South End Branch African and African American Authors Book Discussion Via Zoom: The Jailhouse Lawyer, a Black History Month Program

The Jailhouse Lawyer by Calvin Duncan.

Calvin Duncan was nineteen when he was incarcerated for a 1981 New Orleans murder he didn’t commit. The victim of a wildly incompetent public defense system and a badly compromised witness, Duncan was left to rot in the waking nightmare of confinement. Armed with little education, he took matters into his own hands.

At twenty-one, he filed his first motion from “Motion for a Law Book,” which launched his highly successful, self-taught, legal career. Trapped within this wholly corrupted system, Calvin became a legal advocate for himself and his fellow prisoners as an Inmate Counsel at the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary, Angola. Literature sustained his hope, as he learned the law in its shadow.

Join the discussion here at the scheduled time.