During a murder trial which was still heavily influenced by "Jim Crow" laws, Ades set precedents that allowed a change of venue outside a highly prejudiced environment, and he fought for the right to have African Americans serve on jury panels.

His father, a Russian born and devout traditionalist Jew, moved to America and started an umbrella manufacturing business with his brother, Simon Ades.

For the Euel Lee, “Orphan Jones” Case in 1931, Ades was employed by the International Labor Defense (affiliated with the Communist Party) in a campaign against lynching.

Euel Lee, an African American farmhand, was accused of murdering a white family of four for refusing to pay his full wages.

Fearing riots and further racial unrest, Ades was denied the right to bury the body in New York and is currently interred in an unmarked grave in Brooklyn, Maryland.

[9] The Maryland Bar publicly reprimanded Ades for his conduct while also praising his defense of Lee: "It does not seem to the court that the extreme punishment of disbarment should be inflicted.

On February 20, 1937 Ades sailed to Spain on the SS Île de France to join in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Loyalists.

Following his exposure by Congressman Del’Assandro of Baltimore for being a Communist, he was forced to resign in 1941 and was placed on J. Edgar Hoover’s list for security detention in case of war.

She admires his wisdom, his generosity and his world outlook, and though as a child she thought him larger than life, as an adult she questions his ideology, its implementation and her father's Communist involvement.