Meet the NAACP’s next president

The nation’s largest civil rights organization has chosen a New Jersey-based attorney and activist as its next president.

The appointment of Cornell William Brooks comes on the 60th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, a landmark civil rights case outlawing segregation in public schools.

Brooks, 53, will become the organization’s 18th president, replacing acting president Lorraine Miller. Miller has served in the post since Benjamin Jealous ended his five-year tenure last year.

{mosads}“Mr. Brooks is a pioneering lawyer and civil rights leader, who brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the association,” Roslyn Brock, chairman of the NAACP board of directors, said in a statement Saturday. “We look forward to leveraging his legal prowess, vision and leadership as we tackle the pressing civil rights issues of the 21st century.”

Brooks is currently the president of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, based in Newark, N.J. He is a minister and has also served as an attorney for the Federal Communications Commission, executive director of the Fair House Council of Greater Washington and an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the NAACP said.

“I am deeply humbled and honored to be entrusted with the opportunity to lead this historic organization,” Brooks said in the statement. “In our fight to ensure voting rights, economic equality, health equity, and an end to racial discrimination for all people, there is much work to do.”

The NAACP will formally appoint Brooks as president at its national convention in July.