Spelman College is a private, historically Black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman received its collegiate charter in 1924, making it America's oldest private historically black liberal arts college for women.
Bruce Robert Jacob was an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Florida during the early 1960s. He represented Wainwright, the Director of the Florida Division of Corrections, in the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright, decided in March 1963, regarding the right to counsel of indigent defendants in non-capital felony cases in state courts. The attorney representing the Petitioner, Clarence Gideon, was Abe Fortas, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who later became a Justice of the Supreme Court. The previous 1942 Supreme Court case of Betts v. Brady required the appointment of counsel for an indigent defendant at state expense if there was a “special circumstance” present in the case which made it necessary for counsel to be provided for the defendant to receive a fair trial. For example, if the defendant was indigent and was extremely young, or lacked education or experience, was unfamiliar with court procedures, or if the charges against him were complex, the trial court was required under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to appoint counsel. The Court in Gideon overruled Betts and required state courts to appoint attorneys for defendants in all felony prosecutions.
William Craig Campbell is an American politician, who served as the 57th Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia from January 1994–January 2002. He was the third African-American mayor in the city's history. Accused of corruption during his time in office, he was convicted for tax evasion in 2006 and spent 16 months in federal prison.
Leah Ward Sears is an American jurist and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Sears was the first African-American female chief justice of a state supreme court in the United States. When she was first appointed as justice in 1992 by Governor Zell Miller, she became the first woman and youngest person to sit on Georgia's Supreme Court.
Demetrios John "Mitch" Skandalakis is an American lawyer and former Republican Party politician from Georgia who rose quickly to national prominence in the early-1990s. He upset Martin Luther King III to become chairman of the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and in 1998, was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for lieutenant governor of Georgia. Afterward, he became subjected to a wide-ranging federal corruption investigation of Fulton County government and admitted lying to an FBI agent. He was disbarred, but was later reinstated, as an attorney.
Robert Benham is a retired American lawyer and jurist who served on the Supreme Court of Georgia for over 30 years, retiring in March 2020. He was the second African-American graduate of the University of Georgia School of Law, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court of Georgia, and the first African-American to serve as the court's Chief Justice.
Right to counsel means a defendant has a right to have the assistance of counsel and, if the defendant cannot afford a lawyer, requires that the government appoint one or pay the defendant's legal expenses. The right to counsel is generally regarded as a constituent of the right to a fair trial. Historically, however, not all countries have always recognized the right to counsel. The right is often included in national constitutions. Of the 194 constitutions currently in force, 153 have language to this effect.
Stephen B. Bright is an American lawyer known for representing people facing the death penalty, advocating for the right to counsel for poor people accused of crimes, and challenging inhumane practices and conditions in prisons and jails. He has taught at Yale Law School since 1993 and became professor of practice at Georgia State College of Law in January, 2017. In 2016, he ended almost 35 years at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, first as director from 1982 to 2005, and then as president and senior counsel from 2006 to 2016.
The State Bar of Georgia is the governing body of the legal profession in the State of Georgia, operating under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Georgia. Membership is a condition of admission to practice law in Georgia.
Marvin Stephens Arrington Sr. is an American judge in the Superior Court of Fulton County, Georgia and a former politician in the city of Atlanta. Elected to the Atlanta Board of Aldermen in 1969, he served as President of the Atlanta City Council for 17 years until his unsuccessful bid for mayor in 1997. Arrington was one of the first two black students to undertake full-time studies at the Emory University School of Law in 1965. He presently serves on the Emory Board of Trustees.
Truancy Intervention Project, Inc.(TIP) is a 501 (c)3 non-profit organization serving children ages 5 to 15 declared truant in the Atlanta City and Fulton County public school systems. Founded in 1991 TIP, previously named Kids in Need of Dreams, Inc. (KIND), provides positive intervention services to children reported as truant. It offers at-risk children a second chance at success by pairing them with trained volunteers from the community.
Kenneth (Ken) B. Hodges III is a Judge of the Georgia Court of Appeals and the former Dougherty County District Attorney and was the Democratic nominee for Attorney General of Georgia in 2010. In 2015, Hodges started his own law firm, Ken Hodges Law, based out of Atlanta and Albany. Hodges won an open seat in a contested race on the Georgia Court of Appeals in 2018, earning nearly 70% of the state-wide vote.
The New York County Lawyers Association (NYCLA) is a bar association located in New York City.
Grace Towns Hamilton was the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia General Assembly. As executive director of the Atlanta Urban League from 1943 to 1960, Hamilton was involved in issues of housing, health care, schools and voter registration within the black community. She was 1964 co-founder of the bi-racial Partners for Progress to help government and the private sector effect compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1973, Hamilton became a principal architect for the revision of the Atlanta City Charter. She was advisor to the United States Civil Rights Commission from 1985 to 1987.
In the United States, a public defender is an attorney-at-law appointed by the courts and provided by the state or federal governments to represent and advise those who cannot afford to hire a private attorney. Public defenders are full-time attorneys employed by the state or federal governments. The public defender program is one of several types of criminal legal aid in the United States.
Cassandra E. Maxwell was South Carolina's first African American female lawyer.
On the night of June 12, 2020, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old African American man, was fatally shot by Atlanta Police Department (APD) officer Garrett Rolfe.
Linda Jeanne Dunikoski is an American lawyer and prosecutor who serves as a senior assistant district attorney in Cobb County, Georgia. She was a prosecutor of the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal in 2014–2015 and the murder of Ahmaud Arbery in 2021.
