Avenger of the Week | Deborah Archer, NYU Law Professor and President of the ACLU

Deborah Archer, a distinguished lawyer, professor, and civil rights and racial justice expert, has been elected Board President of the American Civil Liberties Union, the first Black person to serve in that role in the non-profit’s 101-year history. She has been a member of the national organization’s board since 2009.

Archer’s first job as a lawyer was at the ACLU. “After beginning my career as an ACLU fellow, it is an honor to come full circle and now lead the organization as board president,” she said.

The 69-member board oversees the organization’s policies, including its recently announced System Equality Agenda, which focuses on racial inequity in housing, voting, hiring, education, banking, and technology through legislative and legal processes. The ACLU has 1.7 million members, 51 affiliates, 500 staff attorneys, and thousands of volunteer lawyers around the country.

The daughter of Jamaican immigrants, Archer grew up very aware of racial discrimination against her family. When they moved from a Connecticut city to a suburb with better schools, her family was the only Black family on the block. Early on, their house and car were vandalized and painted with “KKK”, and her mother had to explain to her what it meant. At only 9 years old, she decided she wanted to do whatever she could to fight racism.

Archer is a graduate of Smith College, the first in her family to earn a degree, and also of the Yale University School of Law. She has been a professor and co-faculty director of the Center for Race, Inequality and the Law at the New York University School of Law since 2018. Previously, she was a professor at New York Law School for 15 years and a lawyer at the NAACP Legal and Education Defense Fund. She has also served on the New York City Civilian Review Board.  Archer is married with two sons and lives in New York City.

We look forward to her continued avenging for racial justice.

Go, Deborah Archer!

The @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek is lawyer and prof @DeborahNArcher, the first Black president in the @ACLU's 101-year history. “It’s just important for us all to pick a lane that we can fight in, and together we can move the needle.” #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-deborah-archer