Kenneth Vern "Ken" Cockrel Sr. (November 5, 1938 – April 25, 1989) was an American politician, prominent attorney, and revolutionary, community organizer, from the city of Detroit.

After dropping out, Ken joined the United States Air Force, trained as a weapons technician (with special security clearance) and was stationed in Germany as an airman second class.

Over the next ten years, he and his colleagues earned reputations as crusaders for working and poor people, winning a number of high-profile cases that put the establishment on trial—the judiciary and jury selection process in the case following the New Bethel raid incident,[7] the corporation and assembly line in the incredibly successful defense of autoworker James Johnson,[8] the police in the defense of Hayward Brown and Madeline Fletcher.

In 1973, the Detroit Branch of the NAACP awarded Cockrel the Distinguished Achievement Medal for his legal work representing members of various social justice movements facing political repression and intimidation by the police and prosecutors.

A number of the community members, volunteers, and his close political allies who worked on his Ccouncil campaign formed an organization known as the Detroit Alliance for a Rational Economy (DARE).

Ken Cockrel had become the most well-known and influential radical in the city, respected, even by his adversaries, for his intellect, rapid-fire eloquence and passionate commitment to fighting inequity and injustice.