Memories of Prof. Ann Fagan Ginger, LL.M.

In memory of

Prof. Ann Fagan Ginger, LL.M.

Berkeley, California

July 11, 1925 - August 20, 2025

Jul 11, 1925 - Aug 20, 2025

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

Human Rights Now Certificate of Appreciation — with Human Rights Now!

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

1959, Supreme Court of the United States, First Street Northeast, Washington, DC, U.S.

You can listen to the oral arguments made by Ann Fagan Ginger in Parts 1 & 2 of Morgan V. Ohio on April 23, 1959 at https://www.oyez.org/cases/19…

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

Speaking Freely: Ann Fagan Ginger

Ann Fagan Ginger is a lawyer, scholar, author of 22 books, and one of the Guild's longest-serving members. In this interview she discusses her remarkable history as leading legal activist. Ginger persevered in the face of rampant sexism in and out of the Guild, appearing as the only female delegate at the first racially integrated meeting of lawyers in the South, arguing before the Supreme Court, and guiding the NLG through the Red Scare. Faced with hostility from the House Un-American Activities Committee, the FBI, and Attorney General Herbert Brownell, she successfully fought the listing of the NLG as a subversive organization and kept its organizational core intact.

This video is part of the Speaking Freely NLG video history series.

Video by Off Center Media

www.off-center.com

Ginger went on to found the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, a human rights center where she was the founder/executive director.

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Nicole Scott

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

2019, San Francisco, CA, USA

Ann Fagan Ginger Celebrated by Bay Area WILPF Branches News Article: https://wilpfus.org/news/ann-… — with Ann Fagan Ginger, Walter Riley, Steve Bingham and Judith Mirkinson

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

1964, Sproul Hall, Barrow Lane, Berkeley, CA, USA

Letter from Ann about the Free Speech Movement (FSM)... Dear Martin Snapp: I would like to make a presentation on your point 1: Impact FSM had on my life at that time. I am an attorney now retired and founder of the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute in 1965, a center for human rights and peace law and the author of 14 books on human rights and peace law. In October 1964, I was an editor for Continuing Education of the Bar of U.C. Berkeley and the State Bar. This was Friday afternoon and I was walking down Bancroft Way while Mario Savio was speaking from the top of a police car holding an FSM student and rallies had been held for several days. I saw many police cars on the Bancroft Way. I walked across Sproul Plaza and told Mario, whom I knew, that as a lawyer, I could advise him that everyone had a right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly under U.S. and California Constitutions and the UN Charter, Article 55 and that the students should be told this. Mario asked me to say this to everyone. So I climbed on top of the police car and said that as a lawyer, I advise you that everyone has the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly under US and California constitutions and the UN Charter Article 55. Then I climbed down from the car and started walking away. Before I had gotten very far, a reporter came up to me from the San Francisco Chronicle and asked me my name. I said, "I'm a lawyer. What I said is the law, you don't need my name." A few days later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported what I had said, then said "I was Ann Fagan Ginger, the wife of guitar strumming communist folksinger James F. Wood." In 1970, Continuing Education of the Bar got a new director who fired me immediately. I learned then that after my statement to the FSM, the FBI had gone to my supervisor at Continuing Education of the Bar every six months to urge that I be fired. And when the new supervisor took office, he fired me. This is the story I would like to tell at the FSM 50th Anniversary Reunion because it tells what effect supporting the rights of the students had on people who were not students, but were related to the University.

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Comments:

Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

further reading ~ https://fsm-a.org/Person%20pages/Ann%20Fagan%20Ginger.html further reading ~ https://fsm-a.org/Person%20pages/Ann%20Fagan%20Ginger.html further reading ~ https://fsm-a.org/Person%20pages/Ann%20Fagan%20Ginger.html... Read more

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Cynthia Papermaster

Ann Fagan Ginger speaking at 2014 CODEPINK event at UC Law School to call out "torture professor" John Yoo, architect of the legal opinions illegally re-defining U.S. torture policy. Ann was always eager to use her voice for the law and justice. Video by George Szabo.

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

Note: the website is now mclihumanrights.org, not mcli.org.

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

1962, Atlanta, GA, USA

the first joint meeting of Black and White attorneys in the South, co-sponsored by the National Lawyers Guild and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta — with Martin Luther King Jr. and Ann Fagan Ginger

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Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

Berkeley, CA, USA

Ann Fagan Ginger at MCLI — with Ann Fagan Ginger

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Cynthia Papermaster

Comments:

Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute

Ann Fagan Ginger speech on Conscientious Objection and Selective Service in 1966
https://archive.org/details/audiotapereel0232_a/audiotapereel0232_a.mp3... Read more Ann Fagan Ginger speech on Conscientious Objection and Selective Service in 1966
https://archive.org/details/audiotapereel0232_a/audiotapereel0232_a.mp3... Read more Ann Fagan Ginger speech on Conscientious Objection ... Read more