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Legal Defense and Education Fund

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) is the countryâ€™s first and foremost civil and human rights law firm.Â Founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, who subsequently became the first African-American U.S. Supreme Court Justice, LDF was launched at a time when the nationâ€™s aspirations for equality and due process of law were stifled by widespread state-sponsored racial inequality.Â From that era to the present, LDFâ€™s mission has always been transformative: to achieve racial justice, equality, and an inclusive society.

As the legal arm of the civil rights movement, LDF has a tradition of expert legal advocacy in the Supreme Court and other courts across the nation.Â LDFâ€™s victories established the foundations for the civil rights that all Americans enjoy today.Â In its first two decades, LDF undertook a coordinated legal assault against officially enforced public school segregation.Â Continue reading →

Elijah McCoy

Elijah McCoy (1843-1929) was a Black inventor who was awarded over 57 patents. The son of run-away slaves from Kentucky, he was born in Canada and lived there as a youth.

As a boy, the young Elijah was fascinated with machines and tools, learning by watching and constantly asking questions. He came to the United States after the Civil War and settled near Ypsilanti, Michigan, where he worked in a machine shop, further increasing his mechanical knowledge and skills.Â Continue reading →

Wilberforce University

Wilberforce University is a private, coed, liberal arts historically black university (HBCU) located in Wilberforce, Ohio. Affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, it was the first college to be owned and operated by African Americans. It participates in the United Negro College Fund.

The founding of the college was unique as a collaboration in 1856 by the Cincinnati, Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME). Â Continue reading →

Mississippi Valley State

Mississippi Valley State University (commonly referred to as MVSU or “The Valley”) is a historically black university located in unincorporated Leflore County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta, near Itta Bena. MVSU is a member- school of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund.

The institution, which opened in 1950, was created by the Mississippi Legislature as Mississippi Vocational College. The legislature anticipated that legal segregation of public education was in danger (and would in four years be declared unconstitutional in the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education the institution, hoping that its existence would draw African-American applicants who might have otherwise applied to attend Mississippi’s premier whites-only institutionsâ€”the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State University, and the University of Southern Mississippi. Continue reading →

Evelyn Boyd Granville

Granville was born in Washington, D.C., on May 1, 1924. Her father, William Boyd, worked as a custodian in their apartment building; he did not stay with the family, however, and Granville was raised by her mother, Julia Walker Boyd, and her mother’s twin sister, Louise Walker, both of whom worked as examiners for the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

Granville and her sister Doris, who was a year and a half older, often spent portions of their summers at the farm of a family friend in Linden, Virginia.Â Evelyn Boyd grew up in Washington, D.C. and attended the segregated Dunbar High School (from which she graduated as valedictorian) maintained high academic standards. Several of its faculty held degrees from top colleges, and they encouraged the students to pursue ambitious goals. Â Continue reading →

Legal Defense and Education Fund

Elijah McCoy

Wilberforce University

Mississippi Valley State

Evelyn Boyd Granville

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