NAACP Legal Defense Fund : Defend, Educate, Empower

Skip to Navigation
"The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is simply the best civil rights law firm in American history." -- President Obama

News Updates

  • NYT: Robert L. Carter, an Architect of School Desegregation, Dies at 94

    1/04/12
    Source: 
    The New York Times

    Robert L. Carter, a former federal judge in New York who, as a lawyer, was a leading strategist and a persuasive voice in the legal assault on racial segregation in 20th-century America, died on Tuesday morning in Manhattan. He was 94.

    The cause was complications of a stroke, said his son John W. Carter, a justice of the New York Supreme Court in the Bronx.

  • Judge Robert L. Carter, 1917 - 2012

    1/03/12
    Source: 
    LDF

    Judge Robert L. CarterThe NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund mourns the passing of Judge Robert L. Carter, a true giant of the struggle for racial justice and equality. Judge Carter lived an extraordinary life. A graduate of Howard Law School, he was one of the original members of the legal team Thurgood Marshall gathered at the Legal Defense Fund in the early 1940s.

  • LDF Successfully Defends Lower Court Ruling in Historic School Desegregation Case

    12/28/11

    New York, NY -- On December 28, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit affirmed key aspects of the lower court’s decision in Little Rock School District v. Lorene Joshua.

  • Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Journey Through the American Death Penalty System

    12/16/11
    Source: 
    Open Society Foundations

    Mumia Abu-Jamal’s journey through the American death penalty system began on December 9, 1981, when he was arrested and charged with capital murder in the shooting death of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Six months later, he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death for this crime. In the years that followed, Abu-Jamal’s case attracted national and international attention; recorded remarkable victories and painful losses; and came to symbolize the failure of the American capital punishment system.

  • Life Sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal

    12/07/11
    Source: 
    NAACP Legal Defense Fund

    (New York, NY) -- Today, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office announced that it will not seek another death sentence for Mumia Abu-Jamal.  Pennsylvania law now requires Mr. Abu-Jamal to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for his controversial 1982 murder conviction in the shooting death of a police officer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.