By Theodore M. Shaw
He brought an energy and commitment to his work that was rooted in his unabashed commitment to improving the lives of African-American people.

By John Payton
I realize when I say we’re a very racially diverse democracy, sometimes I say it in a way that makes it sound like a triumph; in fact, it’s a challenge.

By The Editors
Early in “Thurgood,” the one-man play about Thurgood Marshall starring Laurence Fishburne now at Washington’s famed John F. Kennedy Center, Marshall recalls that during one of his first nights as an undergraduate at Pennsylvania’s historically black Lincoln University, he and several friends had a minor encounter in the nearby town with the kind of petty racism that was pervasive everywhere in America.

By The Editors
John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. was awarded the Charles Hamilton Houston Medallion of Merit on Saturday, May 8, by the Washington Bar Association at its gala Law Day Dinner in the nation’s capitol.

By The Editors
“These are the lawyers who’ve defined a decade.”

So begins an article in the current issue of the National Law Journal announcing its list of “The Decade’s Most Influential Lawyers.”

Jacqueline Berrien, Associate Director Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, is being appointed as Chair of the EEOC.

By The Editors
Thursday, November 19, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions conducted a hearing on the nomination of Jacqueline A. Berrien, Associate Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to be the new Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

By The Editors
“There has never been a year like this past year in America.”

Those were the opening words of the brief speech with which John Payton, President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) welcomed the nearly 800 guests at LDF’s 23rd annual National Equal Justice Awards Dinner in New York on November 4; and that straightforward declarative sentence indeed seemed to capture an entire twelve months’ sense of excitement—and determination—that permeated the buoyant gathering.

By Stacey Patton
I had a chance to steal a few moments with former NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) President and Director-counsel Theodore M. Shaw after the September 18 symposium on the Supreme Court’s case selection process held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

By The Editors
There’s a rumor floating around the corridors of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund that Michael Bagley, the longtime director of its scholarships program, and Judith Sloan, who’s held several high-level positions in its Development Department since 1981, have retired.

But no one wants to believe it.