Carl Maxey made a name for himself, first as an NCAA championship boxer, and then as eastern Washington State's first prominent black lawyer and renowned civil rights attorney who always fought for the underdog. This is a moving portrait of the man called a "Type-A Gandhi" by the New York Times and whose own personal misfortune only spurred his lifelong, tireless crusade against injustice. "An essential biography of one city's civil rights hero, wonderfully written and impeccably researched. . . . Carl Maxey was a man whose complicated life transcended its own gripping details to mirror a turbulent time in our recent history, a time when it seemed as if race and justice would forever run on separate tracks."--Jess Walter, author of The Zero