Don Jelinek died peacefully in his Berkeley home on June 24, 2016, at age 82. He had wanted his gravestone to read: “He was SNCC.”
Don was a lawyer who spent the years 1965 – 1968 in Mississippi and Alabama during the civil rights movement. Don quickly assumed and maintained dual roles: as a SNCC grassroots organizer and as a crusading ACLU attorney who battled for justice in hostile courts. As a lawyer-activist in Alabama, he took on the overtly racist practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and brought to light the shameful realities of rural malnutrition and starvation in America. He had the honor to represent Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, H. “Rap” Brown and organizations ranging from SNCC to SCLC and the NAACP, as well as hundreds of black sharecroppers and civil rights workers. Until he died, Don continued to take part in SNCC meetings at his home.
Don established a law practice in Berkeley, during which time he represented and lived with the Alcatraz Indians on the island they seized as redress for past injustices. Following the 1971 Attica Prison uprising in upstate New York, Don was the lead attorney defending 61 inmates who had been indicted for 1400 felonies as a result of the insurrection, arguing that the charges were political. No inmate ever served time for these alleged crimes.
Don subsequently undertook a three-year pro bono defense of hundreds of flea market vendors who were ousted from the weekend Ashby BART parking lot. After restoring the vendors to their livelihoods, Don was elected to three terms on the Berkeley City Council, where his votes led to major public housing, among other accomplishments. He was a proud member of the Berkeley Citizens Action. Don was also active in the movement to end the Vietnam War; he represented dozens of conscientious objectors and so-called deserters. He proudly remembered one occasion when the U.S. Supreme Court was out of session and Justice William O. Douglas was unreachable. Don trekked overnight into the remote mountains of Washington State to locate the Justice. Justice Douglas signed the requested injunction.
Don was born on February 17, 1934, the son of Jewish immigrants. He was raised in the Bronx and attended Bronx High School of Science - for which he always maintained he was not qualified - then attended New York University where he received both his B.A. and law degree.
In 1955, Don moved to Greenwich Village where he lived in a tenement and paid his rent by working as a janitor—first taking in garbage cans then walking to his law school classes. In the Village, for the first time in his life, Don met gay people, black people, local leftists and bohemians all of whom fueled his lifetime passion for politics, reading and theatre.
Don wrote and published three books: Survivor of the Alamo, about the Texas Revolution and one man who did not stay at the Alamo to die; Attica Justice about the history of prisons in America, the inhumane conditions that led to the uprising and his defense of the Attica prisoners; and White Lawyer, Black Power about his time in SNCC and the civil rights movement.
Don is survived by Jane Scherr, his wife of 30 years; his brother Roger; Jane’s daughters Dove and Apollinaire and Don and Jane’s grandchildren Hannele and Pascal. A Memorial Service will be held on Saturday July 16, 2016 at St. John's Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, beginning at 1 pm. Don asked that in lieu of gifts, money be donated to “Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement” c/o Eugene Turitz, 2124 Derby Street, Berkeley, CA 94705.
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