Theodore M. Shaw, president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund who is stepping down February 2008, talks to Diverse about his future plans and the ongoing fight to end inequality in education. He also has some choice words for anti-affirmative action advocate Ward Connerly.
Earlier this year, Theodore M. Shaw, president-director counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, announced that he was planning to step down in February 2008.
Shaw became the fifth person to lead the 67-year-old organization in May 2004. Shaw first joined the LDF in 1982, after working as a trial attorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice under the Carter administration. There, he litigated civil rights cases throughout the country at the trial and appellate levels, and in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But when President Reagan was elected in 1981, the Columbia University-trained law school graduate knew that it was time for him to leave.
In 1990, Shaw left the LDF to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School, but returned after just three years to become the associate director-counsel of LDF. When Elaine Jones stepped down as director in 2004, Shaw took over the helm of the organization.
Diverse recently sat down with Shaw to talk with him about his career at LDF and the future of race relations.
