The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) will celebrate its 70th anniversary at its 24th annual National Equal Justice Award Dinner (NEJAD) on Thursday, November 4, 2010 at the Hilton New York Hotel and Towers in New York.

Last evening, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rendered a decision in Farrakhan v. Gregoire that leaves a racially discriminatory disfranchisement law in place.

By The Editors
They’re a people who’ve endured centuries of enslavement, and even after their emancipation in the nineteenth century, endured decades of discrimination whose effects are visible and felt down to the present day.

In broad outline, those words describe the great part of black Americans’ history. But it also describes the history – and the present – of the Roma, an Indo- European people commonly and often derisively called gypsies.

The changing face of America raises important questions, especially in electoral politics. Are minorities fairly represented at all levels of politics? Do we have an equal voice, and an equal opportunity to elect representatives who consider our needs and interests?

By The Editors
“I have often been asked how a white lawyer from the Bronx came to a career devoted to the rights of black people, a career where he would work mostly with black lawyers and leaders. There is one simple answer and another, deeper one.”

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund will argue in an appeals court in San Francisco today that the state of Washington’s denial of voting rights to convicted felons is rooted in discrimination. By John Payton The most fundamental political right in our society is the right to vote. Today (Sept. 21) the U.S. Court of Appeals [...]

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.