Thursday, March 28, 2024

NAACP Receives $40M from Anonymous Donor to Support Education of New Civil Rights Lawyers

NAACP Legal Defense Fund - via Twitter
Image via Twitter

*The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund announced the launch of a new program thanks to the generous donation from an anonymous donor in the amount of $40 million.

The fund aims to cover the education and training of at least 50 new civil rights lawyers. Receipts must commit to eight-years of service towards racial justice work specifically in the South. 

“The donor came to us,” Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, per New York Daily News. “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.”

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“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 added. “The elements for change are very much present in the South, and what needs to be strengthened is the capacity of lawyering.” 

The fund will be named the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program after former Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, and Constance Baker Motley, the first Black female federal judge. 

Motley also served as Marshall’s law clerk in the Brown v. Board of Education case. 

The LDF chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day to announce the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, and set an application deadline of Feb. 16.

“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.”

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