At 15, Lois Roslyn Goodman joined Black students and other activists challenging segregation at Glen Echo Amusement Park. During the 1960 demonstration, she rode the amusement park’s carousel alongside Black students from Howard University.

A state-deputized security guard approached one of the Black riders and asked his race before arresting him. “The human race,” the student replied. Lois, who was white, was allowed to remain.

The moment foreshadowed a lifetime of challenging injustice.

Goodman Ontell, who went on to become a civil rights lawyer and criminal defense attorney, died on May 21 of complications from a heart condition. The longtime Washingtonian was 81.

“She was both very dedicated and competent,” said Thomas Timberg, a longtime friend who knew her as part of a circle of intellectually curious and politically active Washington teenagers.

Her commitment to public service began at home. Social justice “was almost a family tradition,” Timberg said.

Goodman grew up in Washington’s Brightwood neighborhood in a Jewish family shaped by organized labor, education and Reform Judaism. Her father, Leo Goodman, spent his career working for labor unions, including the United Auto Workers, and pushed for stronger protections for employees exposed to radiation and other workplace hazards. Her mother, Elizabeth Miller Goodman, was an educator and nonpracticing social worker who created opportunities and programs for children unable to attend school because of illness or disability.

Both parents attended Marian Anderson’s landmark 1939 concert at the Lincoln Memorial after the Black singer was denied the use of Constitution Hall.

Lois and her two siblings, Joan and Maury, were fifth-generation Reform Jews, according to her sister, Joan Churchill. Their mother taught religious school, and the family belonged to Temple Sinai before later joining Washington Hebrew Congregation.

Jewish values of service and social responsibility took hold early. While attending Woodrow Wilson High School, now Jackson-Reed High School, Lois joined the Glen Echo Amusement Park demonstrations and protested segregated lunch counters at the Woolworth’s on F Street NW.

The protests “really epitomize her core devotion to fairness, to racial fairness,” Churchill said.

Goodman attended Radcliffe College, then Harvard University’s undergraduate college for women, and majored in economics.
After college, she joined the Peace Corps and was sent to India as part of a family-planning program. She later returned to the United States and enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

At a time when relatively few women entered the legal profession, Goodman chose work that placed her beside people who often had little money, influence or access to legal help. She supervised law students doing clinical work at Georgetown University Law Center and taught at Antioch School of Law.

She later moved to Georgia with her young daughter, Lily, and spent five years working primarily through Georgia Legal Services on civil rights, voting rights and family law cases.

In Edge v. Sumter County School District, Goodman helped represent Black residents who challenged the county’s at-large method of electing school board members. The plaintiffs argued that the system diluted Black voting power.

In another case, she represented a white mother who had lost custody of her child after a judge cited her relationship with a Black man as evidence that she was unfit. Goodman appealed the ruling, and the Georgia Court of Appeals ordered the child returned to the mother.

Lily Landau was still a young child when she heard her mother discussing the case around the house and repeatedly using the phrase “out of wedlock.”

At the time, the legal arguments meant little to her. Only years later did she understand that the conversations she overheard concerned a mother’s right to keep her child and a lawyer’s effort to confront racial prejudice in the courts.

Goodman returned to Washington and built a practice that included criminal defense and appellate work. Many of her clients received court-appointed representation under the Criminal Justice Act.

Her nephew David Churchill described her as an advocate who listened closely to people in difficult circumstances and refused to define them solely by the worst thing they had done.

“Maybe they’ve made a mistake, but they still deserve strong representation,” he said.

The courtroom also brought Goodman together with her future husband, fellow lawyer David Jay Ontell. They met in D.C. Superior Court in the 1970s and knew each other for 17 years before marrying. Law, politics and public affairs remained regular subjects of conversation in their home.

Away from work, Goodman Ontell filled her life with people, travel, movies, music and games. She opened her home to relatives and friends and made space for people going through difficult periods.

She took Lily, her only child, on ambitious trips while she was still young. On one journey through Peru, when Lily was about 9, they visited Machu Picchu and boarded a small plane to view the Nazca Lines from above.

Her mother’s sense of family extended beyond relatives.

After Lily moved out, the Ontells invited a young Black man named Steve Lee to live with them rather than rent the available room to a stranger. He stayed for about 18 years and became part of the family.

At 53, she participated in an adult b’nei mitzvah program at Washington Hebrew Congregation. While others read their Torah portions, she sang hers, drawing on her lifelong love of music.

Her commitment to faith reached beyond her own congregation. She helped organize interfaith programs, contacted participating houses of worship and greeted guests at gatherings that brought together Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh and other communities.

She passed the same curiosity and sense of responsibility to her grandchildren. When they were young, she bought them books about art, different cultures and civil rights.

Landau believed her mother would urge younger people to organize, speak out and trust that their actions could change the world around them.

“If I did it,” she said her mother would tell them, “you can do it.”

Ellen Braunstein is a freelance obituary writer. She welcomes suggestions for individuals who had meaningful ties to the greater Washington Jewish community. Email csix@midatlanticmedia.com.