After 16 years of providing legal relief to North Carolina’s most vulnerable residents, the future of the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law’s Center for Civil Rights hangs in the balance. A UNC Board of Governors committee voted 5 to 1 to recommend a policy banning litigation by UNC centers and institutes on August 1.
While the proposal would technically apply to all centers and institutes within the system, only the Center for Civil Rights engages in litigation. The full board will vote on the proposal in September.
“The center likely won’t be able to survive if it can’t litigate,” UNC law professor Gene Nichols wrote in an email to Diverse. Nichols, who was then the dean of the law school, recruited civil rights icon Julius Chambers to found the center in 2001.
Since its founding, the center has defended civil rights causes, addressing cases of discrimination in areas such as housing and voting rights, public schools, the workplace and the environment. The center extends legal assistance to disenfranchised and low-income North Carolinians who many say might otherwise lack representation.
The center’s efforts are aimed at dismantling the ongoing legacy of racial discrimination and inequality in North Carolina, according to Ted Shaw, director of the center and UNC law professor and former head of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). “That legacy is with us, it’s still not completely undone in spite of all the progress we’ve made,” Shaw said.
The center’s work builds on Chambers’ legacy. A UNC law school alumnus, Chambers graduated at the top of his law school class in 1962 and was editor-in-chief of the law review before going on to an illustrious career as a civil rights lawyer, eventually succeeding Thurgood Marshall and Jack Greenberg as president and director-counsel of the NAACP LDF. He endured firebombings of his home, office and car over the course of his career.
“The work that he did wasn’t always appreciated, but it was good work, it was necessary, and it made the state better,” Shaw said.
