Lynn Huntley, aka Mary Lynn Jones, (b. January 24, 1946, Petersburg, Virginia - d. August 30, 2015, Atlanta, Georgia) was a prominent civil rights lawyer. She was born on January 24, 1946, in Petersburg, Virginia. Her father, the Reverend Lawrence Jones, was active in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, when he was associated with Fisk University in Nashville. He was dean of Howard University’s divinity school in Washington from 1975 to 1991 and died in 2009. Her mother, Mary Ellen, died in 2003.
Ms. Huntley attended Fisk University as an early entrant, received an A.B. in Sociology with honors from Barnard College, and J.D. degree with honors from Columbia University Law School, where she was a member of The Columbia Law Review. She worked as law clerk for a federal judge, Judge Constance Baker Motley; and as staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where she focused on cases involving the abolition of the death penalty, prisoner rights and education. She served as general counsel to the New York City Commission on Human Rights and as section chief and deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, where she directed a trial section to vindicate the rights of institutionalized persons, and exercised oversight of sections concerned with legislative affairs, employment, housing, federal regulatory and budgetary matters.
During her tenure at the Ford Foundation from l982-1994, where she advanced from program officer to director of Ford Foundation’s Rights and Social Justice Program, Ms. Huntley was responsible for grant making related to minority and women’s rights, refugee and migration issues, legal services for the poor, minorities and media, and coordination of field office activities related to the foregoing. In l995, Ms. Huntley joined the staff of the Southern Education Foundation as a program director, where she conceived and directed the Comparative Human Relations Initiative, an examination of race and inequality in Brazil, South Africa and the United States and strategies to reduce inequality. She is the author of several reports resultant from this effort, and served, with others, as editor of two related books, Tirando a Mascara (Removing the Mask, 2000) and Race and Inequality in South Africa, Brazil and the United States (2001). She retired from the Southern Education Foundation in 2010, having doubled the endowment and raised over $44 million from diverse donors.
Ms. Huntley has received many honors, including the Thurgood Marshall Award of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University, honorary doctorates from Cambridge College in Boston, Mass., and Allen University in Columbia, SC, and the Lucy Terry Prince Award of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She also received the National Bar Association outstanding achievement award, the Unsung Heroine Award from the Atlanta Coalition of 100 Black Women, and was the Association of Black Foundation Executives’ James A. Joseph Lecturer in 2004. She served as a member of the Georgia Student Finance Commission, and on the Boards of the American Constitution Society, the Association of Black Foundation Executives (where she was counsel) Grantmakers for Education, CARE USA (where she was vice chair), the Center for Women Policy Studies, the Marguerite E. Casey Foundation, and the Interdenominational Theological Center. She was recently elected vice chair of the Board of Trustees of the Jesse Ball DuPont Fund in Jacksonville, Florida.
During her tenure at the Ford Foundation from l982-1994, where she advanced from program officer to director of Ford Foundation’s Rights and Social Justice Program, Ms. Huntley was responsible for grant making related to minority and women’s rights, refugee and migration issues, legal services for the poor, minorities and media, and coordination of field office activities related to the foregoing. In l995, Ms. Huntley joined the staff of the Southern Education Foundation as a program director, where she conceived and directed the Comparative Human Relations Initiative, an examination of race and inequality in Brazil, South Africa and the United States and strategies to reduce inequality. She is the author of several reports resultant from this effort, and served, with others, as editor of two related books, Tirando a Mascara (Removing the Mask, 2000) and Race and Inequality in South Africa, Brazil and the United States (2001). She retired from the Southern Education Foundation in 2010, having doubled the endowment and raised over $44 million from diverse donors.
Ms. Huntley has received many honors, including the Thurgood Marshall Award of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award from Tufts University, honorary doctorates from Cambridge College in Boston, Mass., and Allen University in Columbia, SC, and the Lucy Terry Prince Award of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. She also received the National Bar Association outstanding achievement award, the Unsung Heroine Award from the Atlanta Coalition of 100 Black Women, and was the Association of Black Foundation Executives’ James A. Joseph Lecturer in 2004. She served as a member of the Georgia Student Finance Commission, and on the Boards of the American Constitution Society, the Association of Black Foundation Executives (where she was counsel) Grantmakers for Education, CARE USA (where she was vice chair), the Center for Women Policy Studies, the Marguerite E. Casey Foundation, and the Interdenominational Theological Center. She was recently elected vice chair of the Board of Trustees of the Jesse Ball DuPont Fund in Jacksonville, Florida.
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