Donald A. Jelinek

Donald A. Jelinek spent his formative years as a lawyer on Wall Street and, then, inspired by a colleague’s involvement in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, he journeyed to the Deep South to volunteer as a civil rights lawyer during the course of a three-week vacation in the summer of 1965. He stayed for three years, working with Black sharecroppers and Movement leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. Among his many achievements, Don established the Southern Rural Research Project to investigate and challenge the discriminatory nature of USDA food and cotton programs in the Black Belt. In 1969, after settling in California, Don joined the Native Americans who occupied Alcatraz Island as a protest against the federal government’s disavowal of past treaty rights; he then defended them in court. Returning to New York State in 1971, he served as Chief Counsel for the indicted survivors of the Attica prison revolt. Don, who now lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, Jane Scherr, served as a member of the Berkeley City Council from 1984 to 1990. He heads the law firm Jelinek and Associates and is currently working on a book about his experiences in the struggle for racial equality.