Centers & Initiatives

About Us

Since its founding by Julius L. Chambers in 2001, the UNC Center for Civil Rights has strived to extend America's promise of justice, prosperity and opportunity by elevating families and communities above the boundaries of race, class and place. Its mission is to use community-based impact advocacy and legal education and scholarship to advance strategies that secure social, economic and environmental justice for low wealth, minority families and neighborhoods.

Using a range of advocacy strategies that also includes community education, research, and public policy efforts, the Center is recognized nationally as one of the principal, university-based hubs of civil rights advocacy in the South. The Center draws on the strengths and resources the School of Law, the university, its client communities, and a range of nationally renowned advocates, scholars, and lawyers to further its progressive civil rights agenda.

The goals of the Center's intersecting programs and intitatives are to:

represent, educate, and advocate for minority and low-income people, principally in the American South, building their capacity to remove unfair racial and economic barriers and to improve their own communities;
lead in influencing public policies at local, state, and national levels and in developing innovative, effective, and sustainable programs that remove racial and economic inequalities; and
ensure that future generations of attorneys are equipped to continue the ongoing campaign to secure fair and equal opportunities for minority and low-income people.