NAACP fund’s $40M to aid law students

ATLANTA — The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund began a $40 million scholarship program on Monday to support a new generation of civil rights lawyers dedicated to pursuing racial justice across the South.

The New York-based fund chose Martin Luther King Day to announce the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, named for the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and for Constance Baker Motley, who was a legal defense fund attorney just a few years out of Columbia University Law School when she wrote the initial complaint that led to the court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing racial segregation in public schools. She later became the first Black woman federal judge.

Supported by a gift from a single anonymous donor, the fund plans to put 50 students through law schools around the country. In return, they must commit to eight years of racial justice work in the South, starting with a two-year postgraduate fellowship in a civil rights organization.

“The donor came to us,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The donor very much wanted to support the development of civil rights lawyers in the South.”

The legal defense fund has been backing civil rights lawyers ever since its founding by Marshall in 1940, during an era when Black people rarely had effective legal representation and Black students were turned away from southern universities. It also funded the creation of Black and interracial law firms in several Southern states in the 1960s and 1970s, and has built a network of lawyers since then.

The fund set an application deadline of Feb. 16 for this fall’s incoming first-year law school students.