A School of Their Own

As an Ivy League student in the 1960s, Michael Gross's optimistic perception of America was shattered. When appalling social inequality became immediate for him - first in the Deep South and later in the Navajo Nation - it struck a nerve.

In his first case as a cub lawyer at a War-on-Poverty legal services office in Window Rock, Arizona, Gross was assigned to file a lawsuit to reopen a high school in Ramah, New Mexico. He would spend the next fifty years helping tribes achieve self-governan...