FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 3, 2004

CONTACT: Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119, lisa.lacher@drake.edu

LOVELL HONORED BY THE DES MOINES BRANCH OF THE NAACP

Russell Lovell, associate dean of the Drake University Law School, recently was honored by the Des Moines branch of the NAACP at its 89th annual Freedom Fund Banquet for his 30 years of dedicated service to the organization. Lovell received the President’s Award in recognition of his civil rights litigation contributions, leadership of the group’s legal redress committee and his contributions on the executive committee.

"Russ has been committed to the cause of civil rights for three decades and continues to work with the NAACP,” said Linda Carter-Lewis, president of the NAACP’s Des Moines branch. “He has been very helpful, supportive and instrumental in getting things done. His commitment is unwavering.”

This was Lovell’s third President’s Award and the sixth time overall the NAACP has feted him — including four individual awards and two awards to his employer. The honors recognized his civil rights work in Des Moines, Indiana and Missouri.

Among Lovell's most notable accomplishments was his lead counsel role in the NAACP litigation that desegregated the Des Moines Fire Department. In 1982, the DMFD employed only one African American firefighter in a department of more than 300, and only four in its 100-year history. It took 13 years of litigation and monitoring, but 36 African Americans were Des Moines firefighters by 1995.

In 2003 Lovell was given the Trailblazer Award at the NAACP Region IV Civil Rights Institute in Topeka, Kan., in honor of the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Lovell was lead counsel on the court-awarded attorneys' fees portion of the NAACP's Kansas City school desegregation case and established a U.S. Supreme Court precedent that when a civil rights case succeeds, the federal court orders the guilty party to pay the plaintiff's attorney a market-based fee as part of the remedy.

The first of Lovell’s two NAACP organizational community service awards came in 1975, when the Indiana State Conference of the NAACP recognized Lovell’s lead role in the group’s class action that desegregated the Indiana State Police. The litigation increased the African American presence on the thousand-person uniformed force from a total of three troopers to 7 percent, reflecting the state’s population.

In 1989, the Des Moines NAACP honored the Drake Law School for its diversity efforts and its commitment to creating an environment in which students of color are welcome and succeed. Lovell was then serving his first tour as associate dean, as was current Law School Dean David Walker.

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