Anonymous donor gives $40 million for 50 new civil rights lawyers
An anonymous donor gifted $40 million to fund 50 civil rights lawyers.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund said Monday the money would put 50 students through law school and in return the new layers would commit to eight years of racial justice work in the South, starting with a two-year fellowship with a civil rights organization of their choosing.
“The donor came to us,” Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, told the Associated Press. “The donor very much wanted to support the development of civil rights lawyers in the South. And we have a little bit of experience with that.”
“While without question we are in a perilous moment in this country, we are also in a moment of tremendous possibility, particularly in the South,” Ifill said. “The elements for change are very much present in the South, and what needs to be strengthened is the capacity of lawyering.”
The program is officially called the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who started the NAACP in 1940, and Constance Baker Motley, a NAACP lawyer who wrote the complaint that led to the court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling which outlawed racial segregation in public schools. She later became the first Black woman federal judge in the U.S.
“Our country continues to be plagued with racial injustice, and we need Nonviolent Warriors who are prepared and equipped on all fronts to deal with it — especially on the legal front,” the Rev. Bernice King said in a statement supporting the program. “It will allow the LDF to make greater strides on behalf of the Black community for generations to come in the area of racial justice, just as they did during the movement led by my parents.”
The organization also said Monday it was opening a Legal Defense and Education Fund office in Atlanta, joining offices in New York and Washington, D.C.
With News Wire Services
