$40 million scholarship program launched by NAACP Legal Defense for future civil rights lawyers with anonymous donor’s help

Post Managed By: S A Medu, Chittagong, Bangladesh:

80th anniversary of NAACP‘s Legal Defense Fund celebrates its this year. They’re announced the fund of $40 million to support the careers of future civil rights lawyers.

With help from an anonymous donor, Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, named after tow remarkable personalities. One is Thurgood Marshall, the founder of the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), was the first Black Supreme Court justice, and the other one is Constance Baker Motley. She is the first Black woman to serve as a federal judge and argue a case before the Supreme Court.

Marshall-Motley Scholars Program will be implemented at the education and training of 50 aspiring civil rights lawyers. It will run at a racial justice law practice in the South for over the next two decades, including full funding law school, summer internships and a two-year postgraduate fellowship.

Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel at LDF said about that amounts to an investment of $40 million, “For 80 years, LDF has been at the forefront of developing and supporting many of our nation’s legendary civil rights lawyers and leaders”. “The Marshall-Motley Scholars Program is the next phase of our commitment to identify and invest in a new generation of brilliant minds who have a deep personal desire to bring about racial justice in the South,” she added.

Thurgood Marshall was an influential leader of the civil rights movement. He also had a profound contribution to the NAACP and his legacy lives on in the pursuit of racial justice. 

Thurgood Marshall founded LDF in 1940 and served as its first Director-Counsel. He was the architect of the legal strategy that ended the country’s official policy of segregation. Marshall was the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court on which he served as Associate Justice from 1967-1991 after he was successfully nominated by President Johnson. 

He retired from the bench in 1991 and passed away on January 24, 1993, in Washington DC at the age of 84. Civil rights and social change came about through meticulous and persistent litigation efforts, at the forefront of which stood Thurgood Marshall and the Legal Defense Fund. Through the courts, he ensured that Blacks enjoyed the rights and responsibilities of full citizenship.

Sherrilyn Ifill is the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation’s premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equality. LDF was founded in 1940 by legendary civil rights lawyer (and later Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall, and became a separate organization from the NAACP in 1957. The lawyers at the Legal Defense Fund developed and executed the legal strategy that led to the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, widely regarded as the most transformative and monumental legal decision of the 20th century. Ifill is the second woman to lead the organization.

Source: CNN

For more detail please, visit: LDF