Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund updated its report in opposition to the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be Attorney General of the United States with documentary materials. LDF has engaged in an extensive, painstaking and thorough review of its vast archives, and updated the report that it released yesterday with attachments that include:

  • A letter written by Coretta Scott King, the late wife of renowned civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., opposing Sessions’ nomination to a federal district court judgeship in 1986. Mrs. King wrote powerfully about Sessions’ targeting of voting rights champions and Dr. King’s colleagues Spencer Hogue, Albert Turner and Evelyn Turner.
  • An affidavit from former LDF President and Director-Counsel Theodore M. Shaw, who led the organization’s desegregation practice. Regarding the Davis v. Mobile desegregation case, Mr. Shaw explains that “I have no recollection, knowledge, information, and belief of Mr. Sessions working directly on the Davis case or working directly with me or any other LDF attorney while I was involved with the Davis case.”
  • A chapter from Harvard law professor Lani Guinier’s 1995 book, Lift Every Voice, in which she describes in detail the targeting of the Marion Three and the subsequent effects on chilling Black political participation for years to come.

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Founded in 1940, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the nation’s first civil and human rights law organization and has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or LDF.

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