Yolanda Young (born October 31, 1968) [1] is an American journalist, author, and lecturer. [2] Her work as a writer focuses on law, politics, and culture. Young has addressed audiences at Harvard Law School [3] and the University of Arizona. [4] She was the keynote speaker for the 2011 National Black Pre-Law Conference. [5]
She is on the board of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. [6]
Young's first book, On Our Way To Beautiful (Random House 2002) received favorable reviews from publications like The Chicago Tribune. [7] Young has also been included in the following anthologies: This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women; [8] Shaking the Tree: A Collection of New Fiction; [9] and Memoir by Black Women; and The Black Body. [10]
Young's upcoming book, "Thurgood's Legacy: Black Lawyers Reflect on Law School, the Legal Profession, and Life," [11] is based on a series of articles written for On Being A Black Lawyer. [12]
Young contributes columns to USA TODAY. She also provides commentary for NPR, The Washington Post and other publications. Noteworthy pieces include "Bakke ruling exposes generational divide," [13] Stay Away From Your Man, Rihanna! [14] Mapp v. Ohio Turns 50: A Look at Warren Court's Rights of Defendants, [15] and It's Shreveport's Season. [16]
Young founded On Being A Black Lawyer (OBABL) in 2008 as a news and resource center for African American attorneys. [17] OBABL has been recognized by the American Bar Association. [18] In addition to its legal news blog, OBABL releases the following publications annually: The Power 100, which recognizes the most powerful black attorneys in the nation; [19] The Salute to the Congressional Black Caucus & the Nation's Top Lawyers Black Lawyers With Influence; [20] and The Black Student's Guide to Law Schools, which includes rankings of the top law schools for black students.
In 2008 Young wrote an exposé in The Huffington Post "Law Firm Segregation Reminiscent of Jim Crow." [21]
"[Law firm] Staff attorneys are non-partner track lawyers who handle the menial legal tasks--generating binders and attaching "relevant" or "not relevant" codes to thousands of emails, spreadsheets, and any other documents associated with a particular case—that associates shun. While paralegals have their own offices, as many as ten staff attorneys share windowless file rooms. Segregated from other lawyers in the firm, we go uninvited to attorney-only firm functions and are not provided jury duty or maternity leave. The base pay and bonus structure is half that of a 25 year old first year associate's."
Young would go on to file a lawsuit against the firm alleging discrimination and retaliation; however, a federal judge dismissed the case on summary judgement. [22]
Young was raised in Shreveport, Louisiana. In her memoir, On Our Way To Beautiful, Young recounts how she and her family overcame many tragedies. According to Washingtonian Magazine, "The stories tell of a sometimes-troubled family--Young's father shot and wounded her mother, and an uncle is in prison--but a mostly loving one, thanks to the values imparted by Young's grandmother and great-grandmother." [23]
Young attended Howard University majoring in Accounting with a minor in Political Science. She is also a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center. [23]
Racial quotas in employment and education are numerical requirements for hiring, promoting, admitting and/or graduating members of a particular racial group. Racial quotas are often established as means of diminishing racial discrimination, addressing under-representation and evident racism against those racial groups or, the opposite, against the disadvantaged majority group. Conversely, quotas have also been used historically to promote discrimination against minority groups by limiting access to influential institutions in employment and education.
Thurgood Marshall was an American civil rights lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1967 until 1991. He was the Supreme Court's first African-American justice. Prior to his judicial service, he was an attorney who fought for civil rights, leading the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Marshall coordinated the assault on racial segregation in schools. He won 29 of the 32 civil rights cases he argued before the Supreme Court, culminating in the Court's landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which rejected the separate but equal doctrine and held segregation in public education to be unconstitutional. President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967. A staunch liberal, he frequently dissented as the Court became increasingly conservative.
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978) involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities can reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. The case was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible.
The Georgetown University Law Center is the law school of Georgetown University, a private research university in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1870 and is the largest law school in the United States by enrollment and the most applied to, receiving more full-time applications than any other law school in the country.
The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a leading United States civil rights organization and law firm based in New York City.
Racial steering refers to the practice in which real estate brokers guide prospective home buyers towards or away from certain neighborhoods based on their race. The term is used in the context of de facto residential segregation in the United States, and is often divided into two broad classes of conduct:
Florence Wagman Roisman is the William F. Harvey Professor of Law at Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. She is best known for her work in low-income housing, homelessness, and housing discrimination and segregation. In the fall of 2006, Roisman was the Skelly Wright Fellow at Yale Law School.
Dechert LLP is an American multinational law firm of more than 900 lawyers with practices in corporate and securities, complex litigation, finance and real estate, financial services, asset management, and private equity. In 2021, the firm raised revenues by 25%, with a total of $1.3 billion.
J. L. Chestnut Jr. was an author, attorney, and a figure in the Civil Rights Movement. He was the first African-American attorney in Selma, Alabama, and the author of the 1991 autobiographical book, Black in Selma: The Uncommon Life of J.L. Chestnut, Jr., which chronicles the history of the Selma Voting Rights Movement, including the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches and Bloody Sunday.
Edward Robert Korman is a Senior United States District Judge serving on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn, New York.
Nicholas Kahl is an attorney and Democratic politician from Oregon. He served in the Oregon House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011. He is a practicing lawyer in Portland, Oregon.
Racial Culture: A Critique is a 2005 non-fiction book by American author and Stanford Law School professor Richard T. Ford which raises critical questions regarding the somewhat popular and common presumption of political multiculturalism that social categories emerge from as a result of distinctive cultural practices. Ford argues against legislation that prevents discrimination on the basis of cultural practices and details specific examples in support of this argument.
Dovey Mae Johnson Roundtree was an African-American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the "separate but equal" doctrine in the field of interstate bus transportation by a court or federal administrative body. That case, Sarah Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, which Dovey Roundtree brought before the ICC with her law partner and mentor Julius Winfield Robertson, was invoked by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the 1961 Freedom Riders' campaign in his successful battle to compel the Interstate Commerce Commission to enforce its rulings and end Jim Crow laws in public transportation.
Thomas Campbell Clark was an American lawyer who served as the 59th United States Attorney General from 1945 to 1949 and as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1949 to 1967.
Paul C. Sprenger was an American attorney. Sprenger is best known as lead counsel of Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., a discrimination case involving female iron miners in Minnesota.
Conrad Joseph Lynn was an African-American civil rights lawyer and activist known for providing legal representation for activists, including many unpopular defendants. Among the causes he supported as a lawyer were civil rights, Puerto Rican nationalism, and opposition to the draft during both World War II and the Vietnam War. The controversial defendants he represented included civil rights activist Robert F. Williams and Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown.
Burleson LLP was an American law firm with offices in Denver, Houston, New Orleans, Pittsburgh and San Antonio. It closed its doors in December 2015.
Hocutt v. Wilson, N.C. Super. Ct. (1933) (unreported), was the first attempt to desegregate higher education in the United States. It was initiated by two African American lawyers from Durham, North Carolina, Conrad O. Pearson and Cecil McCoy, with the support of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The case was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing, but it served as a test case for challenging the "separate but equal" doctrine in education and was a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).
Judge Jay C. Gandhi is a United States Magistrate Judge for the Central District of California, and made history as the first South Asian American federal judge in California, and the second Indian-American federal bench officer nationwide. As the son of Indian immigrants, Judge Gandhi was born in Huntington Park, California, and grew up in Hacienda Heights, California.
Romeo Marcus Williams was an American civil rights attorney who organized large-scale student protests against segregation in Marshall, Texas. He was also a junior partner of Dallas, Texas civil rights attorney, William J. Durham, who served as lead counsel on two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases, Sweatt v. Painter, and Smith v. Allwright.
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