It's a side not many people have seen. Stuart Dunnings Jr., a husband, a father and a family man.

"He had a big heart. You didn't see it in the courtroom but he had a big heart," said his youngest daughter, Shauna Dunnings.

Dunnings cherished his family and did everything he could for them even during the tumultuous times for the Civil Rights Movement when fear and tensions ran high.

"People who lived there would kick down the foundation," said son Steven. "[They] wrote things like go back to Africa, that's how welcome we were."

"He said he didn't want to put us in harm's way but he said sometimes you have to be in harms way to do what's right," said Shauna.

"Everything he did he not only did to make this world a better place be he did so we would have a better place to live," said Steven.

And all of his children carry on his legacy -- giving him one of the best compliments a father could ask for.

"I think that's how all of us ended up being lawyers. It's hard not to, when you see the zeal with which our father approached his practice. He loved being a lawyer," said the eldest daughter Susan Dunnings.

Dunnings Jr.'s love for the law showed.

"He was always a challenge because he represented his clients so well," said Maj. Joel Maatman of the Ingham County Sherrif's Office. "And as a police officer you had to make sure you'd done your job properly, you reports were prisitine and you represented yourself professionally." Maatman first worked with Dunnings when he was starting out as a Lansing Police Officer more than 30 years ago.

"He made sure people received justice. It didn't matter what your station of life was. He was there for all people," said Cathy Milett, former coworker of Dunnings at the Lansing chapter of the NAACP.

Dunnings always had that passion even when he first struggled starting up in Lansing as he discussed during an interview back in 1999.

"No one would give me a job so I hung on a shingle. I knew one person when I got here," said Dunnings. And now his name still hangs outside the law practice on Pine Street in downtown Lansing, sitting next to his son Steven.

People know Stuart Dunnings Jr. as a the first Black attorney in Lansing. A man who argued with conviction, stood on his principles and lived out the motto, 'justice for all.' But behind the tough exterior, Dunnings had compassion and a fervor for his family -- a father who will always be remembered.

"Everybody says 'You must be living under a cloud to be the child of Stuart Dunnings' and I say 'I'm not living under a cloud, I'm living under a ray of sun," said Shauna.