>Fay Abrahams Stender (March 29, 1932 – May 19, 1980) was a prisoner rights activist lawyer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Some of her better-known clients included Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and the Soledad Brothers, including Black Guerrilla Family founder George Jackson.
>In 1970, after Stender edited and arranged for Jackson's prison letters to be published as Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson, he became a celebrity.[3] She persuaded French intellectual Jean Genet to write an introduction, propelling the book to a best seller.[5] The substantial proceeds from the book went to a legal defense fund that she set up.
>In 1979, Black Guerrilla Family member Edward Glenn Brooks, recently paroled, entered Stender's home in Berkeley, tied up her son, daughter, and her lesbian lover Joan Morris[4] and shot Stender several times for what he said was Stender's betrayal of Jackson.[1] Brooks forced Stender to state: "I, Fay Stender, admit I betrayed George Jackson and the prison movement when they needed me most" just before he shot her.[7] Stender was left paralyzed below the waist; in constant pain from her injuries, she committed suicide in Hong Kong about a year later, after testifying against Brooks.[6]