[48] She received the Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club in 2015. Ifill graduated from Vassar College in 1984 with her B.A. In this role, she led the litigation proceedings for Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 and Fisher v. University of Texas Austin in 2016. An insensitive Amtrak conductor tried to boot Sherrilyn Ifill, the director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, from her seat on a Baltimore-bound train she boarding in Washington, D.C., Frida Ivos wife Sherilyn has an estimated net worth of around $1.5 million as of 2022. "[26], "No one's ever assumed a white reporter can't cover a white candidate. Her successor will be current associate director counsel Janai Nelson. [42] The following year, she received the 17th Fred Friendly First Amendment Award from Quinnipiac University. Sherrilyn Ifill was interviewed by The HistoryMakers on August 29, 2016. Ifill served on the boards of the Harvard Institute of Politics, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the Museum of Television and Radio, and the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. Who is Running Back in the National Football Leagues Former Football Player Ron Dayne Wife? Plus, in the wake of this week's primaries, [] Stephanie Duprey Leaving WHEC-TV: Where Is the Rochester Reporter Going? Ifill graduated from Vassar College in 1984 with her B.A. In 1999, she became the first African-American woman to host a nationally televised U.S. public affairs program with Washington Week in Review. "On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-First Century. Ford Foundation awards fellowship to former President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and prolific scholar to continue . American lawyer who is known for being president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Sherrilyn Ifill and Janai Nelson in action in Selma, Alabama. Ifill was a political analyst and moderated the 2004 and 2008 vice-presidential debates. Updated: January 26, 2019 Sherrilyn got an award for the Society of American Law Teachers Great Teacher Award in 2016. [28] In 2020, Glamour magazine gave her a Woman of the Year award, calling her a "civil rights superhero. At critical moments during national political and civil rights crises, Ifills voice and vision have powerfully influenced our national dialogue. For more info and to register: news.northwestern.edu Civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill will headline MLK Commemoration [50], Ifill received more than 20 honorary doctorates from universities around the world, including Georgetown University,[51] Smith College,[52] Bates College[53] and Skidmore College. Rog and Bee WalkerINSTITUTE. ", Society of American Law Teachers (May 16, 2016). Copyright 2023 NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Sherrilyn Ifill was born on December 17, 1962, also in New York. Shaping the Civil Rights Discourse: Sherrilyn Ifill '84 By Gary M. Stern Growing up in the hardscrabble streets of Jamaica, Queens, Sherrilyn Ifill '84 was raised in a family of 10 children. She served as President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund from 2013 until earlier this year. Sherrilyn Ifill, who serves as the seventh president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, will be recognized with the Radcliffe Medal on May 27. The decision ensured that Black and Hispanic voters have the same protections when voting for state trial court judges that they have when voting for other offices, extending protections found in the Voting Rights Act. The same, of course, could be said of Ifill herself. Rashad Robinson, president of Color of Change, Prince Edward County, Virginia, chose to close its public schools. She has even announced that she will step down from the role of president and director-counsel in the spring of 2022. Sherrilyn Ifill @ifilljustice It seems important that the immediate past President of the United States and the likely Republican nominee for President in 2024 has called for suspension of the Constitution. Sherrilyn Ifill wears her own bracelets. [36][37], Ifill was awarded the Women in Film and Video Women of Vision Award in 2000. This page was last edited on 13 December 2022, at 23:17. Ifill has held board seats with George Soros's Open Society Foundations (OSF), and she was invited to speak . Gwen Ifill supported, mentored, and inspired several youths, especially in the field of journalism. Ifill first came to the LDF as an assistant counsel in the area of voting rights in 1988. Sherrilyn Ifill is an American lawyer. [12], Ifill also moderated the vice-presidential debate on October 2, 2008, between the Democratic U.S. The senior attorneys in voting rights, Lani Guinier and Pamela Karlan, were departing to go into academia, but they continued to work with me on key LDF voting rights cases for two years in a supervisory and consultative role., My jaw drops when Ifill names Guinier and Karlan. Then in 2021, she was included on the Time 100, Times annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The family is currently based in the United States. [19] 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. As civil rights lawyers, our job is to be like the heroes in the old horror moviesable to see the werewolf no matter what form it has taken.. Ifill is a civil rights lawyer and scholar who recently stepped down after 10 years in leadership as the President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), the nation's premier civil rights law organization fighting for racial justice and equity. @SIfill_ will speak on January 23 about her legal fight for racial justice as a lawyer and president of @NAACP_LDF . It is a 2008 finalist for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. [8] As a child, she lived in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts church parsonages and in federally subsidized housing in Buffalo and New York City. By Bryan Stevenson. [4] Her mother passed away when Ifill was 6 years old. I have never been as nervous and stressed as I was then, Ifill says, Lani Guinier shaped me with the incredible range of her thinking.. The former law professor is still very much a teacher. She is a law professor and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. I ask Janai Nelson, who works with Ifill as the LDFs associate director-counsel, whether she also takes care to give notes a once-over before hitting send: Shes not harshly judgmental. [40] In 2009, she was honored with the First Amendment Award by Ford Hall Forum,[41] and Harvard University honored her the same year with the Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism. Only after a week of research do I fully understand what Ifill has shared in a single exchange. Her senior yearbook photo spells out her career goal: Supreme Court Justice.. Crime Junkie Host Ashley Flowers Announces She Is Pregnant. Sherrilyn Ifill is a renowned layer in the United States of America. Seattle Anchor, Travis Mayfield Leaving KCPQ, YouTube Beauty Vlogger, Yasmeen Nicole Announces Pregnancy. 2023 The HistoryMakers. All rights reserved. Sherrilyn is very happy with the money she is earning from her career. In 2012, Ifill was chosen as President and Director-Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. . And like the children of so many immigrants, her life, her work, made this country better. 1, Sherrilyn Ifill remembers Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, pt. Watching her, I can see the smart little Black girl from New York who had little money but plenty of love, and many books; who grew up to litigate, teach, write, lead, organize, strategize, fight, and win. She is the kind of smart person who makes other smart people nervous, not because she is cruel but because she is so good at what she does. Senator from North Carolina, John Edwards. [2] In 2021, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world on its annual Time 100 list. 2022 Cox Media Group Over the course of the following week, this developed into a series of tributes on various NewsHours as "Remembering Gwen. Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel emeritus of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, receives the Radcliffe Medal. She talks with Preet about about the rise of artificial intelligence in policing, how both companies and law enforcement can confront issues of racial bias, and the attack on voting rights in America. 5 Will Sherrilyn Ifill Step down from her position? She was the moderator and managing editor of Washington Week and co-anchor and co-managing editor . Their wedding was attended and blessed by their friends and families. [21] Her writing appears in The New York Review of Books, Salon, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Photos by Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer Resist nihilism, get involved, take back power, says Radcliffe Medalist Sherrilyn Ifill By Clea Simon Harvard Correspondent Date May 29, 2022 Emails get reread. Sometimes that means fighting in court. She showed us how to listen, how to disagree firmly, but respectfully. As much as it pains me to see long lines of people, wearing masks, standing on their feet for hours, risking their lives to cast a vote; these images are a snapshot of the nobility of Black people.. It has also taken up the fight for fair elections, partnering with much newer organizations like Color of Change, the nations largest online racial justice organizationa move that is emblematic of Ifills approach to her work. [13] In 2013, she became the Legal Defense Fund's president and director-counsel. degree in English, and went on to receive her J.D. Her last name evokes the late journalist Gwen Ifill, a PBS NewsHour personality and the first African-American woman to host a nationally televised public affairs program. [30], 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". A prominent civil rights activist of the modern era and an icon in journalism have the same last name. In the speech Ifill remarked on the calling of the present moment, telling the graduates, We cannot pretend, even as we are here filled with the excitement of this day, that there are not deep challenges awaiting us., And then she went further, linking her sense of professional purpose with a harrowing personal experience. $1749. She didn't get the job out of sympathy. Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (NAACP LDF), spoke at Penn Law on October 4 to faculty and staff about the modern Supreme Court nomination process and the implications of Judge Kavanaugh's nomination. She brought the reality of the discrimination faced by women and girls, with which she was intimately familiar, into her understanding of critical cases, Ifill continues. In 1993, she then joined the faculty of the University of Maryland Law School, where she taught for two decades. Gwen Ifill passed away in 2016 after battling breast cancer and endometrial cancer. [39], She was awarded a Peabody Award in 2008 for her work on Washington Week. The proof is in the pudding. She was a frequent guest on my cable news show Melissa Harris-Perrya proud member of what we called #Nerdlandand I looked to Ifill to help our audience understand complicated issues of law and race. in English, and earned her J.D. Comments NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund President Sherrilyn Ifill has made in the past about defunding the police have resurfaced amid speculation that she is one of the individuals. Sherrilyn Ifil is the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and is well known in the United States as a lawyer and a law professor. [68], President Obama extended his condolences to Ifill's family, saying that he "always appreciated [her] reporting even when [he] was at the receiving end of one of her tough interviews. She was able to collect this decent sum of money from her long-term career as a lawyer. ", "Sherrilyn Ifill is to be head of NAACP legal defense and educational fund", "Alumnus/Alumna of the Month | NYU School of Law", "Shaping the Civil Rights Discourse: Sherrilyn Ifill '84 - Vassar, the Alumnae/i Quarterly", "Thousands of Mourners Celebrate Gwen Ifill's Tenacity and Grace", "Gwen Ifill's Funeral Was A Revival Meeting For America", "Sherrilyn Ifill named head of NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund", "NAACP Legal Defense Fund Names Sherrilyn Ifill Next President", "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", "Sherrilyn Ifill | LDF President and Director Counsel", "Supreme Court upholds college affirmative action program", "Affirmative action advocates shocked and thrilled by Supreme Court's ruling in University of Texas case", "Garland Nomination: Black Advocates Want Him Vetted", "Scalia's death affecting next term, too? The LDF litigates multiple cases at once, requiring its staff to work together to scrutinize all possible angles; examine arguments, counterarguments, and case law for each side; and execute each motion, filing, and deadline with scrupulous attention to detail. Sherrilyn emphasizes the connection between the LDFs history and the multidimensional work we do today.. But Ifill is undeterred. When was Misty Copeland married? Ivo Knobloch must have been born in The United States of America. [56], On January 30, 2020,[57][58] Ifill was honored on a U.S. postage stamp. I was completely green, Ifill admits. Her cousin Sherrilyns words that she was an example of the most American of success stories. Bio, Family, Net Worth, Height, Is C.J. She has appeared on CNN, NBC Nightly News, ABC World News Tonight and C-SPAN, is a regular voice on local and national public radio and contributes to The Root. In Ifills LDF you are as likely to bump into a young historian as an elder litigator. Sherrilyn Ifill, a cousin and president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, stated at the funeral service that her cousin "represented the most American of success stories. In 2012, Ifill was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Gwendolyn L. Ifill (/afl/ EYE-fl; September 29, 1955 November 14, 2016)[1] was an American journalist, television newscaster, and author. The standards were very high. But Ifill has picked her battles well. [20] She joined the Ford Foundation as a Senior Fellow in June 2022. 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