Activist Lawyer Who Defended Angela Davis Dies
A left-wing lawyer who helped win an acquittal for Angela Davis has died after suffering a stroke.
Lawyer Doris Brin Walker died at the age of 90, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Walker, who was known as Dobby, became the first female president of the National Lawyers Guild in 1970. A long-time Communist, she fought blacklisting and helped Angela Davis win acquittal on charges that a weapon registered in her name was used in the murder of a California judge.
Walker “spent her career bucking the prevailing winds,” the Chronicle story says. The article notes she was the only woman in her 1942 UC Berkeley law school class . It also recalls her sponsorship of a state bar resolution calling for a congressional investigation of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
