Brooklyn Boro

Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers names Lurie Daniel Favors as executive director

January 20, 2022 Brooklyn Eagle Staff
Share this:

The Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College (CLSJ) has appointed well-known racial justice attorney and advocate Lurie Daniel Favors, Esq. as its executive director. Daniel Favors previously served as interim executive director and general counsel. 

In her new role, Daniel Favors will lead CLSJ’s strategic direction, building on a strong, 36-year-old foundation to address racial justice issues by providing quality legal advocacy, conducting community education campaigns, facilitating research and building organizing capacity on behalf of New Yorkers of African descent and the disenfranchised. 

CLSJ seeks to accomplish its mission by initiating advocacy projects and litigation, conducting research, and providing community education and training on behalf of and in collaboration with community organizations and groups.

“Since 1986, CLSJ has been the standard-bearer for advocacy in the New York fight for racial, social, and economic justice,” says Daniel Favors. “I’m honored to inherit its important legacy, and I am committed to shaping its future so that CLSJ can continue to protect and empower Black New Yorkers and other vulnerable groups at a time when systemic racial inequities have been magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic and exacerbated by a dangerous escalation of violent white nationalist extremism and an all-out assault on voting rights.”

Subscribe to our newsletters

An activist and attorney with a long-standing commitment to racial and social justice, Daniel Favors joined CLSJ as general counsel in 2015, a position previously held by civil rights attorney Joan P. Gibbs, Esq. She began her legal career as an attorney in the New York offices of Proskauer Rose LLP and Manatt Phelps and Phillips, LLP. She also served as a federal court law clerk in the chambers of Hon. Sterling Johnson Jr. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. 

She later founded Daniel Favors Law PLLC, a law firm that focused on economic and racial justice. In 2021, she was appointed as a commissioner to the New York City Racial Justice Commission, a body created by Mayor Bill de Blasio to increase equity among different racial groups by changing city laws that uphold and enable systemic discrimination.

“We are pleased that attorney Daniel Favors has accepted the position as the executive director for the Center for Law & Social Justice at Medgar Evers College,” says Dr. Ronald J. Sheehy, interim provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, Medgar Evers College.  “Ms. Daniel Favors brings a wealth of experience and commitment to the field of law and social justice.”

“As the founding leader of CLSJ, I am thrilled at the appointment of attorney Lurie Daniel Favors as the next executive director of this very important, one-of-a-kind, legal institution,” says Esmeralda Simmons, Esq., CLSJ’s founding executive director. “Lurie is committed to the pursuit of total freedom for New Yorkers of African descent. She has the vision, the voice of an advocate, and vigor to fill this demanding role.”

Daniel Favors is a contributing writer to “The Birth of a Nation: Nat Turner and the Making of a Movement,” host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM Urban View, and author of the acclaimed memoir “Afro State of Mind: Memories of a Nappy Headed Black Girl.”


Leave a Comment


Leave a Comment