Courtesy of The Root
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. has a new leader, and she’s already planning to position the nation’s premier civil rights law organization to make as great a contribution to civil rights in the 21st century as it did in previous eras.
The organization’s board of directors announced this week that attorney and law professor Sherrilyn Ifill will be the LDF’s next president and director counsel. She’ll be taking a leave of absence from her post at the University of Maryland School of Law to shape LDF’s social-justice agenda in January 2012.
Perhaps best known for its role in the landmark school-desegregation case Brown v. Board of Education, LDF has worked for decades to expand political participation, forestall injustice in the criminal-justice system, broaden avenues of educational opportunity, defend economic freedoms and further the nomination and appointment of fair-minded and diverse judges through impact litigation and advocacy.
