About
I recently retired after 25 years as a judge on the New York Supreme Court. While on the court I continued my career as a writer of non-fiction that began years before when I was a journalist in Washington, D.C. covering Congress and the Supreme Court for several California newspapers. I am the author of two editions of a textbook on Domestic Violence law (Domestic Violence: Law Policy and Practice) and an award-winning biography (Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer, Potomac Books/University of Nebraska Press, 2015). My next book, When Charlie Met Joan: The Tragedy of the Chaplin Trials and the Failings of American Justice, will be published in early 2025 by the University of Michigan Press. In addition, I am an adjunct professor of law.
Featured Work
She Can Bring Us Home, Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer
The first and only biography of Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee (1898-1980) a household name in Black America for forty years as a trail-blazing obstetrician and civil rights activist from Washington, D.C. Best known for bravely leading a group of female doctors and nurses into the Deep South during the Great Depression to bring needed health care to desperately poor minority sharecroppers, she later was an adviser to presidents on civil rights and to foreign governments on public health issues. She was handpicked by Mary McLeod Bethune to be her successor as president of the National Council of Negro Women and was the leader of the national Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. Ironically, her fame and relevance faded as Blacks and women achieved the political power she fought so hard for.
Other Works
Awards and Recognition
- 2016 Colonial Dames of America Book Award for She Can Bring Us Home; Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer
- 2015 Richard Slatten Award for Excellence in Virginia Biography for She Can Bring Us Home; Dr. Dorothy Boulding Ferebee, Civil Rights Pioneer
- 1983 Worth Bingham Prize for Distinguished Investigative Reporting, for "The New Slush Fund Scandal," published in The New Republic
