Choosing Sherrilyn Ifill, President and Director–Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., to address the large luncheon crowd at the Eighth Circuit Judicial Conference last Thursday was a no-brainer.
Yes, she is well equipped to tackle the ramifications of the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
As the seventh person to hold her position, she has worked her way up the ladder at the organization that is “totally separate from the NAACP,” after graduating from Vassar College and New York University School of Law. She argued the landmark Voting Rights Act case Houston Lawyers’ Association v. Attorney General of Texas, in which the Supreme Court held that judicial elections are covered by the provisions of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
In 1993 she joined the faculty of the University of Maryland School of Law, where, in addition to teaching Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law, she continued to litigate and consult on a broad range of civil rights cases, while grooming the next generation of civil rights lawyers. She emerged as a highly regarded national civil rights strategist. Her critically acclaimed book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century, reflects her lifelong engagement in and analysis of issues of race and American public life.
“We [at the LDF] work incredibly hard at what we consider – each and every one of us – our life’s work.”
Read the fulll article in the Omaha Daily Record.
