J.L. Chestnut died he was 77

J.L. Chestnut (1930 - September 30, 2008) was an author, attorney, and a figure in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. He was the first African-American attorney in Selma, Alabama, and the author of the autobiographical book, Black in Selma, which chronicles the history of the civil rights struggle in Selma, including Bloody Sunday.
Chestnut was born in Selma, and attended law school at Howard University. He returned home to become Selma's first and only black attorney, and represented civil rights demonstrators at trial there when the movement began in the 1960s.

Chestnut brought Sanders and his wife, Faya Rose Toure, both blacks who graduated from Harvard Law School, into his Selma law practice. It became active in civil rights case and defended blacks in major voter fraud prosecutions brought by the Justice Department in west Alabama in the 1980s.