Janell Byrd-Chichester Oral History
Janell Byrd-Chichester was raised in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where her mother was one of the first Black teachers to desegregate an all-white school. Byrd-Chichester attended American University and then the University of California Berkeley School of Law, serving as a member of the California Law Review. She went on to clerk for the Honorable Cecil F. Poole on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit before joining the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) in 1987 as an Assistant Counsel. While at LDF, she litigated cases related to school desegregation, affirmative action in higher education, and employment discrimination. She also managed LDF’s Washington, D.C., office and laid the groundwork for LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute. She left LDF in 2001 to work in private practice, including at the Cochran Firm. She later became a partner at the Washington, D.C., law firm Mehri & Skalet and served as the Chief of Staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
She returned to LDF in 2019 as the Director of the Thurgood Marshall Institute, overseeing efforts to conduct and share social science research, develop the LDF Archives, and launch public education initiatives in pursuit of racial justice. In 2022, she became the General Counsel of the National Fair Housing Alliance.
HIGHLIGHTED EXCERPT:
Janell Chichester-Byrd speaks on the origins and mission of the Thurgood Marshall Institute
CITE THIS ITEM:
Janell Byrd-Chichester interview for the Legal Defense Fund Oral History Project. Interviewed by Danita Mason-Hogans on April 18, 2025 in Washington, D.C. Conducted in collaboration with the Southern Oral History Program at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
