NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

Abbreviation	LDF
Motto	Defend Educate Empower
Formation	February 12, 1940 (1940-02-12)
Type	Non-profit organization
Purpose	LDF seeks structural changes to expand democracy, eliminate disparities, and achieve racial justice in a society that fulfills the promise of equality for all Americans.
Headquarters	40 Rector Street, 5th floor New York City, New York, 10006 U.S.
Region served	United States
President and Director-Counsel	Janai Nelson
Website	www.naacpldf.org

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

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

Janai Nelson currently serves as the eighth President and Director-Counsel, since March 2022. 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).

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 that have replicated its organizational model in order to promote equality for Asian-Americans, Latinos, and women in the United States." LDF has also been involved in "the campaign for human rights throughout the world, including in South Africa, Canada, Brazil, and elsewhere."

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.

Areas of activity

• Litigation
• Advocacy
• Educational outreach
• Policy research and monitoring legislation
• Coalition-building
• Provides scholarships for exceptional African-American students.

Areas of concern

• Education
  • Affirmative action
  • Desegregation
• Political Participation
  • Voting rights
  • Felony disfranchisement
• Economic access
  • Employment discrimination
  • Environmental justice
  • Fair housing
• Criminal justice
  • Opposition to the death penalty
  • Fourth Amendment
  • Sixth Amendment

Creation and separation from the NAACP

The board of directors of the NAACP created the Legal Defense Fund in 1940 specifically for tax purposes. In 1957, LDF was completely separated from the NAACP and given its own independent board and staff. 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.

At times, this separation has created considerable confusion in the eyes and minds of the public. In the 1980s, the NAACP unsuccessfully sued LDF for trademark infringement. 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."

Well-known cases

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 "the legal arm of the civil rights movement" and provided counsel for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., among others.

Prominent LDF alumni

A number of prominent attorneys have been affiliated with LDF over the years, including Barack Obama who was an LDF cooperating attorney. 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.

• Debo Adegbile, 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.
• Derrick A. Bell Jr., the first tenured African-American Harvard Law School professor, professor at New York University School of Law, and preeminent Critical Race Theorist.
• Victor Allen Bolden, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut.
• Jacqueline A. Berrien, 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.
• Jocelyn Benson 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.
• Robert L. Carter, 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.
• Julius L. Chambers, third director-counsel of LDF. He argued Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, which upheld the constitutionality of busing to achieve school desegregation.
• Kristen Clarke, 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.
• U. W. Clemon, 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.
• William Thaddeus Coleman Jr., President emeritus of LDF's board and Secretary of Transportation in the administration of President Gerald Ford.
• Drew S. Days, III, 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.
• 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.
• Jean E. Fairfax, organizer, educator; creator of the division of legal information and community service and director of that division from 1965 to 1984
• Jack Greenberg 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 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.
• Lani Guinier, voting rights advocate and the first African-American woman tenured professor at Harvard Law.
• Vanita Gupta, 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.
• Eric Holder, 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.
• Elaine Jones, successfully argued Furman v. Georgia. LDF's fourth director-counsel and the first female director-counsel.
• Pamela S. Karlan, 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.
• David E. Kendall, 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.
• Bill Lann Lee, the first Chinese-American Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.
• Thurgood Marshall, 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.
• Constance Baker Motley, the first African-American woman to be appointed a Federal Court Judge and the first to argue before the Supreme Court.
• Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, 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.
• James Nabrit III was an LDF attorney from 1959–1989.
• Dennis Parker, the executive director of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice. 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.
• Deval Patrick, the first African-American Governor of Massachusetts and only the second African American to be elected governor of any state.
• Cornelia Pillard, a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
• Reince Priebus, 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.
• Constance L. Rice, civil rights activist and founder of the Advancement Project.
• Spottswood William Robinson III, the first African-American appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
• 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.
• Christina Swarns, the Executive Director of the Innocence Project. 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.
• Holly A. Thomas, a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
• Maya Wiley, an MSNBC Legal Analyst, civil rights activist, lawyer, and 2021 mayoral candidate for New York City and the Henry Cohen Professor of Urban Policy and Management at The New School. Wiley is also the former board chair of the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, and former counsel to the Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio.