Ann Fagan Ginger, Forceful Defender of Civil Liberties, Dies at 100

In early October 1964, Ann Fagan Ginger, an editor at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley, was walking across campus when she saw a large crowd gathered around a police car.

A student, Jack Weinberg, had been arrested for participating in a civil rights demonstration on campus; he sat in the back of the car. On its roof stood another student, Mario Savio, addressing the crowd.

When Mr. Savio got down, Ms. Ginger urged him to remind those in the crowd of their rights to assembly and speech should the police try to arrest them, too. He told her that she should do it — so she did.

A photo of the diminutive woman atop a police car, surrounded by a rapt audience, appeared in newspapers around the country.

Alarmed, the university urged the F.B.I. to investigate her. But the bureau didn’t need to be told. By then, it already had a thick file on Ms. Ginger, a venerable figure in civil liberties activism, who died on Aug. 20 at her home in Berkeley.

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