MEET PCL FOUNDER
Henry "Hank" di Suvero

Henry “Hank” di Suvero, noted criminal defense and constitutional rights attorney, led the founding of Peoples College of Law. In 1973, he brought together an organizing committee of attorneys, law students, and community activists to develop what became PCL. The school admitted its first entering class and started operation in the fall of 1974 at its initial location in Los Angeles’ Westlake neighborhood. 

Born in 1936 in Shanghai, China, where his father was an Italian diplomat, Hank moved with his family to San Francisco in 1940 to escape fascism. After growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he was active in the beginnings of what became “the New Left” of the 1960s, and went on to graduate from Harvard Law School in 1961. For many years, Hank practiced criminal defense law in New York City, handling numerous prominent political cases, and was heavily engaged in civil rights legal work in the New York/New Jersey area on behalf of the ACLU and the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. In 1972, he moved to Los Angeles with his then-wife Ramona Ripston. There he served as Senior Attorney at the Greater Watts Justice Center. From 1977-79, he was President of the National Lawyers Guild and played a key role in revitalizing the organization.

After seeing PCL through its first several years of operation, Hank left the U.S. in 1979 to study yoga in India and travel in Asia. He eventually settled in Sydney, Australia, where he taught at the University of New South Wales and resumed practicing criminal law, earning a reputation for aggressive representation. He also became a playwright and poet. Hank died there in July 2020, at the home he shared with his wife Jinny, from complications following surgery. 

Upon Hank’s death, poet Victor di Suvero wrote a poem about his brother.

An audio of the poem, read by Victor’s son Alex, may be heard here.