The National Black Law Students Association (NBLSA), founded in 1968, is a nationwide organization formed to articulate and promote the needs and goals of black law students and effectuates change in the legal community. As the largest student run organization in the country with over 6,000 members, NBLSA includes chapters or affiliates in six different countries including The Bahamas, Nigeria, and South Africa. NBLSA encourages the development of talented, social conscious lawyers of tomorrow. NBLSA help start the Black Law Students Association of Canada (BLSAC), The National Latino/Latina Student Association (NLLSA), National Association of Law Students with Disabilities (NALSD), and The National Asian Pacific American Law Student Association (NAPALSA). The headquarters of NBLSA is located in Washington, D.C.. Organized into six regions (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southern, Mid-West, Rocky Mountain and Western Region) the organization has over 200 chapters and is present in all but a few of the nation's accredited law schools, as well as unaccredited law schools. Each year, the organization holds an annual convention to engage in legal activism and while preparing new generations of black lawyers to "effectuate change." Additionally, the Frederick Douglass Moot Court and Thurgood Marshall Mock Trial Competitions are held during its Annual Convention.
In 1968, Algernon Johnson Cooper, former mayor of Prichard, Alabama, founded the first Black American Law Students Association at the New York University Law School. In 1983, BALSA revised its name and the word "American" was deleted to encompass all blacks, including those not of American nationality. Later, the word "National" was added to reflect the organization's national expansion, which now includes representation in the law schools of forty-eight states and Puerto Rico.
The Association has ties with the National Bar Association, the Council on Legal Education Opportunity, The National Black Alliance, and the National Black Leadership Roundtable. However, the most important affiliation and duty this organization has is to the black community—nationally and abroad.
Famous quotes containing the words national, black, law, students and/or association:
“The return of the asymmetrical Saturday was one of those small events that were interior, local, almost civic and which, in tranquil lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversation, of jokes and of stories exaggerated with pleasure: it would have been a ready- made seed for a legendary cycle, had any of us leanings toward the epic.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“Faith, I have been a truant in the law,
And never yet could frame my will to it,
And therefore frame the law unto my will.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Members of the faculty, faculty members, students of Huxley and Huxley students. I guess that covers everything.”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff (Groucho Marx)
“The spiritual kinship between Lincoln and Whitman was founded upon their Americanism, their essential Westernism. Whitman had grown up without much formal education; Lincoln had scarcely any education. One had become the notable poet of the day; one the orator of the Gettsyburg Address. It was inevitable that Whitman as a poet should turn with a feeling of kinship to Lincoln, and even without any association or contact feel that Lincoln was his.”
—Edgar Lee Masters (1869–1950)