Formation 1968 (1968) Purpose Legal Services Founded 1968 | Type Non-profit Staff 25-50 | |
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Headquarters 11 Dupont Circle NW Suite 400, Washington, DC 20036 Key people Jonathan Smith, Executive Director | ||
The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs (the Committee) is a non-profit organization established in 1968 to provide pro bono legal services to address discrimination and entrenched poverty in the Washington, DC community.
History
The Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs was formed in late 1968 as a response to the civil disturbances that had erupted in cities across the country, beginning in the mid-1960s, and in the District, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr..
Judge Louis F. Oberdorfer, then chair of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and a partner at Wilmer Cutler & Pickering (now Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP), enlisted a small group of Washington, DC attorneys – John W. Douglas, John E. Nolan, William D. Rogers, Edward Bennett Williams, Robert L. Wald, and Herbert J. Miller, Jr. to help form a local committee to address the legal issues identified by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, as the root causes of the urban riots.
Since 1968, the Committee has expanded from a small staff addressing a limited number of matters into a larger organization operating multiple projects that address a broad range of civil rights and poverty issues.