NEWBERRY, S.C. — Sue Summer may seem at first glance an unlikely candidate to be involved in one of South Carolina’s most contentious press freedom cases in recent years.
She writes for a small newspaper in this placid town of 10,000, hosts a local radio “Coffee Hour” and edits a magazine food section. In her spare time, she provides day care for her 4-year-old granddaughter and helps organize community events like the Newberry Ice Cream Churn-Off.
But friends and co-workers warn that those who underestimate Mrs. Summer’s grit and tenacity do so at their peril.
“I have no dollars in this fight, but I do have a dog,” Mrs. Summer, 62, said on Monday after the State Supreme Court agreed to take up the case that has put her in the cross hairs of a powerful judge and the lawyers who have been squabbling over the estate of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, since his death on Christmas Day 2006.
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Patricia Edwards, Ms. Summer’s editor at The Newberry Observer, which publishes three times a week and has a circulation of just over 4,000, described Mrs. Summer as a passionate “journalist’s journalist.”
“She firmly believes that open records should be used to let people know what’s going on inside their government, and this James Brown brouhaha is an excellent example of that,” Ms. Edwards said. “When you think about the money involved in that estate, if she had not done what she did, what would have happened?”
The headline on an earlier version of this article mistated the person who kept a diary that is involved in a dispute over the estate of James Brown. The diary was kept by Tommie Rae Hynie Brown, the wife of Mr. Brown, not by Mr. Brown himself.
A version of this article appears in print on February 4, 2015, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: Reporter Fights To Air Diary Of Brown . Order Reprints| Today’s Paper|Subscribe
