About this Event
*Keynote begins at 5 p.m., followed by the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award Presentation and Reception
Join the Southern Oral History Program (SOHP) housed within the Center for the Study of the American South (CSAS) for an afternoon of celebrating and highlighting the Legal Defense Fund’s (LDF) Oral History Project and more than 80 years of LDF’s transformative work towards racial justice, equality, and an inclusive society. This SOHP Spring 2025 Symposium event begins with two panel sessions featuring interview excerpts, LDF leaders, attorneys, educators, and archivists along with oral historians from the Southern Oral History Program at UNC Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). SOHP is one of the nation’s oldest oral history initiatives. The panels will be followed by a reception and keynote conversation between LDF President and Director-Counsel Janai Nelson and Theodore M. Shaw, the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC School of Law, Director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights, and former LDF President and Director-Counsel. The conversation will be facilitated by former journalist and UNC Hussman School of Journalism Professor Meredith Clark. The day will culminate when LDF presents Shaw with LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award.
Founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, LDF was launched at a time when the nation’s aspirations for equality and due process of law were stifled by widespread state-sponsored racial inequality. "Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country,” Supreme Court Justice Marshall said during the May 21, 1978, commencement address at the University of Virginia’s Finals Ceremonies. “This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on." The LDF Oral History Project documents the stories and context behind LDF’s efforts for 85 years to defend dignity and citizenship for Black people in the United States. Through in-depth oral history interviews, the project showcases the previously untold strategies, stories, and people behind LDF’s history. What do these stories tell us now, and how do they instruct us as we contemplate the meaning of democracy today? LDF recognizes that the narratives it documents, archives, and shares can be tools in the ongoing struggle for racial justice, equality, and liberation today and in our collective future.
Registration is required. The event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited.
This event is part of SOHP’s Spring 2025 three-day symposium, highlighting the power and urgency of oral history research. Please visit our website sohp.org for more information.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Fedex Global Education Center, 301 Pittsboro Street, Chapel Hill, United States
