By Chris Hoenig
Famed civil-rights attorney Demetrius Newton has died after a long illness. He was 85.
When Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were arrested in Birmingham, Ala., during the civil-rights movement, they turned to Newton, then a private-practice attorney, to represent them in court. He would go on to serve as Birmingham’s city attorney before joining the state legislature in 1986.
