The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF, the Inc. Fund, or simply LDF) is a leading United States civil rights organization based in New York City. The organization began as the legal wing of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) under the leadership of Charles Hamilton Houston. In 1938, Thurgood Marshall, Houston's student, succeeded him as NAACP counsel. Marshall further developed the strategies and goals of the legal department and in 1957 established LDF as an organization totally independent of the NAACP.[1]
Theodore M. Shaw was the 5th director-counsel and president of LDF.[2] John Payton recently replaced Mr. Shaw as LDF's 6th director-counsel and president. [3]
About
While primarily focused on the civil rights of African Americans in the U.S., LDF states it has "been instrumental in the formation of similar organizations serving other minority constituencies in the United States," such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the NOW Legal Defense Fund, and the Asian American Legal Defense Fund. It has also "been involved in the global campaign for human rights by assisting in the creation of public interest legal organizations in South Africa, Canada and Brazil."[4]
LDF's national office is in Manhattan with regional offices in Washington, D.C. LDF has "nearly two dozen staff lawyers" and "hundreds of cooperating attorneys across the nation." According to LDF's website, they have "more than 100 cases on [their] docket" and have "been involved in more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any organization except the U.S. Department of Justice." [5]
Areas of activity
- Litigation
- Advocacy
- Educational outreach
- Policy research and monitoring legislation
- Coalition-building
- Provides scholarships for exceptional African-American students.
Areas of concern
History
Probably the most famous case in the history of LDF was Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case in 1954 in which the United States Supreme Court explicitly outlawed de jure racial segregation of public education facilities. During the civil rights protests of the 1960s, LDF represented and provided counsel for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., among others.[6]
Prominent cases
1930s
- 1938: Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada invalidated state laws that refused 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.)
1940s
- 1940: Chambers v. Florida overturned the convictions — based on coerced confessions — of four young black defendants accused of murdering an elderly white man.
1950s
- 1950: McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents ruled against practices of segregation within a formerly all-white graduate school insofar as they interfered with meaningful classroom instruction and interaction with other students.
- 1950: Sweatt v. Painter ruled against a Texas attempt to circumvent Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada with a hastily established inferior law school for black students.
- 1953: Barrows v. Jackson reaffirmed Shelley v. Kraemer, preventing state courts from enforcing restrictive covenants.
1960s
- 1965: Williams v. Wallace was a federal court order allowing a voting-rights march in Alabama, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., which had previously been stopped twice by state police.
- 1967: Quarles v. Philip Morris overturned the practice of "departmental seniority", which had forced non-white workers to give up their seniority rights when they transferred to better jobs in previously white-only departments.
1970s
- 1971: Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education upheld intra-district busing to desegregate public schools. However, this matter would continue in the courts for three more decades; in the most recent as of 2004 related cases, the U.S. Supreme Court in April 2002 refused to review Cappachione v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education and Belk v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, in which lower courts had ruled in favor of the school district.
- 1971: Clay v. United States struck down Muhammad Ali's conviction for refusing to report for military service.
- 1971: Griggs v. Duke Power Company[1] ruled that tests for employment or promotion that produce different outcomes for blacks and whites are prima facie to be presumed discriminatory, and must measure aptitude for the job in question or they cannot be used.
- 1971: Phillips v. Martin Marietta ruled that employers may not refuse to hire women with pre-school-aged children unless the same standards are applied to men.
- 1972: Furman v. Georgia ruled that the death penalty as then applied in 37 states violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment because there are inadequate standards to guide judges and juries making the decision which defendants will receive a sentence of death. However, under revised laws, U.S. executions resumed in 1977.
- 1973: Norwood v. Harrison banned government provision of school books to segregated private schools established to allow whites to avoid public school desegregation.
- 1973: Keyes v. School District No. 1, Denver addressed deliberate de facto school segregation, ruling that where deliberate segregation was shown to have affected a substantial part of a school system, the entire district must ordinarily be desegregated.
- 1973: Adams v. Richardson required federal education officials to enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which requires that state universities, public schools, and other institutions that receive federal money may not discriminate by race.
- 1973: McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green ruled that courts should hear cases of alleged unlawful discrimination based on the "minimal showing" that a qualified non-white applied unsuccessfully for a job that either remained open or was filled by a white person.
- 1977: Coker v. Georgia banned capital punishment for rape, the most racially disproportionate application of the death penalty.
1980s
- 1980: Luévano v. Campbell struck down Federal government use of a written test for hiring into nearly 200 entry-level positions because the test disproportionately disqualified African Americans and Latinos.
- 1989: Cook v. Ochsner: in a belated coda to Simkins v. Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital, a District Court approved a settlement ending a New Orleans hospital's discrimination in emergency room treatment and patient admissions. The settlement also provided increased opportunities for African-American physicians to practice at the hospital.
1990s
- 1995: McKennon v. Nashville Banner: The Supreme Court refused to allow employers to defeat otherwise valid claims of job discrimination by relying on facts they did not know until after the discriminatory decision had been made.
- 1996: Sheff v. O'Neill: The Supreme Court of Connecticut, in view of the disparities between Hartford public schools and schools in the surrounding counties, found the state liable for maintaining racial and ethnic isolation, and ordered the legislative and executive branches to propose a remedy.
- 1997: Robinson v. Shell Oil Company determined that a former employee may sue his ex-employer for retaliating against him (by giving a bad job reference) after he filed discrimination charges over his termination.
2000s
- 2000: Rideau v. Louisiana threw out the 28-year-old, third conviction of Wilbert Rideau for murder because of discrimination in the composition of the Grand Jury that originally indicted him more than 40 years earlier (As of 2004 he is still facing a fourth trial).
- 2000: Smith v. United States was resolved when President Clinton commuted the sentence of Kemba Smith. Smith was a young African-American mother whose abusive, domineering boyfriend led her to play a peripheral role (she did not sell drugs but was aware of the selling) in a conspiracy to obtain and distribute crack cocaine. She had been sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 24½ years in prison even though she was a first-time offender.
- 2003: Gratz v. Bollinger the Supreme Court ordered that the University of Michigan change its policies by removing racial quotas in the form of "points" but allowed them to continue to utilize race as a factor in admissions, which took race into account in order to admit a diverse entering class of students.
Prominent LDF Attorneys
- Derrick A. Bell, Jr., first tenured African American Harvard Law School professor and preeminent Critical Race Theorist.
- Robert L. Carter, was an assistant general counsel of and later the general counsel of LDF. He won numerous cases on LDF's behalf at the Supreme Court. [8]
- Julius L. Chambers, third director-counsel of LDF and first African American Editor-in-Chief of University of North Carolina Law Review.
- Drew S. Days, III, the first African-American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. United States Solicitor General from 1993 to 1996.
- Marian Wright Edelman, 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.[9]
- Jack Greenberg, former Columbia College Dean and LDF's second director-counsel from 1961 to 1984.
- Lani Guinier, voting rights advocate and first African American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law.
- Elaine Jones, successfully argued Furman v. Georgia and was LDF's third director-counsel and first female director-counsel. [10]
- Bill Lann Lee, first Chinese-American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.[11]
- Thurgood Marshall, LDF founder and first African American Supreme Court Justice.
- Constance Baker Motley, first African American woman to argue before the Supreme Court and to be appointed a Federal Court Judge.
- James Nabrit, helped to successfully argue Brown v. Board and was an LDF attorney from 1959 – 1989.
- Deval Patrick, first African American Governor of Massachusetts.
- Constance L. Rice, civil rights attorney and activist.
References
- ^ NAACP Legal Defense Fund - Issues
- ^ NAACP Legal Defense Fund - News
- ^ NAACP Legal Defense Fund - News
- ^ NAACP Legal Defense Fund - News
- ^ NAACP Legal Defense Fund - News
- ^ NAACP Legal Defense Fund - News
- ^ http://www.naacpldf.org/timeline.aspx, The official site provides a Flash-based history of the major cases taken on by LDF. This article has taken extensive portions of this page with the permission of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., the copyright holder of that material.
- ^ Robert L. Carter
- ^ Mississippi Freedom Summer
- ^ 1997-Elaine Jones
- ^ Asian-American Is Named To Top Civil Rights Position - New York Times
External links
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