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Civil Rights Lawyer Michael John Kennedy Dies at 78

HeadlineJan 28, 2016

And civil rights lawyer Michael John Kennedy has died. Throughout his career, Kennedy represented a number of activists from some of the United States’ most significant radical movements, including the Black Panther Party, the American Indian Movement and the Weather Underground. Kennedy successfully defended Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton. He also won acquittals for six Americans charged with raising money to fund the Irish Republican Army, known as the IRA. He was arrested and jailed briefly after staging a silent protest during a House Un-American Activities Committee investigation, and he served as a legal aid to the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua. In his one and only divorce case, Kennedy also represented Ivana Trump in her divorce from Donald Trump. Kennedy was the general counsel for High Times magazine for 42 years, during which he provided a legal shield for the magazine’s effort to expose the U.S. government’s war on drugs. He died on Monday at the age of 78 after a battle with cancer.

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