losing Everything 143

21 Having a Field Day 149

22 Flambeaux 159

23 Suppression 169

24 The Faces of This Case 179

25 If It Ain't True, It Oughta Be 185

26 First and Foremost 194

27 Workhorse 200

28 Profound Judgment 204

29 Tranquility 209

30 A Clean Storm 218

Epilogue 223

Afterword 227

Acknowledgments 233

Notes 237

Sources 267

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/23/2020

Journalist Van Meter’s excellent debut revisits Duncan v. Louisiana, the landmark 1968 Supreme Court decision affirming that the constitutional right to a trial by jury applied to state courts. The case originated in the 1966 arrest of a 19-year-old black man for allegedly striking a white boy in Plaquemines Parish, La. Convicted of misdemeanor battery, Gary Duncan was sentenced to 60 days in prison but appealed on the basis that Louisiana’s trial jury statutes violated his Sixth Amendment rights. As the appeal worked its way to the Supreme Court (where Duncan’s conviction was overturned), forces aligned with local political boss Leander Perez (“the most notorious racist in the state”) fought to have Duncan’s attorney barred from Louisiana courtrooms for practicing law without a state license—a legal strategy designed to blunt the effectiveness of civil rights lawyers across the South. Van Meter makes great use of interviews and oral histories to bring the case’s major players to life, and readers will be struck by how many of the issues involved—voter suppression, public funding for private schools, racial inequalities in the criminal justice system—are still being legislated today. This deeply researched and vividly written chronicle is the definitive account of one of the civil rights movement’s most unheralded victories. (May)

Publishers Weekly

A legal saga with an emphasis on storytelling, it’s a valuable contribution to the literature on the civil rights movement and the ongoing fight against white supremacy.”
 
 —Andru Okun, Washington Post

"A seminal work of impeccable scholarship."—Library Journal, starred

"Excellent debut...readers will be struck by how many of the issues involved-voter suppression, public funding for private schools, racial inequalities in the criminal justice system-are still being legislated today."—Publisher Weekly, starred review

"This history revisits the prosecution of Duncan on a charge of battery, after he touched a white boy’s arm while intervening in a fight...Van Meter argues that the case was an exemplar of a “criminal procedure revolution” that brought federal standards to state courts."—New Yorker, Briefly Noted

"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."—Observer

"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

"Van Meter's narrative and characters come alive to illustrate a pivotal time in American justice. The extraordinary details he gleans from his research immerse readers in the climate and culture of the era. Readers drawn to Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy will find this book a similarly engaging reminder that the justice system is ever-evolving.”
 —Booklist

"Eloquent..[and] poignant."—The National Book Review

"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 TrumpetsCall: Theodore Roosevelt after the White House

"The story of Deep Delta Justice begins in 1966, when a Black teenager in Louisiana named Gary Duncan attempts to break up a fight. His trouble begins when he puts his hand on a white child. Van Meter traces how this incident and the trial that followed, Duncan v. Louisiana, eventually led to a major Supreme Court decision about one’s right to a jury trial."—LitHub

"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, authorof Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age

From the Publisher

★ 04/01/2020

In Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish during the summer of 1966, 19-year-old Gary Duncan witnessed a group of white boys harassing his two cousins. He attempted to calm the scene by lightly touching the arm of one of the boys who, in turn, feigned injury. That evening, Duncan was arrested and charged with battery. From this point, journalist Van Meter masterfully traces the career of aspiring Jewish corporate lawyer Richard Sobol, who temporarily leaves a prominent Washington law firm to join fellow attorneys in New Orleans on Duncan's behalf. Duncan and Sobol successfully carry their appeals to the Supreme Court on the issue of denial of trial by jury in Duncan's misdemeanor charge. They eventually win, and Duncan v. Louisiana (1968) establishes the constitutional right to jury trial in minor wrongdoing cases involving disproportionately higher penalties. VERDICT 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. Also see the documentary feature film A Crime on the Bayou (2020), in development with Augusta Films and HBO, which follows Duncan's story. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]—John Carver Edwards, formerly with Univ. of Georgia Libs.

Library Journal

2020-02-19
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.”

Van Meter, a Detroit-based journalist who is an assistant director of that city’s Shakespeare in Prison project, describes an altercation between two black high school students and four white students. It took place in Plaquemines Parish, a bayou community already infamous for its virulent racism, in large part because of the bigoted politician who ruled the area, Leander H. Perez, who “hurled himself bodily at challenges, heedless of opposition or difficulty.” The criminal case that resulted from the incident, which received a push from Perez, involved Gary Duncan, 19 at the time. On Oct. 18, 1966, Duncan noticed the two black students while driving out of town. Sensing that the white students might attack them, Duncan stopped his car and defused the situation, lightly touching the arm of one of the white boys before driving off. That moment, writes the author in this readable legal and civil rights history, “marked the beginning of one of the most important—and improbable criminal cases in history.” Duncan was charged with assault. Through a series of unlikely connections, he found 28-year-old Richard Sobol, a white attorney visiting Louisiana to work on civil rights litigation while on a brief break from his corporate firm in Washington, D.C. White lawyers in the area, pushed by Perez, become so enraged at Sobol that they attempted to ban him from practicing law in the state, but Sobol prevailed. The federal court in New Orleans ruled that the prosecution “can only be interpreted as harassment” and “was meant to show Richard that civil rights lawyers were not welcome in the parish and their defense of Negroes…would not be tolerated.” Though not as revelatory as Just Mercy, this will appeal to admirers of Bryan Stevenson and similar crusaders.

Timely reading as Americans continue to reckon with an unreliable, sometimes racist criminal justice system.

Kirkus Reviews