But at no point during her childhood did she ever think she would someday lead the historic NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the organization that successfully fought and won the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education.
“From Thurgood Marshall to Sherillyn Ifill does not feel like a logical trajectory,” says Ifill in a recent interview before she took the helm of the 72-year-old organization this month. “But it’s an honor.”
For the last 20 years, Ifill has been a high-profile law professor at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law, where her research and scholarship have broken new ground and have been lauded by other academicians in her field.
