Published on: Monday, January 18, 2021

With that whopping gift from a single anonymous donor, the fund plans to put 50 students through law schools around the country. In return, they must commit to eight years of racial justice work in the South, starting with a two-year post-graduate fellowship in a civil rights organization. The fund set an application deadline of February 16, giving this fall's incoming first-year law school students less than a month to make their cases for the opportunity.

“The donor came to us,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The donor very much wanted to support the development of civil rights lawyers in the South. Ultimately, their work could focus on voting rights; addressing injustice in the criminal justice system; housing and educational disparities; and other cases that emerge from the region.

The LDF chose Martin Luther King Jr. Day to announce the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, named for the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and for Constance Baker Motley, who was an LDF attorney a few years out of Columbia University Law School when she wrote the initial complaint that led to the court's Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing racial segregation in public schools. She became the first Black female federal judge.

The program will support ten incoming students for the next five years, through law school, summer internships, a two-year fellowship program and special training sessions.