Ferrill, 20, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, attended her first NAACP meeting with her mother when she was a child and eventually got active in the youth council of the nation’s oldest civil rights organization that was founded in 1909 by Dr. W.E.B Du Bois, Ida B. Wells and others.
When it was time for her to apply to college, she insisted on attending a university that had an active NAACP chapter. “I have a bias when it comes to the NAACP,” says Ferrill, who recently completed an internship in the D.C. office of the Baltimore-based organization under the direction of Hilary Shelton, a longtime NAACP staffer. “What we do and will continue to do in this country is really important.”
