Sherrilyn Ifill
Sherrilyn Ifill | |
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President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund | |
In office 2012–2022 | |
Preceded by | John Payton |
Succeeded by | Janai Nelson |
Personal details | |
Born | December 17, 1962 Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. |
Relatives | Gwen Ifill (cousin) |
Education | Vassar College (BA) New York University (JD) |
Sherrilyn Ifill (born December 17, 1962) is an American lawyer and the Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights at Howard University. She is a law professor and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.[1] She was the Legal Defense Fund's seventh president since Thurgood Marshall founded the organization in 1940. Ifill is a nationally recognized expert on voting rights and judicial selection.[2] In 2021, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on its annual Time 100 list.
Early life and education
[edit]Sherrilyn Ifill was born on December 17, 1962, in Baltimore, Maryland[3] to Lester and Myrtle. She is the youngest of 10 children.[4] Her mother passed away when she was 6 years old.[4] She graduated from Hillcrest High School.[5] Ifill has a B.A. from Vassar College and a J.D. from New York University School of Law.[1]
She and the late PBS NewsHour anchor Gwen Ifill were first cousins. Their family immigrated to the U.S. from Barbados,[6] with Sherrilyn's and Gwen's fathers, who were brothers, both becoming African Methodist Episcopal ministers.[7]
Career
[edit]While in law school, Ifill interned for Judge A. Leon Higginbotham Jr. the first summer and at the United Nations Centre for Human Rights the second summer.[2] Her first job out of law school was a one-year fellowship with the American Civil Liberties Union in New York.[8] She then served as assistant counsel at the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund, litigating Voting Rights Act cases including the landmark Houston Lawyers' Association v. Attorney General of Texas.[8] In 1993, she joined the faculty of the University of Maryland Law School, where she taught for two decades.[9][10] She is the author of On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century,[11][12] a 2008 finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction.[13] In 2013, she became the Legal Defense Fund's president and director-counsel.[14] She is the Steven and Maureen Klinsky Visiting Professor of Practice for Leadership and Progress at Harvard Law School, 2023-2024.[15]
Ifill regularly appears in the media for her expertise on topics like affirmative action,[16][17] policing,[18] judicial nominees,[19] and the Supreme Court.[20] Ifill has announced that she will step down from the role of president and director-counsel in the spring of 2022, to be replaced by Janai Nelson, currently the associate director-counsel at LDF.[21] She joined the Ford Foundation as a Senior Fellow in June 2022.[22] Her writing appears in The New York Review of Books, Salon, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.[23][24][25][26][27]
In June 2023, Ifill was appointed Howard Law School's inaugural Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., Esq. Endowed Chair in Civil Rights. In 2024, she will launch the 14th Amendment Center for Law & Democracy.[28][29]
Personal life
[edit]Ifill is married to Ivo Knobloch.[4] They have three children.[3]
Honors and awards
[edit]In 2016, Ifill won the Society of American Law Teachers Great Teacher Award.[30]
Ifill was an American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellow in 2019.[31] In 2020, Glamour magazine gave her a Woman of the Year award, calling her a "civil rights superhero."[32] In 2021, Ifill was included on the Time 100, Time's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.[33]
She was selected as the New York State Bar Association 2023 Gold Medal Award recipient, which cited her history as a "tireless warrior for civil rights".[34]
She was awarded the Brandeis Medal in 2023.[35][36]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b Thompson, Krissah (January 22, 2013). "Sherrilyn Ifill is to be head of NAACP legal defense and educational fund". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ a b "Alumnus/Alumna of the Month | NYU School of Law". www.law.nyu.edu. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
- ^ a b "Sherrilyn Ifill's Biography". The HistoryMakers. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
- ^ a b c Thompson, Krissah (January 22, 2013). "Sherrilyn Ifill is to be head of NAACP legal defense and educational fund". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
- ^ "Shaping the Civil Rights Discourse: Sherrilyn Ifill '84 - Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly". vq.vassar.edu. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
- ^ Alcindor, Yamiche (November 19, 2016). "Thousands of Mourners Celebrate Gwen Ifill's Tenacity and Grace". The New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2017.
- ^ Fineman, Howard (November 20, 2016). "Gwen Ifill's Funeral Was A Revival Meeting For America". HuffPost.
- ^ a b Okpalaoka, Ugonna (November 19, 2012). "Sherrilyn Ifill named head of NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund". The Grio. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Edney, Hazel Trice (November 26, 2012). "NAACP Legal Defense Fund Names Sherrilyn Ifill Next President". Politic365. Archived from the original on April 10, 2018. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ "Closing Statements" (interview with Sherrilyn Ifill). NYU Law Magazine. 2013. Retrieved April 11, 2020.
- ^ Levy, Peter B. "On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century." The Journal of Southern History 75.2 (2009): 474.
- ^ "Nonfiction Book Review: On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century by Sherrilyn A. Ifill, Author Beacon Press (MA) $25.95 (204p) ISBN 978-0-8070-0987-1". Publishers Weekly. January 29, 2007. Retrieved January 13, 2021.
- ^ "The Arena: Sherrilyn Ifill Bio". Politico. Archived from the original on May 27, 2009. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ "Sherrilyn Ifill | LDF President and Director Counsel". Legal Defense Fund. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ "Sherrilyn Ifill". Harvard Law School.
- ^ Hefling, Kimberly; Gerstein, Josh (June 23, 2016). "Supreme Court upholds college affirmative action program". Politico. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Brown, Emma; Douglas-Gabriel, Danielle (June 23, 2016). "Affirmative action advocates shocked – and thrilled – by Supreme Court's ruling in University of Texas case". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Rubenstein, Samuel (November 21, 2014). "BPR Interview: Sherrilyn Ifill". Brown Political Review. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Burke, Lauren Victoria (March 18, 2016). "Garland Nomination: Black Advocates Want Him Vetted". NBC News. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ Barnes, Robert (May 1, 2016). "Scalia's death affecting next term, too? Pace of accepted cases at Supreme Court slows". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 15, 2016.
- ^ "Sherrilyn Ifill to Step Down After Nearly a Decade of LDF Leadership; Longtime Deputy Janai Nelson to Lead LDF" (PDF). NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. LDF Media. November 17, 2021. Retrieved November 17, 2021.
- ^ "Sherrilyn Ifill joins Ford Foundation as a Senior Fellow". Ford Foundation. June 21, 2022. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ Ifill, Sherrilyn. "When Diversity Matters | Sherrilyn Ifill". ISSN 0028-7504. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ "Sherrilyn Ifill's Articles at Salon.com". www.salon.com. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ Ifill, Sherrilyn (September 22, 2016). "Tackle racial bias in policing at the root". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ Ifill, Sherrilyn A. (March 2, 2022). "Opinion | Who's Afraid of Ketanji Brown Jackson?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ Ifill, Sherrilyn A. (February 12, 2021). "Opinion | Lawyers Enabled Trump's Worst Abuses". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved January 12, 2023.
- ^ "Civil Rights Lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill Appointed Inaugural Vernon Jordan Endowed Chair in Civil Rights". The Dig at Howard University. June 21, 2023. Retrieved June 21, 2023.
- ^ Leingang, Rachel (January 7, 2024). "Sherrilyn Ifill on a Trump win: 'We will cease to be a democracy'". The Guardian. Retrieved January 7, 2024.
- ^ Society of American Law Teachers (May 16, 2016). "Update on SALT Activities." Retrieved February 19, 2017.
- ^ "2019 Fellows and International Honorary Members with their affiliations at the time of election". members.amacad.org. Retrieved March 9, 2020.
- ^ John-John Williams IV. "Sherrilyn Ifill Honored as Civil Rights Superhero." Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2020, p. A2.
- ^ Specker, Lawrence (September 15, 2021). "Time's '100 most influential' list includes trio with Alabama ties". AL.com. Retrieved November 10, 2021.
- ^ "NYSBA Selects Prominent Civil Rights Attorney Sherrilyn Ifill for Association’s Highest Honor" David Alexander, New York State Bar Association. January 6, 2023. Retrieved January 8, 2023.
- ^ "Sherrilyn Ifill to Receive 2023 Brandeis Medal".
- ^ "Louis D. Brandeis School of Law". Archived from the original on October 24, 2022.
External links
[edit]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- 1962 births
- Living people
- 20th-century American lawyers
- 21st-century American lawyers
- 20th-century American women lawyers
- 21st-century American women lawyers
- 20th-century African-American women
- 21st-century African-American women
- 20th-century African-American lawyers
- 21st-century African-American lawyers
- American people of Barbadian descent
- Hillcrest High School alumni (Queens)
- Lawyers from Queens, New York
- New York University School of Law alumni
- People associated with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
- People from Jamaica, Queens
- University of Maryland, Baltimore faculty
- Vassar College alumni