Janell Byrd-Chichester transcript

This item is featured in:

Janell Byrd-Chichester Oral History

    Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project 

 

Janell Byrd-Chichester 

Interviewed by Danita Mason-Hogans 

April 18, 2025 

Washington D.C 

Length: 02:18:44 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program at University of North 

Carolina at Chapel Hill 

LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute, NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, 

Inc. 



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This transcript has been reviewed by Janell Byrd-Chichester the Southern Oral History 

Program, and LDF. It has been lightly edited, in consultation with Janell Byrd-Chichester, for 

readability and clarity. Additions and corrections appear in both brackets and footnotes. If 

viewing corresponding video footage, please refer to this transcript for corrected information.    

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[START OF INTERVIEW] 



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Danita Mason-Hogans [00:00:01] This is oral historian Danita Mason-Hogans. I'm 

acting as an interviewer on behalf of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of 

North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Today is April 18, 2025, and I'm here with Janell Byrd-

Chichester, former Director of the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense 

Fund. We are in LDF's Washington D.C. office, and this interview is for the LDF Oral 

History Project. Ms. Byrd-Chichester, thank you so much for being here and for sharing your 

story for the record. Do I have your permission to record this interview? 

Janell Byrd-Chichester [00:00:41] Absolutely. 

DMH [00:00:42] Thank you so much. 

JBC [00:00:44] And please, call me Janell. 

DMH [00:00:45] Okay, Janell. So, we're going talk about your leadership with the 

Thurgood Marshall Institute as well as your time as a practicing attorney for the LDF. But 

let's start much further back. I would love if you would talk with me about your parents and 

what you know about their upbringing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 

JBC [00:01:07] Certainly. My Mom, Camolia Alcorn Byrd, and my Dad, Lionel 

Patrick Byrd, were both born in Louisiana, around Baton Rouge. My Mom in Baton-Rouge, 

my Dad nearby in a city called Kahns, I believe. They actually went to high school together. 

They went to McKinley High, and they were sweethearts from age 12 on and got married and 

were married for over 56 years. My Mom's family was a family of very educated Black 

people. She had uncles who were Dr. George Butler, Murphy Bell. Dr. Butler, they called 

him like the Dean of the Black Medical Society, I think, in Louisiana, or in Baton Rouge, 

because he was a leading doctor there. Murphy Bell was a civil rights lawyer, represented 

Black activists. But also, when I came to LDF, Murphy Bell was a cooperating attorney on 

some of the school desegregation cases. Another uncle who was a pharmacist. She came from 

a family of highly educated Black people who were also activists in the community. My 

mother went to Southern University, and my father went to the military. He did not go to 



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college at that time. He went to the military. They were married, and she moved around while 

he was overseas. 

My father was in World War II. He was in the Korean War, and he retired as a Major 

from the Army. He was highly decorated, Silver Star, Bronze Star, and many other military 

awards. But when he left the military, actually they moved to Oklahoma with the military 

because he taught field artillery in Lawton, Oklahoma. My mother was a schoolteacher, and 

she taught both in Baton Rouge, taught in Oklahoma City. And she ultimately led the 

bilingual education program for the Oklahoma City School District. And after she retired, my 

mother started the I Can [Learning] Center, which was a center that was located in the Black 

community in Oklahoma City. She got three or four other retired teachers to join her, and 

they taught math and reading to children and adults who had difficulties. She ran that center 

until she could no longer, for health reasons, but it operated for quite a while in Oklahoma 

City. So those were my parents. 

DMH [00:03:54] That’s pretty powerful. And I think your mom was educated in the 

[19]40s as a Black woman. Is that right? That was an anomaly. How did that happen? 

JBC [00:04:03] I think in part because her family had a very strong commitment to 

education. I believe Dr. Butler went to Howard Medical School. They had a family tradition. 

She went to Southern [University]. Her sister went to Southern. That was part of their family 

tradition. It was a blessing that she was able to do that, but that was just kind of, I think, 

expected in that family. 

DMH [00:04:28] That's incredible for the [19]40’s, I would say. And some of your 

siblings were raised in Germany where your dad was an Army major. 

JBC [00:04:38] He was stationed in Germany. He was there during World War II, as I 

said, and my sister was born [in Heidelberg, Germany], my middle sister, actually, Judy 

Byrd. [She] is on the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Board, on the LDF Board. She's an 



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emeritus member of the Board right now, but she served on the Board for many years and 

does a lot of work with LDF. 

DMH [00:05:00] I definitely want to hear about how y'all siblings got together and 

decided that you wanted to work with the LDF. I also wanted to know what maybe the 

transition was like from Germany to Oklahoma. Did your parents ever talk with you about 

that? 

JBC [00:05:17] Well, not so much Germany to Oklahoma. It was just kind of living 

in the times. And what I mean by that is, like in Oklahoma City, for example, where they 

lived, was an area that by the time I was five or six we moved to, I'll say,[in] the country. We 

still lived in Oklahoma City in the [city] limits, but it was [the] outskirts of the city. And the 

reason they moved there was because they wanted to move from the community that they 

were in, which was pretty much a segregated community that Black people were limited to. 

My mother would point and say, “We wanted to get that house, but we couldn't because of 

race.” So, they moved out [to the country].  

Interesting connection, when I started working at LDF, and I was working on the 

Oklahoma City school desegregation case, I was reading the transcript from the trial from 

1963, which was around the time that they were getting ready to move in Oklahoma City 

from that Black community to the country, in essence. Because they wanted a bigger and 

different house. And Professor Derek Bell, who at the time was an attorney at the Legal 

Defense Fund, puts a real estate agent on the stand. And he testifies that he has a map. And he 

says, “At this point in time, Black people could not live north of this line, south of this line, 

east or west.” So, it was the locked in, segregated area of the city. And I knew that because I 

knew of my own history and my family's history. And it was just really incredible that 

connected up when I got to LDF. I know it because my Mother always talked about it. We 

grew up in a time of racial, I'll say, strife and division, at least I did in Oklahoma City during 

school desegregation.  



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School desegregation came to Oklahoma City in 1972, real desegregation. Judge 

Luther Bohannon ordered that the school system be desegregated, and he was burned in 

effigy. There were protests. It was a really difficult time. I actually went to Catholic school. 

The Catholic schools were also segregated. I went to the all-Black Catholic school, Corpus 

Christi. There was violence. I mean, there was literally violence occurring if you went to 

football games, if you went to any of the kind of activities where students were out and about. 

It was a violent kind of time in Oklahoma City. And it was a very heated time. My mother, as 

a teacher, was one of the first Black teachers assigned to teach in a formerly white school. 

And it was difficult but successful, I'll say. A lot of the parents there liked her and supported 

her. But it was a difficult time and difficult experience for her. 

My Dad was the [Deputy Director] of the Oklahoma City Housing Authority, and he 

located certain public housing in formerly all-white areas. So, we were threatened with 

bombs. There was concern. We’d come home, and Mom was like, “We have to check the 

engine of the car.” That kind of stuff. And this is stuff that you don't think is happening 

during that period. But my Dad was basically forced out because he was desegregating 

housing in Oklahoma City. That's a little bit of our background from the city. It was difficult 

times.  

When we were growing up, I would say, the Catholic school I went to, elementary 

school was segregated, but the high school was not. I went to high school in 1972. Our high 

school had about five percent—maybe a little bit more—Black population at the high school. 

There was a fair amount of strife, but there was also a lot of good that we got out of it. It was 

overall a good experience, but the racial aspect of it wore on me even as a teenager. So, I 

always wanted to leave Oklahoma. Somehow, I thought that if I left, I could escape the 

racism of Oklahoma. I spent my time saying, “I'm going to get a scholarship and get out of 

here. I want to go to college and get out of here.” Because I wanted to leave what I felt was 

an incredibly racist environment. I don't know why I was so naive not to think that wherever I 



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went it was also going to have those same racial issues. Probably a little different, but still 

significant issues. I spent my high school years with that plan in place to leave Oklahoma 

because I just felt it was a very negative place for Black people. 

DMH [00:10:27] I'm curious about your neighborhood and the community where you 

lived. I know we talked about the larger issue of the racial unrest, but the neighborhood and 

community. 

JBC [00:10:37] When my parents moved from the segregated inner-city area to the 

country, it was where other Black people who wanted a different house or wanted to live in a 

different community moved. There was a community of Black folks in the country who 

moved there. It was all Black. I'm trying to think. I don't think there were any white people in 

that neighborhood. It was a very strong and close-knit community. My next-door neighbor 

was Hannah Atkins, who was a Black woman who was the first Black woman elected to the 

Oklahoma State legislature. She subsequently became the Secretary of State for Oklahoma, 

and she was just an incredible dynamic woman. Her husband actually was the doctor who 

delivered me, Dr. Charles Atkins. Then on the other side were the Coxes, Dr. Cox and Mrs. 

Cox. He was a dentist. And my very best friend and their family's kids and our kids were the 

same ages. We matched like this. My best friend in life was his daughter, Thais. It was a very 

supportive environment and close-knit. In that regard, we were very, very lucky. I never 

appreciated that everybody didn't have those same kind of friendships and familial 

relationships. I would say also through our church, Corpus Christi was a Black Catholic 

church, and that community of people was just incredible. All the families, you knew families 

not individuals. You know the mom, the dad, and all the kids. And I know this happens other 

places, but it was a very close-knit community with the Black Catholic Church in Oklahoma 

City. It really, I would say, kind of propelled many people in successful ways. It was just a 

very positive experience. 



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DMH [00:12:45] I notice that you do such a good job of imparting understanding, and 

I just wonder how much impact was your Mom as an educator on you in the way that you 

have traveled throughout your career. 

JBC [00:13:01] My Mom was a special lady [not] because she wanted us to do well. 

She pushed us and all of that, but she was also incredibly loving and practical. And I always 

tell this little story about my Mom. Because we had nuns at the school, and some of them 

were not so nice. I had piano lessons, and we had a concert. And they signed me up to play 

the song that I could play the least best. They had a little printed program. I went home, and I 

said to my mom, I'm like, “Mom, I'm supposed to play this song. I can't play this song. It's 

really not good.” And I didn't know why she had assigned that one, but it was really bad. And 

my mother said, “Well, what song do you want to play?” And I told her. And she said, “Well, 

when you go up, you play that song.” That's what I did, and I marched my little self up to the 

piano and played the song I wanted to play. The support and love from my Mom, in that 

regard, just always kind of stuck with me that, find another way to work around things that 

might be a little ugly in life. That's something that she taught me. She was a woman of grace, 

and beauty, and smarts. She's helped me persevere in difficult times. 

DMH [00:14:27] How affirming. I know your Mom did work on political campaigns. 

Could you talk a little bit about that, and how she might have been involved though? 

JBC [00:14:36] When I was maybe six or seven [years-old], we were “Hannah's 

Helpers.”  I just mentioned Hannah D. Atkins, who's from [Winston-Salem] North Carolina 

actually, yes. She was just an incredible leader. She was running for office. We had our little 

blue and green outfits, and we went door-knocking as children to get Mrs. Atkins elected to 

be a state representative. So, we did that, but when you mention Mom running a political 

campaign, one of her best friends was a woman, Mary Lou Miles. Mary Lou had two 

daughters. One is Vicki Miles-LaGrange. Vicki ran for the state senate, and Mom ran her 

campaign. Mom was her campaign manager. Vicki was elected and served for quite a while 



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before she became the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma. And then 

Vicki—she's retired now—but Vicki was a “first” of everything. The “first” Black woman to 

do so many things in Oklahoma City. A real incredible woman in her own right, and Mom 

ran her campaign for the State Senate. 

DMH [00:16:01] You spoke about your Dad and his military career. I think you 

mentioned that he was in World War II. 

JBC [00:16:07] And the Korean War. 

DMH [00:16:08] There's so many things that we have benefited from in the Civil 

Rights Movement because of those Black soldiers that came back and really demanded a lot 

of different treatment. Did your Dad ever talk about racism that he may have experienced in 

the military, especially in the service in the [19]50s? 

JBC [00:16:30] Yes, he did. I'll share it this way. When Dad died—and being a 

military man—they have everything prepared. So, he had everything. He would show me 

when I would come home. “Let me show you what I want you to lay me out in,” he'd say. 

And I'd go, “Dad, no.” But he also had written pretty much his obituary, and in it he talked 

about the racism that they [Black soldiers] experienced in the military. He wanted to be sure 

that was included in his life story because he went through some really difficult times. He 

talks about everything, from them being left in what seems like really kind of dire straits. And 

he realized it was very much based on race. When he retired—like I said, he retired as a 

decorated veteran—he could not get a job. My father was pumping gas when he got out of the 

military. He subsequently was able to get better jobs. But when he got out [of the military], 

he had a very hard time getting a job. I always say, my Dad was very, very pale, very light-

skinned. You might think he was not Black. He grew up in Louisiana though, and he was 

very aware of and lived that racial history. Dad was also outspoken. If my father went to a 

restaurant, for example, and he didn't see any Black people working there, he would ask to 

speak to the manager. And he would say, “Do you have a difficult time finding Black people 



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to be employed here? Because I can help you.” His thing was to get people jobs. He did that 

all the way through his life. He worked at Honeywell Corporation towards the end of his life, 

and part of that was he got so many people jobs in Oklahoma City. He was like, “You need a 

job? Come see me, let me see what I can do.” He was just very clear-headed about the need 

to advance people. He led the Oklahoma City development. Northeast was the Black side of 

town, so to speak, where it was segregated. Oklahoma City Northeast, [Inc.] it was called. So, 

they did development, built houses and things in the community.  

He was very conscious of all of that and wanted some of the military issues to be 

included in his obituary. It left a scar. 

DMH [00:19:23] Your parents sound like really powerful movement people. Would 

you talk a little bit about your siblings? 

JBC [00:19:29] Sure. I have four siblings. Unfortunately, I've lost two, the two oldest. 

My oldest sister was a psychologist, Dr. Cheryl Byrd. She lived in Los Angeles, I'll say, the 

last 20 years of her life. She passed away in 2020, early in the pandemic, I think [at] age 76. 

My oldest brother, Lionel Byrd Jr., “Skip,” he had an undergrad degree from the University 

of Oklahoma. And he was in, I don't even know how to describe this, he worked for Intel, in 

Portland, Oregon. He followed my Dad's footsteps. At his service, because my brother passed 

as well in 2022—these are hard losses—many people got up and talked about how he had 

gotten them jobs. He had gone to recruit at historically Black colleges. And Intel was not 

really supportive of that. He had to push hard to get that. He had recruited people. This one 

woman got up and talked about how he came down. He's like, “You need to come to 

Portland. You need to do—.” And she's like, “Why am I doing this?” She's like, “I've been 

here [in Portland] 30 years now,” you know. And so that was ingrained in the family. My 

sister Judy Byrd is a lawyer, but she's not a practicing lawyer. She does retail consulting for 

airports, for companies that want to be in the retail space in airports. But she's also been on 

the Board of the Legal Defense Fund over ten, fifteen years now. Like I said, she took senior 



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status when I joined rejoined LDF in 2019. Judy has been very involved in both the airline, 

airport retail business, but also she's been on the Board of [Alvin Ailey American Dance 

Theater] and other kind[s] of nonprofits in New York. I mentioned three [siblings], and 

there's one more. My brother Rick Byrd, who is just a year-and-a-half older than me in 

school. We get along well. We grew up close, and he is in California. He's been in California 

for many years. He has a company. They install cable networking and fiber optics. He has a 

fiber optics installation company in California and is the one who always dances to a 

different tune, so to speak. But my mother was always like, “Where's my son?” We [were] 

always like, “Here's your favorite child.”  

That's the line up. There were five of us all together. 

DMH [00:22:30] How do you think that your family ties to the Deep South have 

shaped your knowledge and understanding about race relations and social justice? What was 

your sense of Southern, Black influence and culture and— 

JBC [00:22:43] It's interesting. Being from Louisiana, that's Southern, Black. That's 

kind of who we are without really knowing it, in a sense. And I talked about the family next 

door. The mother in that family was also from Louisiana.  

Oklahoma did not become a state until 1907. Oklahoma, though, thinks it's part of the 

old Confederacy. And so, Oklahoma tried as hard as it could to be like those old Confederate 

states. Oklahoma has its capital [building] facing south. Oklahoma segregated everything 

from cemeteries to phone booths, to lunch counters. It was a very segregated city, 

residentially segregated. And it's a harsh, I say, city, but the state, it's a harsh state on racial 

issues. It has been for a long time. Although it had some progressive leadership actually 

serving on the Hill, Carl Albert, and I'm trying to think, Fred Harris from Oklahoma. You'd 

be amazed at these people. And David Boren, who died recently. You'd be amazed that 

Oklahoma had those kind of white leaders in the[19]70s and early [19]80s. But Oklahoma, as 

a state, pretty much tried to recreate what existed in the old South. So, I would say we lived it 



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in Oklahoma. I did not really spend much time in other Southern states. We drove to 

Louisiana once or twice when I was a kid, but I didn't spend time in the South until I started 

working for the Legal Defense Fund. 

DMH [00:24:36] I'm always fascinated with the Southern, Black culture of Louisiana. 

What was that like? 

JBC [00:24:42] Mainly, I just think of the difference in the way of speaking. I can 

hear it. I have a southern accent, but I guess it's more Oklahoma southern. The manner of 

speaking, the food. My dear Auntie was such a great cook, Aunt Nina [Ford]. I don't know, 

beyond that, how it's different from where we were in Oklahoma, how different the southern 

states were other than when I went as an LDF lawyer. That was an eye-opening experience 

for me to go and spend—I would say I litigated school desegregation cases at LDF for about 

nine years, and most of those cases were in Alabama. That was an eye-opening experience 

for me because I had been away from Oklahoma for quite a while by that time too. I went to 

California, New York, but not Deep South. So, it was quite interesting to see what was going 

on in those communities, even in the late [19]80s, early [19]90s, where things were still quite 

segregated and oppressive in many respects. 

DMH [00:26:08] I wonder what school was like for you. I know that you said that in 

your earlier years, it was segregated. And then the high school, what was that like for you? 

JBC [00:26:19] It was interesting. At the Black elementary school, there were some 

whites in that elementary school. They were like, with us, right. They were in the Black 

Student Union. No, really, they were in the Black Student Union. They did [it] all, because 

we all grew up together, kind of thing. When I went to high school, I was very afraid because 

of all of the stereotypes. I was like, “Oh my God, I'm going to flunk out. I'm not going to be 

able to compete.” All of that. There was a lot of fear that I had. I got almost straight A's 

through high school and ended up at the very top of the class. But there was all of that fear 

about it. It was an environment where you'd have the first Black person who was a 



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homecoming queen or that type of thing during that time. And this was a time when we 

thought we were revolutionaries, too. Angela Davis and Huey Newton were coming. We 

were following in that. We were also in a, I would say, a culture or a vein of wanting to be 

affirming that we were Black people, and we're standing up, and we are proud of who we are, 

and we're not going to be oppressed kind of thing. We got in trouble because we were 

pushing back,  in elementary school, because it wasn't Black nuns, it was white nuns. And 

there was a big battle between us and those nuns. The civilian teachers, we loved. I'll never 

forget Mr. Raffelli from New York City came down and opened our eyes to the world and 

Mrs. Dix. They were both white. They were wonderful. But the nuns were – there was a 

hostility towards the student population – people would be slapped and hit and that type of 

thing. It was a really strange environment. That was in the first through eighth grade. And 

then in high school, it was an interesting situation because there were certain circumstances 

where people that I thought were very friendly to me, very friendly— I'm like  – this is my 

friend, this white person – and come to have one of the white people that was from my 

original school come and tell me that, “Did you know what Bob said?” And I'm like, “No, 

what did Bob say?” “Oh, Bob said, when we interviewed him, what would make McGuinness 

High School, what will make McGuinness better? Bob said, ‘If you get rid of the n-----s.’” 

And I'm like, “Well, Bob's supposed to be my good friend.” Bob was very upset that she had 

told me this, but I mean, it was like that. You felt like maybe it was a more embracing 

environment until sometimes the covers were peeled back. And I don't know that Bob really 

knew what he was saying, I have to say, because it was very clear that Bob did want to be my 

friend. I don't know. It was a time of racial struggle, I'll say, and some strife. Because the 

situation with the public schools and the violence that was occurring there because of the 

school desegregation was still very fresh. 



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DMH [00:29:44] What were the discussions in your family when you were talking 

about going to college? I know you said you couldn't wait to leave for Oklahoma. What were 

the discussions in your family about higher education? 

JBC [00:29:58] It was interesting because my Mother actually had her master's 

degree, started studying for a doctorate. She was always very focused on education. That was 

her thing. And my Dad was focused on the practical, like how do you get things done, and 

what do you need, and you got to have a job, you got to have a car, you got to have this. You 

heard both of those kind of approaches to life. My Dad graduated from college the same year 

I did. He went back to school, and he got his college degree. We graduated the same year. It 

was important to him, but he didn't have it [early on]. His family was not in the same way 

positioned to help him go to school, which is why he went to the military.  

It [college] was just expected. Mom always planned for that and expected that. We 

didn't have the money to do it. That's why I knew I had to get a scholarship to get to college. 

But it was something that I always wanted to do. 

DMH [00:31:16] You went to American University. And when did you realize you 

wanted to go to law school? What happened? 

JBC [00:31:27] I wanted to go to law school. I had, I’ll say, a sense that I couldn't go 

because I thought the admissions path was too challenging, and I thought that the cost was 

out of reach. My sister went to Howard. She and I are very different. She always sees 

everything as possible. She went to law school, and she went Georgetown's law school. And I 

was like, “Well, if she can go to law school, I can go to law school too.” That really opened 

the door for me because I was kind of seeing it as not really possible, even though I was 

interested in doing it. She kind of broke that door down and made it obvious that I could do 

it. 

DMH [00:32:13] I'm very curious about who and what influenced you to take the 

route of law school. And how did you know what kind of law you wanted to practice. 



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JBC [00:32:27] Okay, this will go back to Oklahoma. In my reading as a high school 

student, I read a fair amount about the criminal justice system, and it haunted me. It haunted 

me that I felt that many people, and particularly Black people, were being locked up at a high 

rate in a system that was not just, and that people were losing their liberty. When I say it 

haunted me, it's like the type of thing I would think about at night. Like, “What does it mean 

to be locked in a jail cell? What is it, how does that feel? And how hurtful must it be for you 

to lose your life, to lose you liberty, to lose your ability to associate with your family, your 

friends?” I had, early on, wanted to be a criminal defense lawyer. It was the criminal justice 

system in the United States, with its really high, high incarceration rates. That all drove me to 

want to do something to challenge that system. That's why I wanted to go to law school. 

DMH [00:33:40] What did you do after you received your J.D.? Talk a little bit about 

being a [law] clerk. 

JBC [00:33:49] I'll talk about a little bit about how I got there. When I was in law 

school, I clerked for the American Civil Liberties Union. I'm trying to remember his name 

now, oh goodness. I was encouraged by the leader of the office. Oh gosh, I have part of the 

name. But anyway, he [John Shattuck, Director of ACLU National Legislative Office in 

1981] encouraged me to apply for a [judicial] clerkship, and he said he would help me. He 

wrote me letters of support for many [clerkships]. I worked there under the great tutelage and 

mentorship of not only the leader of the office, but also Wade Henderson, who led the 

Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights for many years, and Laura Murphy, who 

was at the ACLU at the time and led the National ACLU Legislative Office here in D.C. for 

many years. They were fabulous mentors, and they all pushed me forward. That drove me to 

the clerkship. 

DMH [00:34:57] When did you first become aware of the work of the LDF, and what 

led you to join the Legal Defense Fund? 



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JBC [00:35:07] I don't know exactly when I became aware of LDF's work, but I knew 

of it for a very long time. As a lawyer, someone who wants to work in civil rights law or 

criminal justice even—because LDF had its death penalty program, really powerful program 

and had done some incredible work in the criminal justice space, historically—you just know 

of LDF if you're in that space. I knew of the Legal Defense Fund. I was very interested. I 

applied [to be an attorney at LDF] and I interviewed with Julius Chambers. Julius said, “We 

want to hire you, but I don't know that we have the money.” I also had job offers [at] other 

places, at law firms, including Wilmer Cutler & Pickering. So, I went to Oklahoma and 

waited to hear from Julius, and I waited for a while. Finally, like in November, I called him 

up. Like, “Julius Chambers, Mr. Chambers,” I'm sure I called him. I was like, “I'm waiting to 

find out whether you ever got any funding for this job.” And they didn't. So, I went to 

Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, which was a wonderful experience. Wilmer Cutler & 

Pickering, one of the leading, big law firms in the D.C. area, at the time. Wilmer had a great 

pro bono program. When they interviewed me, I said, “I'm not sure you want me to work 

here because this is really not what I want to do in life.” I said, “I want be a civil rights 

lawyer.” They said, “Well, you can start here, and you'll have great opportunity to do pro 

bono work here.” And I said, “Okay.” So, when LDF did not have a position, I went to 

Wilmer. And at Wilmer, there were two partners. One was John Payton, who subsequently 

became the Director-Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund after Ted [Shaw]. John was 

Director-Counsel until he passed. What year did John pass? I want to say 2010 or so. John 

was my mentor and Jim Coleman. There were two Black partners at Wilmer who were just 

amazing mentors, brilliant lawyers. And they were activists. In addition to whatever 

corporate work they had, they did a lot of pro bono work. So, I did employment 

discrimination cases. John Payton's wife is Gay McDougall. Gay, if you see a picture of 

Nelson Mandela voting for the first time, Gay McDougall is standing right next to Nelson 

Mandela. She led the Lawyers' Committee [for Civil Rights under Law] Southern Africa 



17 
 

Project. When I was at Wilmer, her husband [John Payton] was at Wilmer. We worked with 

the Lawyers’ Committee, and we sued the South African government for apartheid. Along 

with Bill Lake, who had come from the State Department, we had a great team of folks. We 

did not win, but we sued them in a case that allowed us to present that issue. I had great 

mentors at Wilmer. And the lawyers at Wilmer had been truthful. They let me do a lot of pro 

bono work. I also did the corporate work as well but kept looking to go back to LDF. And 

one day Ted Shaw called me, and said, “Janell, you want to talk to us again?” I'm like, “I 

don't know.” I actually went – because I wrote Julius, I'll call it, a sharply-worded letter after 

my first experience – I was like, “Ted, I don’t know because that last experience wasn't so 

good when I waited for three or four months to hear from you guys, without a job.” Then 

Teddy convinced me to come up. I met with Julius [Chambers]. Julius said, “I understand 

you're kind of upset with me.” I'm like, “Well, you know.” We worked it out. I love Julius. 

He was great. He was a great boss. It was great to be able to work with him. I was lucky to be 

able to ultimately get with LDF and be able to join the staff in November of 1987. 

DMH [00:39:30] Did you interview with Ted Shaw or Julius Chambers? 

JBC [00:39:33] I probably had interviewed with them the first time around. I'm sure I 

did, because that's when Julius said, “Well, we'd like to hire you, but I need to see if I have 

some funding.” And so, the second time Teddy called me and said, “Why don't you come 

up?” I was like, “Oh, okay.” But I was flattered and glad that they called and happy to join. I 

was excited to join LDF because that's where I wanted to be. 

DMH [00:40:03] Do you remember your first day at work in the first week? What did 

the office look like? 

JBC [00:40:08] I remember what the office looked like. I do not remember the first 

day. I remember, it might have been the first day or the second day. My direct boss was 

Norman Chachkin, who headed the education project or education section. And we had 

gotten an order from, was it an order or a motion? We had gotten an order from Judge Acker 



18 
 

[William Marsh Acker, Jr.], I believe, in the Northern District of Alabama. The Justice 

Department had moved, or he might have moved on his own to release seven, eight school 

districts from their desegregation orders. I remember he said something like, “I want to let 

these puppies fly,” something like that. It was something like, he was ready to let them go. 

And it was en masse, dismissal of these cases. That was my first big thing, was to go to 

Alabama and appear before Judge Acker on those motions to let seven or eight school 

districts be released from their school deseg orders and declare them unitary school systems. 

That happened very early on at LDF. 

DMH [00:41:17] What was the intellectual and social community like at the LDF 

during that time?  

 

JBC [00:41:24] It was pretty incredible. Intellectually, there were some real giants there. It 

was a little intimidating because of who some of the folks were. Jim Nabrit was there. Steve 

Ralston was there; we were speaking about him. As you know, some of the senior attorneys, 

probably deputies to Julius. Julius Chambers was there. Teddy Shaw. Norman Chachkin was 

there. Lani Guinier was there. And I had watched Lani and Elaine [Jones] working when I 

was a student. I had watched them on the Hill, and they were just an incredible team during 

the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 1981-82. They were critical to the adoption of 

the extension of Section 5 and all of that. They were at LDF. I was in awe of them. It was a 

pretty heady team, to say that brilliant lawyers who were committed, who had stellar histories 

of really big wins. There was a lot of good. They had really pretty powerful histories of being 

able to say, “Look, we won these cases. We established this law. We went on the Hill.” 

Because LDF was then working and the DC office, in particular, working on the Hill with 

legislative efforts. It was just kind of a real high to be in that environment. Ron Ellis. I'm 

trying to think of who else was there. Judith Reed. It was a great group of people. Sherrilyn 

[Ifill] joined. When did Sherrilyn Ifill join? Did she join while I was still in New York? I 



19 
 

think she joined shortly after I was there. It was a great group. The death penalty folks, Dick 

Burr, George Kendall. It was a really incredible group of people. I was just elated to have the 

opportunity to work there. It was tough. There was a lot going on, and LDF didn't have deep 

pockets. On a lot of these cases, particularly when I started—it was under, first Reagan, and 

then the end of the Reagan and the start of the first Bush administration. And it was 

incredibly hostile to civil rights. The Justice Department was in a lot of our cases, and they 

were taking positions that were opposed to the positions they had taken before and that were 

anti-civil rights positions, to dismiss all the school desegregation cases.  All that was starting. 

It had probably started a little bit before I joined, but it was—from what I described about 

walking in the door and being handed the order, "We want to let these cases fly.” It was on. 

DMH [00:44:28] I wonder how you kept each other encouraged? How did y'all relax? 

How did you interact with each other? 

JBC [00:44:37] A lot of late nights. Folks would be there. I mean, I routinely was in 

the office. And the death penalty people, I don't think they ever slept. I slept sometimes. But I 

remember I sat next to Dick and George, and they would be working around the clock. I 

might go home around 11:00, 12 midnight. At that point I was in New York City. We would 

order in food, but really people were at their desks. It wasn't like a social scene. It was work, 

and we had some really incredible support from Oscar [Fambro] and Earl [Cunningham] who 

were the team that did– because at that point everything was paper. You're dealing with 

sending 20 copies of a brief out. We had the whole copy section. And those folks, Oscar and 

Earl would patiently wait for you to finish your brief. It's midnight; Oscar and Earl would be 

sitting there waiting. They're like, “Don't worry. It's okay, we got you. We got you.” It was 

[that] environment, even after I moved to the DC office in 1990. And the friendships, the 

relationships that I made at LDF have lasted me a lifetime. I worry about the folks today 

because it's different. Everybody's working remotely and all that. But at that time, we would 

be in the office very late. And then we'd travel together. We'd go, whether it's depositions, 



20 
 

trials, you were off-and-on travel with people. You get to know people well in those kinds of 

circumstances. It was kind of like, it was the LDF family. 

DMH [00:46:28] As far as your work as an attorney with the LDF, during that time, 

you litigated school desegregation, affirmative action in higher education, and employment 

discrimination cases. Let's talk about a few of those cases.  

JBC [00:46:44] I was just looking back at the court decision in one of the cases, one 

of first cases. And one of those first cases that I worked on, apart from those cases that I just 

mentioned where the judge was trying to dismiss all of those cases in one fell swoop. I 

worked a case out of Talladega County, Alabama. We were contacted by Black parents from 

Talladega. They sent a letter. It included artwork, and it was an interesting way to reach out 

for help, but it actually was pretty compelling. What they were arguing about was that, in 

effect, what the school district had done was it had never really desegregated. And then for 

the schools that were majority-Black, they were getting fewer resources, and the physical 

facilities were deteriorating. And then, as the school district was planning, and this was kind 

of late [19]80s, planning having to shut some of the facilities down and this type of thing, 

they would not provide information to the parents. So, the parents had written letters saying, 

“We would like to know what your plans are for these schools.” Because they went to those 

schools. In any community, the communities get attached to their schools, and they wanted to 

know what was going to happen to the schools in their community. And the School Board 

was really dishonest with them. They either stonewalled them, or they gave them 

misinformation. 

At one point, my clients went to the School Board to [a] meeting. They wanted to be 

able to record the meeting so they could share it with other people in the community as to 

what was happening. The schoolboard decided to pass a resolution to bar the recording of 

public meetings. They denied them data, despite the state law. The Alabama Open Records 

law required that this information [be made public] public information, that the parents 



21 
 

wanted. They were denied that information. We finally filed a lawsuit, Elston v. Talladega 

County, to try to address the status of the schools, the continuing segregation in the schools. 

And it was not welcomed by the Federal Court. We were assigned to Judge [James] Hancock 

in the Northern District of Alabama. The first thing that happened when we filed the 

complaint— It’s typical if you are not licensed in the state, you have a local attorney, and 

then you file a motion pro hac vice to be admitted for purposes of that case, like a guest pass, 

you can work on this case. They are routinely granted in almost every case, and LDF has 

been doing this for years. The trial judge denied us all. There were three LDF attorneys. [The 

judge] denied us admission to represent the plaintiffs. The judge said that he was denying our 

admission because a victory for the plaintiffs could be a burden on the taxpayers. He did not 

want the community to have the lawyers that they had selected. That's kind of how that 

started, and it was a long, hard fight that went up to the Court of Appeals, twice. The first 

time the judge just ruled against us, [he] didn't even write reasons. We went up; we won that 

time. The Court of Appeals said, “Well, you've got to say something, Judge. You just can't 

rule against them without explaining.” We went back down. He restricted all the evidence. 

We went back up. The Court of Appeals noted how all this had happened. I would say, that 

was one of the most painful decisions because they laid out the facts, and then when they got 

to the part that was critical about making the decision, I didn't think the opinion reflected the 

facts on the ground and in the record, and the Court ruled against us. That was a really bitter 

pill to swallow because we had worked so hard with that community. That was one of the 

cases. 

One other that I'll mention, which was a different experience, was in Chambers 

County Alabama. The school district actually, in 1991, they were still running segregated 

school busses. The school district was still largely segregated, and the schools in the county 

away from the heart where the city was, the city of Valley, the schools in county, the facilities 

were of lesser quality. You could see a difference in the level of education of the teachers 



22 
 

assigned to the different schools based on race. There were a number of different disparities 

that we found. This whole challenge arose in the context of the city of Valley, which was a 

city in Chambers County. They wanted to secede from the county. They were majority-white, 

and they wanted to secede. And they wanted to take a disproportionate amount of the 

resources of the county school system with them. We opposed that. We opposed it through 

the Justice Department, through the Voting Rights section first, and then we went to Court. 

We went to Court before Judge Harold Albritton, who was appointed by Nixon or Reagan? 

He was a Republican conservative. He was a very conservative judge, let me put it that way. 

And Judge Albritton heard our case. We put on, it was probably two weeks or so of trial. It 

was a difficult trial, and he ruled in our favor. 

DMH [00:52:41] What was the name of that case? 

JBC [00:52:42] Lee v. Chambers County. This was not the first time that a 

conservative judge ruled for us. He followed the law. He followed the law and he ruled for 

us. Now he did say, “I'm not giving you any attorney's fees.” No attorney's fee, which is 

interesting since we won, but he ruled for us on the merits. That was really affirming, in the 

sense that we could go before a judge who we really knew was a pretty staunch conservative 

judge and win. The same thing happened in the Natchez, Mississippi Schools desegregation 

case. We went before Judge Barber, and he was a pretty conservative judge, and ruled in our 

favor. Those two wins gave you some sense that it is possible to continue to prevail in some 

of these cases. But there were a lot of losses. There were a lot of losses. 

DMH [00:53:43] I think people could benefit from learning a little bit about the 

strategies that you approached these cases with, particularly because you knew you were 

going in front of conservative judges. What was that strategy? 

JBC [00:53:56] I would say, from a strategy perspective, that we wanted to be able to 

get as much relief as we could out of that vehicle of the school desegregation cases. 

Originally when the deseg orders were issued in Lee v. Macon [County Board of Education], 



23 
 

it was like a statewide case that affected every county and city. And they had standard 

provisions, whether it was desegregate transportation, student assignment, teacher 

assignment, extracurricular activities. We would go in, and we would look at all those 

aspects, all those factors, I should say and assess how they were doing. Were they 

desegregated? Were they not? Was there equal treatment? It was everything from the sports 

stuff for extracurricular activities, to transportation for how kids are being transported, 

facilities, the teachers. All of that, we would look at. Then, the fact that we were before 

conservative judges, and at times that it felt pretty hostile, I will say, not always but it 

certainly did at times. We would push to get as much relief as we could. That was, in terms of 

strategy, we still were pushing to move forward and to maintain those cases, to keep them 

open, so that we could get relief. Because that relief actually mattered. It was substantive 

relief. It makes a difference in these communities where you have such segregation in the 

schools, you could see what was happening. These schools were getting more resources; 

these were getting fewer resources. Whether it's teachers, even in Chambers County. One of 

the things, and I'll credit an attorney from the Justice Department who did this, Sabrina 

Jenkins, she went through the classes. They offered AP classes in the city schools that were 

majority-white. They didn't offer those AP classes in the county schools, which were 

majority-Black. She went through line-by-line. We would go through and try to get the relief 

that we could, even in the face of the courts turning back the law after just a short period of 

time. 

 I mentioned Oklahoma City was desegregated in 1972. Well, Oklahoma City had 

desegregated schools from 1972 to 1984 when the school district said, “Okay, we've done it.” 

Now they went back to Judge Luther Lee Bohanon, who I think was pretty tired of all the 

attacks that he was getting. Because he was really attacked for having originally ordered 

school desegregation. And he allowed them to reverse that or abandon the school 

desegregation plan. When I came to LDF in 1987, I’m litigating now, shortly thereafter, the 



24 
 

Dowell, the Oklahoma City School desegregation case. Because they went back to the same. 

It was ten or eleven 99% Black schools in 1972. Those same schools became 99% Black in 

1984. It was just like one generation of students who experienced desegregation before they 

went back. We were fighting the retrenchment on the school deseg front. 

DMH [00:57:33] What do you think were the implications of the effects of that case 

on the individual lives of the clients? 

JBC [00:57:41] Which case? 

DMH [00:57:42] You mentioned the Dowell [case]. 

JBC [00:57:44] The Oklahoma City? In the Oklahoma City case, it's interesting 

because one of the things that we looked at—and there was a lot of evidence in the record, 

and I already told you what Derrick Bell had put in 1963 about the segregated areas in 

Oklahoma City. In the trial—and I wasn't there for the trial in 1972. I was in high school. But 

in that trial and in the record, there was a lot of evidence of housing discrimination and how 

the city and the state engaged in segregating the population. The data that we put on in the 

[19]80s showed that once those communities had been segregated like they were, that in the 

Black areas, whites would not move in. You would not get whites moving into those 

communities. Once they were segregated, they were locked in, at least during that time. They 

stayed majority, predominantly-Black. I can tell you, having just been to Oklahoma City a 

couple weeks ago, that those areas are still suffering. 

What we found during the desegregation was that housing segregation lessened, but 

then as soon as those orders are up, and you can move in ways to determine the racial 

makeup of your child's school, that did not continue. That progress that we were getting 

during the school desegregation period did not continue. The other thing that happened in 

Oklahoma City was when Oklahoma City abandoned its school desegregation plan, they 

created what they called an equity officer. And the equity officer was a man named Bill Price 

Curtis. And Dr. Price Curtis analyzed what happened under the new plan, and he determined 



25 
 

that the schools in the historically Black areas were not being treated equitably. He wrote up 

a report of all the different ways in which he determined that the schools were not equitable. 

And then Dr. Price Curtis was fired. We then represented Dr. Price Curtis in an employment 

case, which was a difficult case in Oklahoma City. We ultimately did not prevail. We did end 

up, I think we got a little bit of a settlement for him maybe at the end. But it was a tough case 

in the sense of the juries and the environment in which we were litigating was challenging, I 

will say. But that's what happened. They abandoned the school desegregation plan. Dr. Price 

Curtis analyzed it, determined that there were serious inequities, and then they did not want 

to hear that. So, they shut that down and terminated him. 

DMH [01:00:53] Could you talk a little bit about the Adams v. Bennett case? 

JBC [01:00:57] Yeah, the Adams case was originally filed, I believe, in 1972. It was a 

case that was worked up by LDF, by Jean Fairfax, who was an incredible leader at LDF. She 

led the division of— I'm going to get the name wrong. It’s community service, like public 

education, legal service and community service [Division of Legal Information and 

Community Service]. And Jean’s division went to the states and met with people in each of 

the states to determine what was happening in higher ed. She documented that and then 

identified folks who wanted to do something about it. And they became plaintiffs in the 

Adams case. The Adams case was a case brought against the U.S. Department, what would 

now be the Department of Education. At the time it was Health, Education and Welfare, H-E-

W. That case was against 17 Southern and Border states to require them to take steps to 

desegregate their higher education system. Basically, what we were doing was using Title VI 

of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to say that the federal government needs to enforce Title VI 

against these 17 Southern and Border states with respect to their higher ed systems. And we 

got relief. It was a tremendous case, and it was a lot of relief, a lot relief for historically Black 

colleges in terms of additional funding, but also additional programs, curriculum, some 

desegregation at the historically White institutions. It was, I would say, far from what you 



26 
 

would have wanted, but it was still significant movement in the right direction. And that case 

remained in effect when I came to LDF in 1987; I probably started working on Adams two 

weeks later. And it was a time where the government was looking to roll back or limit 

Adams, the federal government administration. We were pushing back against that. All of a 

sudden, there was— I'm not remembering now who filed the motion, but there was a motion 

some 17, 18 years after the case has been a fact, to say we don't have a cause of action, we 

don’t have claim. The Court considered that. There was heavy briefing. They decided – it 

went up to the Court of Appeals, and the Court of Appeals decided we had a claim. But then 

they had a question as to whether we had the standing to bring it. No, I'm flipping that. It was 

a question of whether we had standing. Went up. And then they said, “Do you have a cause 

of action?” When we came back down, they determined that we did not have a cause of 

action to bring the case, and the case was dismissed. Adams, by that time it was probably 

called Adams v. Cavazos at that time. The ultimate decision, Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg was 

in the Court of Appeals at that time. She was one of the judges on the case that held that we 

did not have— I'm trying to remember the rest of the panel—but they ruled that we did [not] 

have, affirmed that we didn't have a cause of action after all of that time. Yeah, so that was a 

big disappointment for us, very big. This was a really huge case in LDF's history. 

DMH [01:04:30] Another case I wanted to hear you speak about is the Johnson v. 

Board of Regents for the University System of Georgia. 

JBC [01:04:40] Yeah, and that case was one that I worked on. And then, I think, I 

probably left during the final resolution of it. I remember being in Georgia. I remember going 

to the school to meet with people, both in the administration. I remember some of the fights 

we had, so to speak, and legal fights. I know that we did not get the relief we wanted in that 

case, but in terms of the details of the litigation, it was at a time when the federal government 

and the state, but the state in particular, were adamantly opposed to being able to— that 

involved their admissions program, as I recall. The bigger admissions case that I worked on, 



27 
 

there were two higher ed affirmative action cases that I worked on. One was Podberesky v. 

Kirwan, which involved the Benjamin Banneker Scholarship Program at the University of 

Maryland. There was a challenge to that program, and we litigated that with the strong 

support of the state of Maryland. We had a big team of experts, historians. Genna Rae 

McNeil from North Carolina was our primary historian, but we had sociologists, we had 

statisticians all analyzing kind of what was the effect of the history of segregation and then 

after segregation, all of the Jim Crow and discriminatory practices that still were in place. 

And so, we analyzed that. We put a big record on. We won before the Trial Court. We went 

up to the Court of Appeals, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that Court just did not 

want to hear it. It was a Court – that was a very interesting experience arguing – there was an 

argument first from the University of Maryland. The lawyer for the state, Evelyn Cannon, an 

African American woman who subsequently became a judge. She was in the state attorney's 

office. She argued before the Fourth Circuit, and then I argued. When I argued, the Court 

really wouldn't let me argue. I was at the podium, and I would get a question from the bench. 

I would start to respond, and they would cut me off. It just kept happening and happening. At 

a certain point, I just stepped back from the podium. I physically stepped back. I crossed my 

arms, and I looked down because they really were not letting me get a word in. They would 

ask a question, but then they would cut me off. We already had a tough panel, but it was very 

clear where they were headed. They basically ruled that the history didn't really matter. 

Because they said, “Anybody with a history book could then have an affirmative action 

program.” And so, they ruled against us in Podberesky. 

That was one. The other one that was quite difficult, and this is another one that we 

did not prevail in. This [are] kind of precursors to where we are now. The Hopwood v. Texas 

[case], which was a challenge to the affirmative action admissions program at the University 

of Texas Law School. And Texas Law, UT was a school that the Heman Sweatt case came 

out of, that Thurgood Marshall litigated on the road to Brown, kind of opening the door. And 



28 
 

there the Supreme Court found that the exclusion of Sweatt was illegal, unconstitutional. But 

here we are in Texas, with its extreme racial history, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals 

ruled that race could not be a factor in admissions despite the history of discrimination. That 

was another hard loss. In that one, it was difficult because the state itself and the law school 

itself, which the law school defended the program, I would say kind of in name. But the 

actual defense was far less than what we would have hoped and expected. And we let them 

know that. And very different from what the state of Maryland did, for example in defending 

the Benjamin Banneker Scholarship in the Podberesky case. Those were two big losses 

unfortunately in the affirmative action higher ed space that were very difficult. I think they 

were difficult for me personally, but you could see where this was heading. And we are 

where we are now. 

DMH [01:09:38] When you were in private practice, you did the First American v. 

Edwards. Could you talk a little bit about that? 

JBC [01:09:44] I could. That was really an amicus brief in the financial services 

space regarding standing to sue under the Fair Housing Act. We ended up being fine in that 

case. It turned out fine. That was part of my practice at Mehri & Skalet when I was in private 

practice and we did fair housing and fair lending cases. We did a fair number of large cases, 

some wins, some losses, but we did okay in that space at that point in time. The Fair Housing 

Act has always been of incredible importance to me, personally, to work on enforcement of 

that. Because you can't work on school desegregation and not see the elephant in the room of 

the geographic, the residential segregation that we have in this country and the incredible 

history of it and the way that it's documented, the role of the federal government, the role of 

the states in creating the segregation that we see today. So many people think, “Oh, people 

just prefer to live where they want to live.” So much of this segregation, it was created and 

locked in, in ways that have not changed in decades. I always wanted to work on housing 

issues. This was part of my work in that space where I was finally able to actually begin to 



29 
 

get to do some work in that space and post the 2008 financial crisis where so many people 

were suffering also. I did consumer protection in that space. It was interesting because when I 

started doing that, I called up Eric Schnapper, a former LDFer, about one of his cases that he 

had taken to the Supreme Court while he was at LDF, when Jack Greenberg was the 

Director-Counsel, I believe. It was a Truth in Lending Act case. And it's one of these things 

where you realize that sometimes you have to figure out what tools are the best tools. And 

particularly given the nature of racial issues in America and how race becomes supercharged. 

If there are pathways where you can challenge that same behavior under other laws, 

sometimes that might be the best path because you may not face the same level of resistance, 

and you may get relief for your client. One of the things that Eric had done was use the Truth 

in Lending Act. Now in my job, where I'm finally doing my housing, consumer protection, 

and part of my practice was to use the consumer protection laws, which I think we did quite 

effectively. But it was interesting that it connected back to LDF practice in that same space. 

DMH [01:12:41] That actually leads me to a question about how you prepare. When I 

spoke with Ambassador Andrew Young, he talked about using stories in negotiation. Steve 

Ralston talked about using numbers and statistics. Jerome Boykin, in Louisiana, talked about 

chasing down the money. What kind of preparation and strategies do you think about as you 

prepare for a case? 

JBC [01:13:14] For the litigation space— We'll get to the Marshall Institute, and it all 

kind of connects up, at least in my own personal view, of the role of other tools. From the 

litigation space, one of the most important things to me was connecting with the community. 

Because you want to make sure you are pursuing remedies, relief that are meaningful and that 

are helpful to them. The community support helped me in the litigation, even if there might 

be some real strong headwinds coming this way. Knowing that and having folks there with 

you, that was always very helpful. From a legal perspective in the school desegregation space 

and affirmative action case, what we tried to do really was tell the story of the history of 



30 
 

America. It's a real story. And what's significant, I want to say here, is that what the Supreme 

Court did in the affirmative action cases, including maybe starting with Bakke [Regents of 

University of California v. Bakke], is to really downplay the significance of the history of 

discrimination. In Bakke for example, the Court called it societal discrimination and said, 

“Once it’s societal and it’s everywhere, and it’s broad, there’s kind of basically nothing you 

can do about it. It's everywhere, so you can't connect it in a causal way to this particular 

institution. So, you can’t get a remedy for it.” What we keep coming back to in the 

affirmative action cases and the school desegregation cases is the history and the intent 

behind that history. Even if I have a claim that is based on disparities, with the numbers, I 

typically would want to package that claim and that case in the history of that action, that 

community, so that the Court is operating in the context. Unfortunately, what we've seen in 

many of the cases, not all, but in many cases, that history is not something that people want to 

remember. As we see with the book banning and all that, that I guess the emotional reaction 

to the reality of what happened to Black people in America is an emotional reaction on both 

sides. The reaction that we get in the courts has often been one just to either ignore, or to 

downplay, or to say that it's so much that there's nothing you can do about it. 

DMH [01:16:08] An emotional reaction on both sides. That's really good. The idea of 

what became the Thurgood Marshall Institute is percolating as early as 1995. And you were 

passionate about the LDF embracing the idea of organizing a think tank. You didn’t let go of 

that idea. I wonder if there was an incident or a catalyst that revealed a gap or need that you 

envisioned the Thurgood Marshall Institute that institute could fill in producing and sharing 

data? 

JBC [01:16:50] Sure. Let me just tell you the concept for the Institute. After Justice 

Marshall died in 1993, the staff got together to discuss what would be an appropriate way to 

honor Justice Marshall. And the idea of the Thurgood Marshall Institute came from that staff 

meeting. The idea was to create the capacity at LDF, a greater capacity to do social science 



31 
 

research, public education, and advocacy. It connected very well for me because in all of my 

cases, like the school desegregation cases— I felt like I was living in Alabama for about nine 

years because of all of the school deseg cases there. There was a time when I was working on 

the Tuscaloosa case, for example, where I had the keys to one of the professor's homes. She 

just said, “I'm just going to give you a key. You just come when you want, whatever.” And 

there were people in these communities, there were white people and Black people in these 

communities who supported us, and certainly Black people. I'm just saying it wasn't all just 

one race. And the importance of having that and understanding the community and having 

the ability to let the public know, not only what was going on, but that people cared. And 

people cared when they understood what was at stake. Including in the African American 

community, there were times when people were like, “Well, why do we need desegregation?” 

That whole discussion, debate that has gone on for a long time. But what I found, in I would 

say all of my cases, was that I went and talked to the community. And when you lay out facts 

and you educate them about what's happening, in this segregated process, in a country that is 

where the power and the money are controlled by people, and it's racialized. When all the 

power and the decision-making is on one side, and it's not yours, segregating yourself from 

that power is a serious disadvantage to you, and your family, and your community. 

It was obvious to me from working on those cases, the importance of having the data, 

of having the ability to educate the public about it, and the ability to do advocacy. And the 

ability to do advocacy beyond the four walls of a piece of litigation. Because you're confined 

by: What's the law, what this Court said, who's the judge. All of that restricts what you're able 

to do in that space, but you can go outside that space. And even if the judge said, “I don't 

want to hear about the history,” you can tell the world about the history. The Marshall 

Institute, I thought it was a beautiful idea for the staff to come up with this concept. Part of 

the buildup was to embrace the Marshall family, [Cecilia] “Cissy” Marshall, and John, and 

Goody. It was a great opportunity for LDF, I think, to up its game, so to speak, by adding 



32 
 

those tools to our toolkit. It's not like we never had any of those, but to have the funding and 

the way to do it in a more systematic way was really important. For me, I said to Elaine 

Jones, “I want to do that.” Because I had been a litigator. I'd been litigating these cases, and 

you hear how things are going. I'm not that generation of folks who are bringing the bags of 

victories in. I'm in the generation where things are being rolled back in serious ways, and you 

can feel it. I'm feeling like we need to educate the country. We need to educate people. And 

we need to advocate to get the support that we need to move in this direction. Because a lot of 

the things that we're litigating about, school districts could do on their own. But they weren't. 

Many weren't. That's the concept for the Marshall Institute. I felt like it fit perfectly with my 

experience as a civil rights litigator. Feeling like, “Okay, I'm in this litigation box.” It's an 

important box to play in. We got to be in that box. But we don't have to be exclusively in that 

space. We need to be in these other spaces as well, and we need the resources. The Marshall 

Institute was a vehicle to get the resources to do a dramatically increased amount of work in 

that research, advocacy, and public education space. 

DMH [01:21:52] Before diving a little deeper into the TMI, let's talk about the LDF 

archives, because the LDF archives and the Marshall Institute in some ways work in tandem. 

In terms of preservation, you collaborated with a consultant in the late 1990s, as a consultant, 

to make plans for the LTD archives. So where does your interest in archival work come 

from? 

JBC [01:22:22] Let me respond to that by saying, I love learning, and I love history. 

You can't walk into LDF and see Thurgood Marshall's desk or look at some of these old 

briefs that are in the file that are made on a mimeograph machine where people had, you 

know they turn the thing, and they push, the briefs came out on that tissue paper. And they 

did an amazing job, by the way. It was interesting to see. I was like, “Wow, hardly any typos, 

no typos.” But that was always – Thurgood Marshall's standard was excellent, and the 

standard of the Legal Defense Fund. You just feel the weight of the history, not in a negative 



33 
 

way, but in a positive way, to be there. To a certain extent, it lifts you, the history. I can't say 

that I was always passionate about archives, so to speak. But the history, it's hard to miss the 

value of that. You just appreciate it by being in this space. I will say one thing, I grew up in 

Oklahoma. In Oklahoma, and even the school I went to, which was a good school in 

Oklahoma, they don't teach you any of this racial history. I mean, what did I learn in school 

about the Civil War and history? It was that a bunch of Northern carpet baggers came down 

after the war to take advantage of the South. That's the history that I was taught in Oklahoma. 

The history that I learned as a lawyer at the Legal Defense Fund, and as a lawyer working on 

these cases, because I'm now looking at, “Well, what did this county do back in the— Okay, 

let me go back to when I can first find records. How long has this been segregated? You 

know, what do they do in the 1800s, 1900s? What can I find?” Because I wanted to show, 

from the earliest time to now. And that's what I did with Dowell v. Board of Education. We 

documented that history going all the way back to even before Oklahoma was a state. To 

show this history, how long there's been this segregation, the depth of it, and why there was a 

need to eliminate it, “root and branch,” as the Supreme Court said. We really are going to 

have to take aggressive, affirmative action if we're going to change the state of not just race 

relations, but racial equity in the United States. That history is what undergirds, cries out for, 

I want to say, resolution or action to say, “The country needs to do something, needs to do 

better, needs take action to address what has happened. And this is what has happened.” But 

so many people don't know so much of the history. Like I say, I grew up in Oklahoma. There 

was so much of this history I did not know until I started working on civil rights cases 

myself. You can't underestimate the value of knowledge, and it's that knowledge. But also, 

there's an emotional component to it. I went to the Library of Congress, because LDF had a 

number of boxes of documents at the Library Congress. And I don't know if this was under 

Julius [Chambers] or Elaine [Jones], which one, but I was told to go to the Library of 

Congress and go through the boxes. I didn't go through all the boxes, but this was like a 



34 
 

sample, just to see what was there, what was protected by attorney-client privilege which 

couldn't be produced to the public, and what wasn't. You're going through these boxes, and 

here's Thurgood Marshall's plane tickets. Wow. Here's Thurgood’s agenda, personal agenda. 

There are notes. Oh, a letter from the Klan to Thurgood Marshall. I mean, it was the real stuff 

of life was in those boxes that was the history of what the attorneys that were before us in this 

path, that they lived. It kind of gives you goosebumps when you're sitting there, even sitting 

here talking about it. Because, oh, Thurgood went here! Thurgood did this! It's just very 

interesting stuff, but it's also critical to motivate people and have people understand why it's 

important to move in the direction that the Legal Defense Fund is trying to move toward, 

which is a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy. And we're still struggling. 

DMH [01:27:05] One of the things that the consultant that you hired in the 90s noted 

was that, “Hey, these guys are generating a lot of material for the litigation work, but the 

focus and priority is winning cases, not preserving the materials for the archive.” So, the 

consultant's report mentioned that some of the materials were in a state of distress. And what 

was your reaction and the reactions of others in the office to those files? 

JBC [01:27:31] I think nobody was surprised. I mean, we were running as fast as we 

could. Right? I say, and this is true, kind of, of all legal practice but certainly at the Legal 

Defense Fund, it took all of your intellectual capacity, physical capacity, and emotional 

capacity to do your job and to do it well as a lawyer at the Legal Defense Fund, for sure. 

When I say you're running as fast as you can, and you're being battered about. These are 

tough, tough roles. And to think that people have not focused on whether they're preserving 

copies of the documents in the right way is just not, it is kind of like, “You're lucky that you 

got that document out the door.” And we had secretaries. We had support. But they're spread 

thin too, and the resources were not deep. I don't think anybody was surprised to hear that. It 

was just that we knew, just like something else, this is something you need to tend to. That's 



35 
 

what it was. It was something that we were responsible for and needed to tend to, and needed 

tend to in a serious way, but we also were running off, litigating, et cetera, et cetera. 

DMH [01:28:59] Well, in 1998, excuse me, Julius Chambers asked Staff Librarian at 

that time, Donna Glockner, and now the Director of Archives— 

JBC [01:29:09] Donna Glockner. 

DMH [01:29:11] To create a proposal to organize the files. You and Donna worked 

together on the project. Given what you just said, how did you tackle the project of that 

enormity? 

JBC [01:29:24] You have dug up some facts that I did not even recall. I did not recall 

this until you put it in your notes. And I thought back, and I was like, “Oh yeah, I probably 

did do that.” This is one of those things where Julius Chambers assigned me to do this. This 

is the way it works. Your boss says do it, you go do it. Now, is it interesting? I'm like, I 

could've spent time at the Library of Congress and stayed there for weeks. This is stuff that 

was part of the job. I recall a little bit about a filing system. But Donna, Donna Glockner, 

who was at the Legal Defense Fund before I came, and I believe is still at LDF now, has just 

been an incredible soldier in this fight, serving and supporting the institution to organize its 

documents, to set up platforms and software that allow us to save the documents and store 

them. She's incredibly smart about how to do that. And then she stayed with LDF all these 

years. So, she is the institutional memory of what we have done. And it was terrific. I got the 

opportunity to work with her again when I became the Director of the Thurgood Marshall 

Institute. In 1988, I am sure I followed Donna's lead. 

DMH [01:30:49] Well in October 1998 an official recommendation was made to the 

LDF Board of Directors to approve the establishment of the Thurgood Marshall Institute. So, 

now the TMI is going to happen, and where did you start in developing the Thurgood 

Marshall Institute? And what were your initial goals? 



36 
 

JBC [01:31:09] I left for a year. I taught at the University of Maryland. I taught 

Sherrilyn Ifill’s class at the Law School. When I came back— I think it was probably late 

summer, early fall of [19]96, [19]97. And I came back to do the Marshall Institute. And 

Elaine [Jones] said, “Okay, your cases are now off your docket because you've been gone for 

a year. So, we have the room on your plate.” And so what I did, what Elaine Jones told me to 

do, which was: I answered every question, or set out to answer every question about how do 

we stand up something like this that we want with this vision for the Marshall Institute. How 

do we get the financing for it? What's the staff support? How does it fit into the organization? 

And then how does it work with the other? Here's litigation. Here’s the D.C. office that does 

all the policy work. How does the Marshall Institute support that work? What kind of projects 

should we have? What should our priorities be for projects? All the things that go into that. 

And then we reached out to Justice Marshall’s clerks and had a big meeting with the Marshall 

family. It was a great opportunity because I got to meet Cissy Marshall, John, and Goody 

through that. But we had a huge meeting with the Marshall clerks at the Thurgood Marshall 

Judicial Building to try to put this all together. And Elaine, talk about mentors, Elaine Jones. I 

mean, brilliant, inspirational, you wouldn't want anybody else in your corner. If you only 

have one person, Elaine has been an incredible leader of this movement over the years. She's 

an incredible lawyer, thinker. And what she did in the Thurgood Marshall Institute was she 

made me answer every single question you could imagine. Right? We worked through it all. 

We had optional budgets, depending upon how much funding we could raise, optional 

staffing plans, all of that. We worked through it all. That's what we took to the Board to get 

the Board's approval to create the Marshall Institute. And the Board did approve. 

DMH [01:33:26] You didn't have any challenges getting everybody on board? 

JBC [01:33:29] Oh, well, let me say, if you're saying, are there – You don't have an 

institution like this, a thinking institution, without challenges and conflict and disagreements. 

Otherwise, your folks, I don't know what you're doing. So yeah, there were differences. I 



37 
 

would say the biggest challenge for the Marshall Institute is, and was, one, raising the money. 

Okay? And two, fundraisers probably might gravitate towards the Marshall Institute over 

litigation because litigation tends to be more controversial, or they view it as such. There's a 

concern that, depending upon what the Marshall Institutes is doing, is it going to outgrow 

LDF? There’s all this, how do you structure all this? How do you manage these things? What 

kind of people, what kind of staff do you bring in to do things that you haven't been doing in 

the past, or at least haven't been doing to the extent that you now plan to do it? The social 

science researchers, the public education specialists, all of that stuff. That's where the tension 

is. 

And then the other mission, I would say, or objective in my view of the Marshall 

Institute, was to support, internally, all of LDF. It was important to me that the Marshall 

Institute facilitate the integration so that there are not silos across the organization. And that's 

what we did when I was Director. We certainly did that. I'm proud of what we did. I'll put it 

that way. Because it had an internal function as well as an external function. And the internal 

function was to facilitate collaboration, communication, and integration across the whole 

teams. For example, when I was the Director, we would have people down in the states 

working on our Voting Rights Defender Project and Prepared to Vote Project, staffing the 

states. We’re finding out things that, this needs to go to litigation. Now it's time for a lawsuit, 

or we think it might be. This is going here. So, the coordination. It was critical to have that 

litigation arm backing up the work that we were doing on the ground in advocacy work just 

in local communities on voting rights issues, but also knowing that I can pick up the phone 

and call the litigation staff and say, “Okay, I think we have a case. I think [we] need to do 

something.” That was also part of what the Marshall Institute was to do, was to facilitate that 

integration amongst the staff. 

DMH [01:36:11] You left the LDF in 2001, and you went into private practice. 

JBC [01:36:16] Yes. 



38 
 

DMH [01:36:18] The Cochran Firm's Washington office. Could you talk a little bit 

about your work there? 

JBC [01:36:25] Sure. I think I joined Cochran [The Cochran Firm] probably, did 

some work on my own, joined Cochran probably around 2002. I knew Johnnie Cochran 

through my sister. We had met and talked numerous times. We always said we wanted to 

work together. So, he asked me to come and join his staff in D.C. when he was opening a 

D.C. Office. At Cochran, I did a number of things. I did police misconduct cases, not 

surprising. Jury trials. I did public accommodations work. I did employment, Title VII work. 

I also did a lot of consulting for civil rights organizations, primarily though for the 

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. And what I did there connects with what was 

happening in the courts. What I did for the Leadership Conference was, I was the chair of 

their Task Force on Civil Rights Restoration. This was probably 2004 or so, 2003, 2004-time 

frame. The Supreme Court had been rolling back critical civil rights decisions and limiting 

the scope of civil rights laws. And Congress had been taking actions as well that were 

negative, like increasing the applicability or the taxability of recoveries in the civil rights 

space. Before, it's easier to settle a case if people don't have taxes coming out of it because it's 

lower dollars to ask for [from] the other side. The Newt Gingrich Congress decided that they 

were going to tax these civil rights recoveries, which had not been taxed before. They were 

taxing the recoveries, which made it more difficult, taxing the recovery and the attorney's 

fees. So, the plaintiff is paying tax on what they're getting, they're paying tax on the attorney 

fee provision, sometimes outstripping the award. And then the attorney is paying tax as well. 

There were all these kinds of actions that had been taken in the [19]90s that were rolling back 

civil rights. It's what we felt in the courts and what was happening in the courts, but also what 

was happening in the legislatures. The Leadership Conference set about working to create an 

omnibus bill that captured all of these civil rights, I'll say, setbacks, and to restore the law. 

My job was to work with an umbrella organization—when I say umbrella, it's the coalition 



39 
 

for civil rights organizations across the board—to bring those organizations together so we 

could collaborate and decide on actual language of a bill. Senator Kennedy and John Lewis 

actually introduced bills in Congress, in more than one congressional session, to restore the 

civil rights laws. Unfortunately, the appetite was not there. The support was not there. But 

that was some of the work that I did while I was at The Cochran Firm. 

DMH [01:39:23] What about during your time at Mehri & Skalet? 

JBC [01:39:27] Mehri & Skalet, I mentioned earlier that I had started a fair housing, 

fair lending, consumer protection practice in the housing space. We were representing 

plaintiffs, groups of plaintiffs, sometimes individuals, who were victims of that whole 

predatory lending [catastrophe] and then the foreclosures. And there were pretty ugly things 

that were happening to the homeowners after the crisis. The banks may have been bailed out, 

but the homeowners were not. Banks were bailed, but homeowners were not. The practice 

was primarily built around trying to challenge predatory practices, and to help support 

homeowners stay in their homes, and to change the laws where we could. That was primarily 

what I did at Mehri & Skalet. 

DMH [01:40:22] How did that inform your work when you served as the Chief of 

Staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency? 

JBC [01:40:29] When I worked on all those cases, post the financial crisis, what I saw 

a lot of times was there were policies in place, and many of them were driven by Fannie Mae, 

Freddie Mac, who were these government-sponsored entities, kind of quasi-government, 

quasi-private. But they had policies that would often prevent us from resolving issues in the 

cases that we brought. Fannie and Freddie had their own crisis after 2008 and ended up in 

conservatorship, where they remain to this day. Although they're financially in a different 

place today and doing much better. But they took huge losses during the financial crisis 

because they too were part of that whole process or involved in the process of the lending that 

led to the financial crisis. When I saw the role that the government regulators and the quasi-



40 
 

government agencies played in both the crises, the predatory lending and the recovery, it was 

clear to me that if you were inside you could be in a position to try to have more influence on 

those policies. These are policies about how to deal with homeowners who are in 

foreclosures, all those kinds of policies. And Fannie [Mae] Freddie [Mac] control a huge part 

of the market. That's why I wanted to go to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The new 

Director was—former Congressman Mel Watt [who] became the Director of the Federal 

Housing Finance Agency. Mel Watt actually was a former LDFer. I reached out to him and 

told him that I'd be happy to work in any capacity, but I was very interested in working at 

FHFA because I thought that the government could do a lot better with the financial markets 

and financial services industry, in particular the Fannie and Freddie, in terms of the services 

that end up being provided to the average everyday homeowner and the policies that applied, 

driven through them. That's why I wanted to be there. I was happy to be able to go. 

DMH [01:42:53] Now, I want to talk a little bit about the magnitude of the Thurgood 

Marshall Institute and their contributions to the public, to all kinds of work and making 

people's lives better. First of all, can you believe that it's 10 years? 

JBC [01:43:15] Oh, that's fantastic. The ability to get this Institute stood up and 

funded is an incredible accomplishment. And Sherrilyn Ifill, coming in as the new Director-

Counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, was able to get that done and get it stood up in 2015. I 

congratulate her for that. It's really terrific that she was able do that. It had been a challenge 

for quite a while. We had had numerous Directors-Counsel. It was Elaine, then Ted, then 

John Payton before Sherrilyn. So, there was transition at LDF also, which I'm sure affected 

LDF's ability to be in a position to raise the kind of money. I think Sherrrilyn brought in like 

$5 million to get started. That was really an incredible accomplishment. 

DMH [01:44:12] What makes the Thurgood Marshall Institute's research distinctive 

from other research centers, like the Brennan Center and the Urban Institute of New York? 

What makes it different? 



41 
 

JBC [01:44:23] I don't know that it is so different, but some of it is different. And 

some of it is connected to the program and the advocacy that we do. For example, during the 

pandemic, we not only were on the ground. During the pandemic, many of us were in our 

homes. Although there were some people on the ground because some people still were 

willing to go out there and wanted to go there once they were allowed to do so. We have this 

big, huge voting rights effort that's ongoing in the midst of a pandemic. We did research 

about what's happening in each one of the states. And then we would do blogs and social 

media to the states. Because what we realized, shortly after the pandemic started when there 

were elections— First I thought, “Okay, everybody's going to be remote.” That's what we 

thought. Then, was it Wisconsin? Folks were out. They were out voting. And I'm like, “Oh 

no, this is not going to be just remote or by mail. People will be voting in person.” So, we had 

to prepare for all the ways in which people would be voting. Then we had to educate voters 

about what they needed to know. What I mean by that is, we took our research on COVID 

and what's happening in your state, what are the rates, all of that. And we would put in a blog 

post for Mississippi, for Alabama. So that if you're trying to decide. And we did an education 

piece about how to make decisions about whether you're going to vote in person, whether you 

going to vote by mail, based on your health, whatever, what's happening in your community. 

We used that research to support our advocacy program in that way. It was standard research. 

Basically, we gathered the data. Some of the research is different, though. There might be 

research, for example, about bail reform. Bail reform that happened, and what it means. 

They’re issues that somehow often get lost in the discussion. People might say, “Oh well, it's 

bail reform, and now you've got this increase in crime,” or whatever. We would look to see 

whether that was really accurate or not, or what misinformation was occurring. What data 

were people missing in terms of sending out these false messages, and then trying to get a 

positive message out. 



42 
 

The other way that I would say we might've used it. And some of this is research, but 

not the social science kind of research. When the pandemic hit, there were a lot of people 

who were very afraid about what was going to happen with their mortgage. So, we put out 

information. And people's first reaction probably would have been, “Oh here's the bill. I'm 

not looking at that because I can't pay because I don't have a job.” Meanwhile, there were 

options to put that mortgage on hold or modify it while the pandemic was going forward. 

And if you signed up, you could basically save your house. So, we put information out just to 

help people survive. We would provide that kind of information. There was research that was 

done during the pandemic about the school lunch programs. We would document what was 

happening, and that would help some of our litigation. We got the core social science. We're 

not cooking the books, but we knew what information was needed to support sometimes 

litigation efforts. Some of that research was done. It was a research agenda that was 

coordinating—I talked about coordinating across LDF. We didn't come up with a research 

agenda for TMI. We came up with a research agenda for the Legal Defense Fund that we 

supported. We talked to people in the litigation staff. We talked to the policy staff. “What 

kind of research do you need? What would be good?” Then we would have a whole staff 

meeting to discuss research, and then decide what was the research platform for that year and 

the research agenda for LDF, for the Marshall Institute for that year. It was a collaborative 

across the board effort. I don't know so much about all the research that's done. And there's a 

lot of good research that a lot organizations do. We recognize that. We use it, and we support 

it. But our research is also very important, and it helps advance the work that we do. And at 

times, sometimes it stands in where we may not have a program in that space through a 

litigation. It may not be a litigation angle. So, sometimes the only way you can address this is 

to drill down on it from a research and public education approach. That's what we did. 

DMH [01:49:34] I was thinking about your tenure between 2019 and 2022. So many 

things happened. We had COVID, we had George Floyd. We had such a confluence of 



43 
 

advocates. We had information readily available about economic disparities. There was a lot 

going on during those times, and I was just wondering if you could touch on some of the 

milestones. 

JBC [01:50:04] When we looked back at it, there were so many things that we stood 

up. It was really incredible. We had a great team, really fantastic team, the Deputy Director 

Anne Houghtaling. We had a Voting Rights team with Tori Winger and Michael Pernick. We 

had just a lot of great staffers. Celina Avalos. I'm just thinking of the team that we had. We 

had a lot of good people. What we did was, we were able to pivot based on— This all was 

happening very quickly. For example, at one point we thought we were all inside, or working 

from our basements, and the next moment half the team is mobile. People might go but they 

might not interact, but they might drive by the polling places. One of the things we did is, we 

stood up an app. LDF created an app. We had a lot of volunteers and other people that we 

trained. We worked with Reverend Barber's organization, the Poor People's Campaign, and 

Forward Justice. And we had volunteers. We had an app, and what folks could do with that 

app was the following. It was really terrific. If I'm a mobile voting volunteer, I could drive by 

the poll, I could take pictures. Are there lines? Are there steps in front of the polling place so 

people can't get in who are disabled? Is there electioneering going on? Is the polling place 

open on time? Then my app asks all the questions. My volunteer might drive by. They don't 

even have to get out and expose themselves to the pandemic, but they can give me my 

information. It loads up into another platform that we stood up, here, that everybody's got on 

their own computers. Where I'm a lawyer, I work with a Voting Rights Defender or Prepared 

to Vote Program through the Thurgood Marshall Institute. Now okay, I'm Alabama, “Oh, I 

see this polling place in Lowndes County, it's not open, and it's 9:00. Okay, I am calling the 

election officials.” We were able to use an app where people could take pictures. You could 

upload those pictures. The person in New York, in their basement, will see that picture on our 

platform, and they can know exactly what's happening. They can call. There's 



44 
 

misinformation. Say somebody put out information that the polling hours are such and such, 

and it was wrong. Because we provided palm cards, we call them “palm cards.” It was all the 

critical voting information you needed. And it was not only available online. We stood up a 

voting rights website. You could go to your state, and you could connect to register, all that 

stuff, but also all the information you needed. It would change depending, it might change 

four times before the election, the relevant information. We would change those palm cards. 

We probably mailed out millions to voters of palm cards, and we put in personal protective 

equipment.  Basically, you get a mask, gloves, your palm card; you're ready to go. We sent 

that out. We sent water sometimes. We just literally sent water to folks who were working in 

polling places where it was going to be hot, that type of thing. Luckily, because of the 

funding that came in post-George Floyd, that was to be targeted to support this election work, 

we were able to spend it in that way. There was a lot of work that was done, whether it was 

setting up platforms, websites, palm cards, mailers. Then we worked with LeBron James’s 

More Than a Vote organization, to recruit poll workers. We recruited a huge number, 

thousands of poll workers across the country through that effort with them, and also worked 

with celebrities to do ads. All of that was done in that space that was very hectic. That was 

just one project. Meanwhile, we're writing reports and doing other research projects. We did 

blogs.  

We also had these labs where we'd have in-depth training sessions, where we’d have 

local community people. We'd have the academics. We might have some government 

officials. And they'd all come together for an off-the-record discussion of a particular issue. 

Whether that was water issues, because that was one of the issues that I inherited. It was great 

research that was done by Coty Montag on the water shutoffs, what was happening in Flint, 

all of that stuff. But really the issue was across the country, a lot of people, particularly in 

Black and Brown communities, were getting liens on their homes because of water bills, 

losing their property, the quality of water, water shutoffs, all of that. We worked on that water 



45 
 

issue. We had a water lab, for example. We had a lab on AI. We had all these, in the lab 

format that I just described, which is kind of in the, I won't call it cone of silence, but they 

weren't public. We didn't do press release. We might say we had lab, but we would never say 

what was discussed in that lab. These were opportunities for people to talk with each other 

who may not normally speak. And to also have the academics in the room so you have the 

data. We did those as well. 

DMH [01:55:52] I think that's such an important continuation of the work of the 

Thurgood Marshall Institute and have been fascinated by the ways in which we're thinking 

about justice now when it comes to technology. We're talking about discrimination in the 

technological fields, the generation divide. I have to ask you a little bit about that work. It's 

rooted in the past but portends a lot for future understanding about how discrimination works. 

JBC [01:56:24] Yeah, we had a lab on AI. It was very interesting. We did a podcast 

on it, which got a lot of listeners. And this was part of the work that connects— I'm not sure 

exactly, because I left in 2022, what exactly LDF is doing in this space now. But I know that, 

for example, Sherrilyn Ifill was working to address the problems with Facebook and Google, 

the big tech companies, about what's happening in that space. Certainly, recognizing that we 

are going to need, or we need now, some serious regulation of the tech industry, which 

unfortunately we don't have yet in the way in which we need it. But I would say from the 

civil rights perspective, we were recognizing this. One of the researchers at TMI at the time I 

was there, Algernon Austin, did a piece on facial recognition. Actually, we got that published 

in USA Today. We were looking at the issue, but I can't say that at that time that we had 

gotten to the point where we had framed out what's needed. Although there are people, and 

certainly people in the civil rights field, including my current work where I'm working now, 

that's big, working in this AI space. 

DMH [01:57:50] What do you think the most important area of civil rights is today, 

and where is litigation most needed? 



46 
 

JBC [01:58:01] I'll say, those are questions that are really kind of unanswerable, 

because it depends on if your problem is health, you need something in the health space. If 

your problem is housing, you need housing, voting rights. But let me say this. As we look at 

the country, this is 2025, and we have never been where we are now that I can see. Where 

we're throwing the Constitution and the laws out the window, and people are being 

“disappeared” on the streets and sent to foreign countries without due process. The legal 

profession has been threatened. The educational institutions are threatened. The United States 

is in serious crisis. For the civil rights work, we have to continue to do what we've been doing 

because at least for now we still have the laws and the Constitution, and there are still wins to 

be had in each one of those individual matters. But I don't think anybody is confused about 

what's happening writ large across the board and the crisis that we are in. It’s very terrifying 

where we are. I think a lot of people say, “Well, you know we've been in difficult times 

before.” And that is certainly true and in worse times. In today's climate, I think that we are 

lucky to have an institution like the Legal Defense Fund, which is separate from government, 

financially, and in its work, and in its leadership, and in virtually every way. And so, it can 

move forward and continue to press the government and the people to do the right thing when 

it comes to racial justice and equity in the United States. But there are some incredibly 

powerful headwinds that are very worrying when we see, for example, the government trying 

to put DOGE officials in non-profit organizations. This is uncharted territory, at least for us. 

For the current citizens, not just citizens, but the people who live in the United States and the 

public education, the pushback is incredibly important. I think, and this is what I said when I 

came back to LDF. I love working in the housing space. To me, housing determines, I like to 

say everything from whether you can get a bagel in the morning, to whether you have your 

health, whether you can get to a hospital or a doctor, grocery store, your blood pressure. 

Where you live is so determinative of your ability to enjoy and thrive in life. Housing has 

always been, to me, and like I say I saw it in the deseg cases, kind of a critical place to focus. 



47 
 

That said, when I came back to LDF in 2019, seeing the 2020 election on the horizon, I 

confessed that I said to Sherrilyn, “I want to work on housing, but I see that the house could 

burn down. And so, we better deal with democracy.” That's kind of like the best answer that I 

have for that question. That, if we don't have a rule of law, if the country is all run by corrupt 

oligarchs, it's very difficult to see how fairness and justice for any of the people, White or 

Black.  One thing that's interesting about this struggle, that it is the role of lower income, 

middle and lower income Whites who have been used in this process and abused. Meaning 

that, the powers-that-be and some of the biggest promoters of the approaches that have 

oppressed Black people have also oppressed poor White people. The LDF vision of a 

multiracial, multiethnic democracy is one that embraces all of the people of the nation, all the 

people who live here. That means we have to have the ability to have rules, and processes, 

and a structure, and a government that has laws and is not just determined by the whim of 

somebody with billions of dollars or who has a racial agenda. 

DMH [02:03:33] I know attorney [Charles Steven] Ralston pointed to a need for 

people to understand the Constitution better. Do you think that the Thurgood Marshall 

Institute, what role do you think that—? 

JBC [02:03:43] I think that's true. I'll step back and say, so many people don't even 

understand that we have three branches of government. It's in the Constitution. That’s part of 

what he's talking about. I think civic education is important. What I don't know is, because 

what's happened with the current president, Trump, is that all of the— You can't write a law 

for everything that happens in the world. You have to have some norms of behavior, some 

unwritten codes of conduct, some standards of ethics. It's not all written up because you 

can’t. The fact that they are willing to violate so many laws means that to teach people about 

those laws, you kind of have to teach them about other societies, I almost think. Like how it 

could work to provide a better standard, a better quality of living for all of the people if you 

have a nation of laws and a democratic system that supports equal justice under law as it says 



48 
 

on the Supreme Court. If that's real, then that gives people hope. It gives them the ability to 

work without fear. How many people are in fear right now? So many people are even afraid 

to protest, something that I really wouldn't have thought about before. But going out to 

protest, people are afraid to put a yard sign up. Basic things. University professors in fear for 

what they might say in class, and regular school teachers. Fear that comes from the 

breakdown of the law is really undermining. I think we have to find a way to teach people 

about how society can work when you have the rule of law, when you have a Constitution 

that promotes fairness and justice across the board. I think we have to teach people that. Right 

now the ability to teach them is even restricted. We're in some difficult times. But I'll circle 

back to say, one thing that I thought of in this period is that—and I'll talk about Black 

people—is for Black people, I have long felt having gone through my experience as a civil 

rights lawyer, that, and totally believe in the law and in pursuing justice through legal 

processes, but I kind of feel like, we on some level, we have to save ourselves. And that the 

way we are going to best save ourselves will take me back to education. I talked about the 

housing. I talked about democracy. And you connected the education with your question 

about learning about the Constitution. I think the education of our community, on everything, 

is critical to people being able to protect themselves, being able to protect everything from 

their their health to their wealth. I think that that education is critical. And it will put us in the 

best position we can be in in these hostile times and even better position in the hopeful, better 

times that we'll see sometime soon, I hope. 

DMH [02:07:14] Which brings us full circle back to the question I was going to ask 

you about. Your mother left a legacy that clearly has inspired you, and in what ways does her 

history and legacy of leadership, and education, and grassroots activism, in what way has that 

inspired you? 

JBC [02:07:34] Well, sometimes it's just in little ways. And I'll come back to the 

education point. Because I took off when I left the Marshall Institute to take care of Mom. 



49 
 

Mom was 98, and she was living in my home. I wasn't working. My mother passed at the end 

of 2024. Then as I started to think about what I should do next in life. So many thoughts. 

Because I'm interested in it all. What can I say? Whether it's Medicare, whether it is 

Medicaid, whether it's the democracy. Although, I could work on any of those issues because 

they're all really important. But I started thinking more recently as the attacks on our nation 

became so fierce in the last few months of 2025, since January 20th to now. You can really 

feel it, and everybody feels it. I told you my Mother opened a clinic in Oklahoma City to 

teach reading and math to kids. I started thinking, “Maybe that's what I should do.” I really 

have been thinking that will bolster people in hard times. Having education, being able to 

understand how to support yourself, how to make yourself healthy, all of that will help 

people. And so, when you say that, I really was thinking, maybe that is— Because 

everybody's looking. “What should I do?” I started thinking that maybe that's the thing to do. 

Maybe I should start a reading clinic. I've not been a teacher, though. I feel like I may not 

have the skills, but Mom had the skills. She had lots of materials. She was a teacher. She 

loved teaching. That's not been something that I've done. So, I was like, “Oh, maybe you're 

stepping into a space that you might not be well prepared for.” But that's what it made me 

think of. It made me think, “Maybe that's where I need to go, is to try to start educating 

young kids. 

DMH [02:09:42] I forgot to ask you about the grant that the Mellon Foundation gave 

in 2021, and how that grant might be furthering your goals. 

JBC [02:09:54] What it's doing, and the Mellon Foundation grant was significant. Let 

me put it this way, when you look at the work that the Legal Defense Fund has done and 

other civil rights organizations. I'll say most funders—and we fundraise like all the 

organizations—they're funding the work that's on the ground, a lot of it. Whether that's 

advocacy work, whether it's public education, whether it is litigation, they're funding that 

work. That's all the work out front. When you're running as fast as you can, you're not 



50 
 

thinking about whether you file the documents exactly in the right file, and put a label on it, 

and put it in a protective environment. But we've talked about the importance of making sure 

that that history is preserved. What Mellon has done and has the wisdom and the foresight to 

see, is how their funds can help us protect that information. But not just protect it, to get it out 

to the world. Now LDF has created, I always call them the mighty archives team because we 

have a great archives team. Donna, Kayla, and— God, why am I just blanking on the other 

staffer's name? Well, now they've got a big staff. The head of digital archives for LDF, 

Ashton Wingate, Kayla Jenkins, and Donna Glockner were the three that were here when I 

was here. And they put together that incredible website with some great website folks, really 

pretty amazing. And now LDF has that out to the public. Having that LDF Recollections 

website, the timeline, all of that. I don't know that this part of it has rolled out yet, I think it 

may not have, but Elaine Jones personally —and I spent 10 hours on the phone going through 

every line of —it’s a different timeline I think than the one we have now, but it's the two 

column: this A, then you have B, or 2.0, whatever. But Elaine Jones went through every line 

of that timeline. She had amazing— because these are cases where she's like, “Now, I 

remember this particular attorney. Now, he did this in court.” Elaine has an incredible 

memory, so she would be able to say what was argued in court, the judge's reaction, and 

what, all of that. And then some of the cases she was able to put in a frame that really helped 

people understand, like Furman versus Georgia, the death penalty case. Even though that case 

was only able to stop the death penalty across the board absolutely, for a period of years until 

the Supreme Court allowed it to be revived, at the time, the number of lives that were saved 

just by that one decision. And Elaine was able to capture those kinds of details. “Do you 

know how many lives were saved just from that one decision?” Some people might look at it 

and the fact that the Supreme Court revived it later, but we saved lives. Those are people, 

those are human beings. Elaine had all those kinds of insights on the details of the archives. 

I'm sure Sherrilyn has done the same kind of thing, the leadership of LDF. That is invaluable 



51 
 

to get that kind of input, and then be able to translate that into communications for the public. 

To get Elaine's voice and Sherilyn's voice in materials that will live on. And Teddy Shaw, to 

get Teddy's voice. And I don't mean just to hear it, but I mean their substantive thinking about 

the case, the docket, the development of the law. When Elaine and I were going through the 

timeline, for example, we got to a certain point and there's a memo. And she's like, “Oh, this 

is when LDF decided shortly after Title VII was adopted, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, 

that it was an employment discrimination provision that we were going to develop the law in 

a very determined and focused way. So, we went out, we picked the cases. And this is how 

we developed the law in this area. We thought it was important to get precedents on the 

books about how the law was to be interpreted. This is a very intentional way in which we 

developed the law.” Those kinds of intentional strategies, as well as the insight from the staff, 

I think is really, really incredibly valuable. And the Mellon funds have facilitated making that 

happen. 

DMH [02:15:12] What else would you like to accomplish in terms of civil rights and 

the Thurgood Marshall Institute? 

JBC [02:15:18] Well, I'm not leading it now. I’m no longer at LDF, but I still think 

that vision, the original vision is the right thing for LDF. I support it. I know LDF still does. I 

just saw they put out a new report about a week or so ago. I haven't had a chance to read it, 

but I see that the work is ongoing. The researchers that they have are terrific. They've got 

excellent researchers. Dr. Kesha Moore, I know, is one of them. She was just producing, she 

churns it out, but she has a top quality work. I think that work, it supports LDF [in the] long 

run because it completes LDF in a way that— I always used to say, the name of the Legal 

Defense Fund was NAACP Legal, the original name, NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund. This puts the beef in the “Educational” by really drilling down on, how do 

you educate. What do you need to educate? You need research, you need the data, you need 

the people who can develop the advocacy materials and ways to get that out to the public. 



52 
 

That's what the Marshall Institute does. I think it really completes it and fulfills the promise 

of the Legal Defense Fund from the beginning. 

DMH [02:16:50] Is there anything else that I didn't ask that you want to add? 

JBC [02:16:57] I don't think so. I'll just say that LDF has given me the opportunity to 

have a lot of wonderful experiences in life, and to participate, and to be in the thick of things 

and in the fight. And that's been my honor to be able to do that work. There are times when 

LDF, supporting people internationally or locally, where you just feel like it's all— When we, 

a whole crew from LDF went to South Africa, when Mandela became president. And seeing 

that. And we did training for Black lawyers in South Africa on how to litigate under the 

Constitution. You can see it coming together and continuing to inspire and give us hope that 

we can continue to improve things for people in the United States and around the world. It's 

all about supporting human beings, humankind, and equality and justice. And it's really 

important. I think everybody will be happier if we can make more progress in this space. 

We're on the right path. It's just great to have been able to be a contributor. 

DMH [02:18:18] I have thoroughly enjoyed our conversation today. 

JBC [02:18:21] Oh, well thank you. I enjoyed it as well. It was really nice meeting 

you both and having the conversation and revisiting and recalling some of this history, 

because you forget. So much of it you forget. 

DMH [02:18:34] Thank you for your incredible work. I look forward to continuing to 

read and figure out what's going on. Thank you so much. 

JBC [02:18:42] You're welcome. You’re welcome.