Earls to receive state NAACP’s top honor
The NC NAACP will hold its 29th Annual Humanitarian Awards Banquet on Saturday, March 16 at Abundant Life Christian Center in Raleigh.
Top honors will go to Anita Earls, an attorney and executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. Officials say Earls has earned the 2013 NC NAACP Humanitarian of the Year through her “unyielding commitment to equality, fairness and justice for all.”
The Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice fights on behalf of low income and minority communities for everything from voting and immigrants’ rights to criminal and environmental justice. Earls, a noted civil rights attorney, founded the organization after heading the UNC Center for Civil Rights and directing the Voting Rights Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Earls has also served as deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.
In private practice, Earls has taken on cases involving voting rights, police misconduct, school desegregation, employment discrimination, public accommodations, disability rights and First Amendment violations.
In addition to her work at the Coalition, Earls is a visiting research fellow at Duke University. She has previously taught at the law schools of the University of Maryland and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Earls will join a distinguished club. Past Humanitarian of the Year honorees include Julian Bond, former Gov. James B. Hunt, Maya Angelou, the late John Hope Franklin and the late Donice Harbor.
For tickets or more information about the banquet, call the NC NAACP at 919-682-4700 and choose option 0.
