New LDF Head is Ready to Challenge Right-wingers
by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – Theodore M. “Ted” Shaw, selected to succeed Elaine R. Jones as new president and director-counsel of the 64-year-old NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, says he expects continued assaults on equal opportunity programs by Right-wing conservatives.

“That fight has not ended. We still have attacks on all kinds of programs. It isn’t clear what the next attack is going to be by the Far Right, but, we’re preparing to meet them whether it’s on pipeline programs, mentoring programs or scholarship programs,” says Shaw. “In the eyes of the radical Right, all of these programs should be illegal. We’ve got to fight their attempts to end them.”

He adds, “It’s important for people of good will to understand that the stakes are very high and that these people’s perverted view of what constitutes fairness would prevent any attempt to voluntarily and consciously address racial inequality in a targeted way.”

Shaw will serve as LDF’s fifth head, rising from the position of staff attorney in 1982 to his current position of associate director-counsel. His leadership of LDF begins as racial and social issues are illuminated by a high-profile presidential race and the anniversary of the Brown case, which enforced desegregation of public schools.

“In general, we’re going to continue to be the law firm for African-Americans nationally when it comes to systemic racial discrimination,” Shaw says. Among issues of high priority in addition to affirmative action is a racially biased criminal justice system.

“The war on drugs has been distorted into a war on the people of color and the way in which the death penalty is still being implemented,” Shaw explains, “We know that it has never been and cannot be made to be a fair system; and all the evidence is in now about people being convicted for crimes they did not commit and sentenced to death. While we have been able to exonerate some of these individuals, what we don’t know is if we’ve executed people who were never exonerated and should have been.”

Shaw will be taking the helm at the LDF May 1 when the blunt-spoken Jones steps down. The change in leadership coincides with the 50th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education U. S. Supreme Court ruling, argued by LDF May 17, 1954.