Black America’s Invisible People: A Conversation with Michael Bagley,
Director of the Legal Defense Fund Scholarship Program:

Since 1963 the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) has helped promising students pursue higher education. From a fellowship program that sponsored two students’ pursuit of graduate education, it has grown into a program that has helped more than 6,000 students graduate from a broad range of America’s colleges and universities. During the 2008 – 2009 academic year the program awarded scholarships totaling $440,000 to 103 undergraduates attending 67 colleges and universities and 56 law students at 27 law schools. Michael Bagley, director of the program for 17 years, recently spoke with the editors of TheDefendersOnline.com

G. Michael Bagley, LDF Director of Scholarship Programs, center, with law students ShayLyn Cochran, left, the LDF Shearman & Sterling Scholar, and Sheila Adams, right, the LDF Civil Rights Scholar, two of 56 law students who received LDF Law Scholarships for 2008-2009.

The Editors: Why was the scholarship program started? Has its purpose changed over the years?

Bagley:  The LDF Law Program began as a post-graduate fellowship program in 1963. Its purpose was to help increase the number of Black lawyers practicing in the South — this was 1963, remember, when the need for lawyers to defend civil rights activists and to press legal challenges to segregation was greater than ever.  It paid for law books, rent for their offices, and provided a stipend to the young law school graduates it supported. That first year there were just two Fellows: Marian Wright Edelman, who went on to found and lead the Children’s Defense Fund, and Julius Chambers, who served as LDF President and Director-Counsel from 1975 to 1984.

That effort proved too expensive to maintain, however, and in 1972 it was transformed into a scholarship program to help Black students get through law school itself.  Over time, the Law Program’s purpose expanded to increasing the number of Black lawyers practicing generally.

The Editors: When and why was the program aiding undergraduates added?

Bagley: That decision, which established the Herbert Lehman Fund, aiding undergraduates was a means of making real the integration of predominantly white colleges – which, of course, LDF had played a critical role in bringing about in principle. When that principle was firmly established, it became clear there had to be financial aid available to those African-American students who were going to be admitted to these colleges.

Much later, in the 1990s when most predominantly White colleges had achieved some degree of integration, we then started to focus on increasing the diversity of the colleges’ undergraduate ranks. Through all the changes, however, we’ve kept our focus on aiding students who are outstanding personally and scholastically.

The Editors:  What is the average amount of scholarship aid that LDF provides each student?

Bagley: The amount is the same to all the students in each of the categories — $2,000 each for undergrads, and $3,000 each for law students. The awards have been frozen at that level since the early 1990s. Of course, that’s a long time to have the awards remain at that level – as the costs of attending college and law school have increased astronomically. What our awards do is provide students with funds for books and other class materials, and money for travel that the school doesn’t provide.

We are constantly fighting to make sure that the amount of money that we do give goes directly to the student and not to the school, because what the schools will try to do is reduce the amount of aid from the school by a commensurate amount.  In an effort to forestall our recipients getting caught in that trap, our award letter states that they must use the funds to either reduce their tuition or their cost of attending or their loan expenses. Our funds can only help a little because college and law school costs are so great, but they do help.

The Editors: Speaking of academic quality, we  noticed that among the law students LDF has aided this year, there are at least six who graduated summa cum laude from their undergraduate institutions – in such fields as Mechanical Engineering, History, Justice Studies and English and African American Studies.  Is this high quality of performance unusual in students LDF sponsors?

Bagley: No, it is not unusual at all. While the grades of the students LDF sponsors are distributed along the grading curve, it has become more commonplace in recent years for a number of the students LDF sponsors to gain highest honors. In one sense, that’s to be expected from a corps of highly motivated students: 98 percent of our undergraduate scholarship recipients gain their degree, and that figure is slightly higher for our law students.

The Editors: Does that mean that in judging applicants for undergraduate scholarship aid, the LDF committee (largely comprised of a small group of LDF staff attorneys and a few individuals outside LDF) is placing more emphasis on academic achievement than it has in the past?

Bagley:  No. In terms of sponsoring students for both the undergraduate and law-student programs, the (determination) committee has always looked for students with outstanding academic backgrounds. But our major emphasis has been to help students who’ve shown a major ongoing commitment to public service.

We pore over their community service activities and the recommendations they get from teachers and people in the community for evidence of significant leadership potential. It’s very important to us that applicants want to pursue public interest work and/or civil rights law.

We don’t look for specific numbers in terms of test scores or grade point averages. We put more weight on the activities they’ve been involved in. We’ve found that students who want to better the world around them are also conscientious and achievement-oriented in their academic work.  The scholarship program’s alumni continue those patterns of achievement that first drew us to them throughout their lives.

The Editors: What are some of the ways this achievement pattern shows itself in the post-college or law school careers of  LDF scholarship alumni?

Bagley: We have determined that nearly 80 LDF scholarship alumni are municipal, state or federal judges; and that 18 percent of all Black federal judges got through law school with funds from our program. There are five current or former members of Congress who are LDF scholarship alumni, and eleven former LDF scholarship students are current or former state senators and representatives. And there are dozens upon dozens who are involved either full-time or part-time in various kinds of public service work

The Editors: Does it stand to reason that, given the numbers of students LDF has helped get through law school, there would be this many LDF alumni who are members of Congress, and federal and state and city judges?

Bagley: I don’t think so. I think it is unusual for a program like ours that gives small scholarships. It strikes me that the real source of our alumni’s outstanding records in those fields lies in the primary benefit scholarship recipients derive from being a part of LDF: the opportunity to supplement their legal education by having access to a cohort of lawyers actively working in civil rights law.

The Editors: What good does that do?

Bagley: It adds to the desire these law students had when they entered law school – the desire to become civil rights or public interest lawyers. And because of that, and because of the students who have that in mind, it’s added to the ability of those students to work in the public sphere. These are students who want to do that kind of work.

The Editors: What are the sources of LDF’s scholarship funds?

Bagley: Our funds come in the form of donations from the public. We’re also able to draw on our scholarship endowment, which was established in 1972. We do need to continually build up the endowment and raise more scholarship money from the public so that we can both award students more money and expand the number of students we can fund on an annual basis.

The Editors: How big is the endowment?

Bagley: Our endowment is $2.5 million.

The Editors: How is the health of the scholarship program? That is, given the current economic climate, are donations keeping pace with past years?

Bagley: We continue to secure funding from generous donors.  But the economic crisis could dramatically affect giving to the scholarship program. Giving has fluctuated from time to time. Now, the situation could become very serious for us and for other sources of scholarship aid for students. The schools are being squeezed by costs, too. The result could be a sharp decline in college- and law school-going by Black and other students of color because they just can’t get enough funds to make it work.

The Editors: Are you experiencing a decline in applications for scholarship aid?

Bagley: Yes. The number of applicants for both scholarship programs has declined in recent years. In 2002, we got 4,445 requests for undergraduate scholarships applications and 808 completed applications. This year, we have received 1,982 requests for the scholarship forms, and 357 filled out and sent in their applications. The comparable numbers for the law school program have always been smaller, but they show the same downward trajectory. To me, this indicates that more students are finding the financing they need to attend college or law school isn’t adding up and they’re deciding they can’t go at all.

The Editors: Given that gloomy picture, what’s the future of the scholarship program?

Bagley: To put it bluntly, we need to raise more money. Our students need more. It’s not good that we’re only able to give out small amounts every year, even as the costs of education keep rising. Somehow, we must expand our efforts to help students who want to go to college and on to law school because this investment will always contribute to LDF’s mission. We need to expand our efforts to help students who want to go to graduate school, particularly Black students, because it’s much more difficult for them to get funding.  We have to find a way to accomplish both those goals.