On Oct. 13, 1968 the New York Times Magazine published the controversial article he wrote, “Nine Men in Black Who Think White” which argued that “historically, the Supreme Court has been the enemy of the American black man.” Instead, Steel contended, after Brown, the Court slowly retreated on numerous racial issues, leaving most Southern school segregation in place, declining to take on northern racial segregation, allowing injunctions preventing peaceful racial demonstrations and ignoring the misuse of urban renewal federal funds which were supposed to rebuild cities but were used instead to construct highways isolating Blacks. On the day of publication, the NAACP board of directors, in a split vote, with Executive Director Roy Wilkins recommending termination, Steel was subsequently fired. In response, Carter, who lauded Steel's work as well as his article, resigned in protest along with his entire legal staff and stated that he believed that the NAACP board had fired Steel because it felt the legal department was taking on cases that were too controversial. Private practice In the decades that followed Steel pursued civil rights cases in private practice in New York City, at DiSuvero, Meyers, Obermen and Steel, and then at Eisner Levy and Steel LLP. In 1980 he and his colleague from the NAACP, who was Steel’s closest professional colleague and friend, Richard Bellman (who was an uncle of Rep. Jamie Raskin), started the civil rights firm Steel and Bellman PC, and later added Susan Ritz and Miriam Clark as partners. The firm took on a wide range of cases, involving discrimination in housing and employment; they freed the wrongfully accused from jail, and pushed for prison reform. The firm represented plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit that alleged racial discrimination in the hiring and promotion of black and Hispanic workers by the New York City Parks Department. The suit, Wright v. Stern, was settled in 2006 when the Parks Department agreed to pay more than $21 million in damages and fees. After Steel Bellman Ritz & Clark disbanded in 2006, Steel joined Outten & Golden, where he is now senior counsel. He also serves as general counsel for the Institute for Policy Studies. Attica In 1971 Steel, who was a vice-president of the National Lawyers Guild New York City Chapter, went to Attica Correctional Facility as one of the outside observers trying to prevent the prison authorities from engaging in a bloody attack on