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ACLU Celebrates 80th Birthday, Honors Civil Rights Attorney William
J. Sheppard at Annual Awards Banquet
December 30, 2000
MIAMI -- ACLU members and supporters will gather Saturday at the group's Annual Awards Banquet to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the nation's oldest and largest civil liberties organization. Noted Jacksonville civil rights attorney William J. Sheppard will also be honored with the organization's highest award, the Nelson Poynter Award, at the Dec. 2 event at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables.
From the defense of public schoolteacher John Scopes for teaching evolution to the ending of legalized racial segregation, the ACLU has been involved in every major civil rights and civil liberties struggle for nearly a century. Voting rights issues, regardless of partisan interests, have been no exception.
For more than 30 of its 80 years, the ACLU has worked in the courts to preserve voting rights, recently playing an active role in the Florida election controversy by filing strongly-worded "friend-of-the-court" briefs in the Palm Beach County Circuit Court, the District Court of Appeal and in the U.S. Supreme Court. The ACLU briefs urge the Florida courts to remedy voting irregularities in Palm Beach County. The U.S. Supreme Court brief, submitted Nov. 28 in an appeal by Presidential hopeful George W. Bush, defends the independent role of the courts and will be argued Friday.
Hoping the Supreme Court case, George W. Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, will be among its many successes defining freedom in America, the ACLU will celebrate its history at the 2000 Annual Awards Banquet, which will kick-off at 7 p.m. with an open bar reception Dec. 2 at the Hyatt Regency Coral Gables, 50 Alhambra Plaza. Dinner will follow at 8 p.m. in the hotel's Venetian Ballroom.
The dinner program will include a brief tribute by Sheppard's former law clerk Randall Berg, now the Executive Director of the Florida Justice Institute. Berg will present Sheppard with the Nelson Poynter Award, which is given annually to individuals who have worked tirelessly to advance civil liberties and civil rights in Florida. The award is named after Nelson Poynter, the former crusading editor and publisher of the St. Petersburg Times. Like Poynter, Sheppard has never been afraid to stand up for unpopular civil rights issues, handling race and employment discrimination cases, in addition to criminal defense, at his firm of Sheppard, White and Thomas, P.A., Jacksonville's first racially-integrated law firm.
Sheppard now serves as ACLU cooperating counsel in the Jacksonville school prayer case, Adler v. Duval County School Board. The case, which was filed on behalf of students and parents in the public school district, challenges the school board's policy of allowing senior class "chaplains" to lead prayers at graduation ceremonies ? a violation of the U.S. Constitution's requirement of separation of church and state.
