NAACP Legal Defense Fund

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is identified in the book as a former workplace of Betsy Bartholet, a law professor whose experience as an attorney informed a course on race and poverty litigation. The organization’s direct work, structure, and history are not detailed in the account; its significance here is as part of the professional background behind a course that brought students into contact with social-justice practice.

Connection to Legal Education

Bartholet had worked as an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund before teaching an unusual one-month intensive course on race and poverty litigation at the law school. The course took students away from campus for a month of work with an organization engaged in social-justice work. In December 1983, Bryan Stevenson traveled to Atlanta to spend several weeks with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee as part of the course.

Role in the Account

The reference connects the Fund to the course through Bartholet’s legal experience, rather than through a described case or campaign of the Fund itself. The account presents the course as a practical alternative to conventional legal study: students were expected to spend time working with an organization, and Stevenson’s placement led him to meet Steve Bright, director of the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee. No further details are given about the Fund’s operations or its relationship to that committee.