THE MISSION
Julian’s mission is to attack discrimination in all forms through legal advocacy and activism in order to exact justice, foster equality, and innovate and advance the doctrines of civil and human rights law so that they will evolve in stride with social change and fulfill their purpose of protecting and empowering the vulnerable. Our intention is to revive the spirit, effectiveness, strategy, and impact of the civil rights movement to end lynchings, unjustified police killings, and all other hate crimes and rights violations.
THE PROBLEM
Julian solves the issues of:
1. Modern-day lynchings not being addressed, especially in isolated, overlooked, and vulnerable communities. Since 2000, there have been at least eight suspected lynchings in Mississippi alone. Despite convincing evidence, no one has ever been charged in a single case, and the medical examiners in half the hangings have a history of falsifying records.
2. Outsiders unfamiliar with rural life making decisions that don’t align with community interests.
3. Families not having access to courts due to poverty.
4. The deficit of innovation in civil rights, preventing the doctrine from keeping pace with social change.
5. The relatively low success rate of civil rights litigation.
6. The lack of collaboration among civil rights attorneys.
7. The safety risks associated with protesting.
Julian helps solve these problems, and here are some ways how:
Issue 1: Investigating and litigating civil rights cases, especially lynchings, in overlooked communities that other groups can’t and don’t access. Often, individuals who live in isolated areas won’t talk to outsiders. However, being born and raised in rural Mississippi, Julian's founder, Jill Collen Jefferson, identifies with rural and isolated Americans. So, she has access to a great deal of information that comes purely by trust. Julian's method also garners trust. Rather than practicing in an office afar, Julian intimately embeds itself in each community where it has a case and its staff integrates its lives with theirs.
Issue 2: Julian only embeds itself in a community with permission. It then works with families to construct goals that align with their needs. As Julian investigates, it uplift the community by mentoring, helping individuals find jobs, identify funding, and take steps toward their goals. Before leaving a community, Julian conducts review sessions with the family and community stakeholders to ensure that their needs were met.
Issue 3: Julian does not charge families for its services. Instead, it relies on donors and alternative revenue streams, such as IFW crowdfunding, to fund its work.
Issues 4, 5, 6, & 7: Julian addresses these issues by incorporating innovative cognitive strategies into its litigation methodology and by launching a three-phase, multi-year technology project that has already been reviewed by tech experts for viability.
Julian works in isolated, overlooked, and vulnerable communities. The market for our work is national and global, spanning races, genders, religions, and nationalities of millions.
We will end lynchings, change the way litigation proceeds, how crimes are tracked, and how people protest and engage on a mass scale.
We launched on January 14 of this year and just won an $11 million-dollar verdict in our first case—a modern-day lynching where a 21-year-old black man was found hanging from a tree in his white girlfriend's front yard near midnight in Mississippi. Julian, through its own investigation, identified the primary suspect and is currently pushing for criminal charges. We're also litigating other modern-day lynching cases as well as cases involving other rights violations, such as wrongful convictions and equal protection violations. Julian does not just work for the present; we build the future.
Through litigation, we push back against all forms of discrimination to change society. Through technology and innovation, we create shifts in consciousness and transform the way litigation proceeds, how crimes are tracked, and how individuals protest and engage on a mass scale. Through strategy, we make sure it’s effective and built to last. When we investigate a case, we integrate our lives with the lives of victims and their families to gain a comprehensive understanding of their needs and desired outcomes. This combination of an intimate organizational structure, exclusive cases, agility, creativity, innovation, reach, and community intimacy is unique.
This is a headline for one of Julian's cases--the 2018 lynching of Willie Andrew Jones Jr. in Scott County, Mississippi.WITHOUT ANY FUNDING, WE HAVE:
1) Created and submitted a proposed U.S. Civil and Human Rights Agenda to President Biden's administration and won our first victory when he signed the Executive Order, directing the DOJ not to renew contracts with private prison operators.
2) We investigated, solved, and won litigation in the Willie Jones case, mentioned above--a case that the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the FBI failed for two years to solve.
3) Analyzed, found gaps, and created detailed proposals to amend Constitutional standards of intent, which have kept civil rights attorneys from winning worthy cases and advancing the doctrine of civil rights law
4) Registered people in rural America who’ve never before voted.
5) Pushed for and succeeded in getting Minnesota's legislature to convene a special session to discuss a police brutality bill.
6) Began advising on and/or litigating cases in every region of the United States, and we’ll expand into Africa in the first quarter of our second year.
And that's just a taste. With funding, we could move mountains.
Julian seeks funding to:
- Hire attorneys, paralegals, and researchers
- Pay operation costs, such as travel and legal database subscription fees
ABOUT THE FOUNDER
Julian was founded by Jill Collen Jefferson who grew up in the de facto segregation of rural Mississippi, just outside the town where the KKK was founded. She researched civil rights cold cases from the 1960s for years with the Civil Rights Cold Case Project and concentrated on civil rights and human rights as a student at Harvard Law School. She was trained by the leaders of the civil rights movement. She learned civil rights history and strategy from her lifelong mentor Julian Bond, the organization’s namesake. She learned the nuances of civil rights policy from Congressman John Lewis, and she learned how to implement those policies while in President Barack Obama's White House before conveying them to the nation as one of four speechwriters on President Obama's 2012 campaign. Now a civil rights and international human rights attorney, she solves issues at the core of our nation’s problems that few even know exist in order to build the future of civil rights.
THANK YOU.
To you, thank you so much for your support. Julian’s story is your story. Together, we will build the beloved community. Together, we won’t just move outside the box, we’ll redesign it.
We, as people, are not powerless. We’ve got more work to do, more steps to take, a few more mountains to climb. But today, we honor the stories and struggles that brought us here. Today, we affirm the future our nation deserves. Today, we continue our journey.
...And tomorrow, we’ll keep on marching.
Julian is the future of civil rights. Come, let us build a new world together.