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NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Legal Defense Fund, or LDF) is an American civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.

Abbreviation

LDF

February 12, 1940 (1940-02-12)

Non-profit organization

40 Rector Street, 5th floor New York City, New York, 10006 U.S.

United States

Janai Nelson

www.naacpldf.org

LDF is wholly independent and separate from the NAACP.[1] Although LDF can trace its origins to the legal department of the NAACP created by Charles Hamilton Houston in the 1930s,[2][3] Thurgood Marshall founded LDF as a separate legal entity in 1940, which became totally independent from the NAACP in 1957.[1]


Janai Nelson currently serves as the eighth President and Director-Counsel, since March 2022.[4] Previous Director-Counsels include Sherrilyn Ifill (2012–2022), John Payton (2008–2012), Ted Shaw (2004–2008), Elaine Jones (1993–2004), Julius Levonne Chambers (1984–1993), Jack Greenberg (1961–1984), and founder Thurgood Marshall (1940–1961).[5]

Litigation

Advocacy

Educational outreach

Policy research and monitoring legislation

Coalition-building

Provides for exceptional African-American students.

scholarships

Creation and separation from the NAACP[edit]

The board of directors of the NAACP created the Legal Defense Fund in 1940 specifically for tax purposes.[6] In 1957, LDF was completely separated from the NAACP and given its own independent board and staff.[6] Although LDF was originally meant to operate in accordance with NAACP policy, after 1961, serious disputes emerged between the two organizations. These disputes ultimately led the NAACP to create its own internal legal department while LDF continued to operate and score significant legal victories as an independent organization.[3][7]


At times, this separation has created considerable confusion in the eyes and minds of the public.[7] In the 1980s, the NAACP unsuccessfully sued LDF for trademark infringement.[3] In its ruling rejecting the NAACP's lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recognized that the "universal esteem in which the [NAACP] initials are held is due in significant measure to [LDF's] distinguished record as a civil rights litigator" and that the NAACP has "benefitted from the added luster given to the NAACP initials by the LDF's litigation successes."[3]

1935 , removed unconstitutional color bar from the University of Maryland School of Law admission policy. (Managed by Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP before the formal foundation of LDF.)

Murray v. Pearson

1938: , invalidated state laws that denied African-American students access to all-white state graduate schools when no separate state graduate schools were available for African Americans. (Handled by Thurgood Marshall for the NAACP before the formal foundation of LDF.)

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada

former acting President-Director Counsel for LDF (2012–2013), argued twice in the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act, and a current Commissioner for the United States Civil Rights Commission.

Debo Adegbile

the first tenured African-American Harvard Law School professor, professor at New York University School of Law, and preeminent Critical Race Theorist.

Derrick A. Bell Jr.

a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Victor Allen Bolden

chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, appointed by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate on December 22, 2010. Immediately prior to her appointment, Ms. Berrien was the Director of Litigation and Associate Director-Counsel for LDF.[23]

Jacqueline A. Berrien

is the Secretary of State of Michigan. She is also the former Dean of Wayne State University Law School. She was a summer legal intern at LDF.[24]

Jocelyn Benson

an assistant counsel at LDF until its 1956 separation from the NAACP, and an architect of Brown v. Board. After the separation, he replaced Thurgood Marshall as the General Counsel for the NAACP. He won numerous cases at the Supreme Court and was a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York [25]

Robert L. Carter

third director-counsel of LDF. He argued Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, which upheld the constitutionality of busing to achieve school desegregation.

Julius L. Chambers

the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division since 2021 and former President of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She previously headed the Civil Rights bureau of the New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

Kristen Clarke

first African-American federal judge in Alabama, retired from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, and one of the first Black officials elected to the Alabama Senate in modern times.

U. W. Clemon

President emeritus of LDF's board and Secretary of Transportation in the administration of President Gerald Ford.

William Thaddeus Coleman Jr.

the first African-American Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and the United States Solicitor General from 1993 to 1996.

Drew S. Days, III

founder of the Children's Defense Fund. During the Mississippi Freedom Summer she headed LDF's Jackson, Mississippi office and handled more than 120 cases.[26]

Marian Wright Edelman

organizer, educator; creator of the division of legal information and community service and director of that division from 1965 to 1984

Jean E. Fairfax

succeeded Thurgood Marshall and served as LDF's second director-counsel from 1961 to 1984. Greenberg began as an Assistant Counsel at LDF in 1949. He argued more than 40 of LDF's cases before the Supreme Court, including a portion of Brown v. Board. While he was director-counsel, LDF successfully defended the civil rights movement, ended "all deliberate speed" in desegregation[27] the first employment discrimination lawsuits in the Supreme Court, and brought about a national moratorium on the death penalty. After leaving the LDF, Greenberg was a professor at Columbia Law School and the former Dean of Columbia College.

Jack Greenberg

voting rights advocate and the first African-American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law.

Lani Guinier

the Associate Attorney General of the United States since April 2021. She was formerly the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General and acting head of the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice from October 2014 until January 2017.

Vanita Gupta

a federal judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Dale Ho

the first African-American United States Attorney General. Holder was a member of LDF's Board of Directors and interned for LDF as a law student.[28]

Eric Holder

successfully argued Furman v. Georgia. LDF's fourth director-counsel and the first female director-counsel.[29]

Elaine Jones

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice since January 2021 and the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford Law School. She is frequently mentioned as a potential democratic appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court.[30]

Pamela S. Karlan

a partner at Williams & Connolly LLP, he represented President Bill Clinton during the President's impeachment proceedings. He is a former LDF staff attorney and currently a member of its board of directors.[31]

David E. Kendall

the first Chinese-American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.[32]

Bill Lann Lee

LDF founder and the first African-American Supreme Court Justice. Marshall left LDF in 1961 to become a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit before going on to become Solicitor General of the United States and Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Thurgood Marshall

a former federal judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas and a former judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. McDonald was one of the first eleven judges elected by the United Nations to serve on the Yugoslav Tribunal and became its president between 1997 and 1999.

Gabrielle Kirk McDonald

a federal judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Natasha C. Merle

the first African-American woman to be appointed a Federal Court Judge and the first to argue before the Supreme Court.

Constance Baker Motley

was an LDF attorney from 1959–1989.

James Nabrit III

Dennis Parker, the executive director of the . He formerly was the Chief of the Civil Rights Bureau in the office of the New York Attorney General and, prior to that, worked for over a dozen years at LDF.[33]

National Center for Law and Economic Justice

the first African-American Governor of Massachusetts and only the second African American to be elected governor of any state.

Deval Patrick

a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Cornelia Pillard

served as White House Chief of Staff for President Donald Trump in 2017. He also served as the chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2011 to 2017. He interned for LDF as a law student.[34]

Reince Priebus

civil rights activist and founder of the Advancement Project.

Constance L. Rice

the first African-American appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Spottswood William Robinson III

Theodore Shaw, Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Professor Shaw served as the fifth president and director-counsel.[35][36][37][38]

[1]

Christina Swarns, the Executive Director of the . She previously served as the director of litigation for LDF and, in that role argued and won Buck v. Davis in the U.S. Supreme Court. She is one of the few African-American women to have ever argued a case in the Supreme Court.[39]

Innocence Project

a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Holly A. Thomas

an MSNBC Legal Analyst, civil rights activist, lawyer, and 2021 mayoral candidate for New York City[40] and the Henry Cohen Professor of Urban Policy and Management at The New School. Wiley is also the former board chair[41] of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, and former counsel to the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.

Maya Wiley

A number of prominent attorneys have been affiliated with LDF over the years, including Barack Obama who was an LDF cooperating attorney.[1] The following, non-exhaustive list of LDF alumni demonstrates the breadth of positions these attorneys have held or currently hold in public service, the government, academia, the private sector, and other areas.

Clemon, U. W., and Bryan K. Fair. "Making Bricks Without Straw: The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Development of Civil Rights Law in Alabama 1940-1980." Alabama Law Review 52 (2000): 1121+.

online

NAACP-LDF Official Website

Thurgood Marshall Institute at LDF