Ted Shaw Oral History

Ted Shaw was born on New York City’s Governors Island in November 1954, six months after the Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. 

In 2004, Shaw became the fifth Director-Counsel of LDF. Shaw joined LDF in 1982 as a staff attorney, where he litigated cases related to elementary, secondary, and higher education, housing, voting rights, and capital punishment for over 26 years. He also directed LDF’s education docket. In 1987, under the direction of the LDF’s third Director-Counsel, Julius Chambers, Shaw established LDF’s Western Regional Office in Los Angeles, California. 

Shaw taught at the University of Michigan Law School, where he played a key role in initiating a review of its admissions policy that the Supreme Court later upheld in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger. He also taught at Columbia Law School, CUNY School of Law at Queens College, and Temple University School of Law, and he served as a faculty member of the Practicing Law Institute and as the Julius L. Chambers Distinguished Professor of Law and the Director of the UNC Center for Civil Rights. His research areas include the 14th Amendment, affirmative action, and fair housing. His scores of honors include the 2012 Harlem Neighborhood Defenders Office W. Haywood Burns Humanitarian Award and the 2012 Office of the Appellate Defender Milton S. Gould Award for Outstanding Advocacy. In 2024, LDF awarded him the Thurgood Marshall Lifetime Achievement Recognition Award.