NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records selections, 1943-1964

The project is a sampling of materials from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The entire collection consists of approximately 80,000 items of which about 80% (210,299 images) have been digitized thus far. Spanning the years 1915-1968, with most dating from 1940 to 1960, these records document the work and procedures of the organization as it combated racial discrimination in the nation’s courts, establishing in the process a public interest legal practice that was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. The organization’s records cover a host of topics, including segregation in schools, on buses, and in public facilities; discrimination in housing and property ownership; voting rights; police brutality; racial violence; and countless other infringements of civil rights.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records selected for this transcription campaign include a Thurgood Marshall correspondence file, index to the organization’s legal case file, background files on Brown v. Board of Education and the 1943 Detroit riot, and daily bulletins on staff activity in the 1950s.