Jacqueline Berrien Way (Brooklyn)
Present name:Decatur Street
Location:Between Lewis Avenue and Stuyvesant Avenue
Honoree: Jacqueline Berrien (1961-2015) was a civil rights lawyer and the chairperson of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) under President Barack Obama. Under her leadership, the EEOC promulgated rules against discrimination in employment and health insurance on the basis of disability or genetic test results. She also won a record $240 million jury verdict against a company accused of abusing workers with intellectual disabilities at an Iowa turkey-processing plant, and reduced case backlogs overall. Ms. Berrian was a graduate of Oberlin College and Harvard Law School. After serving as a clerk for a federal judge, she joined the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1994, she became an assistant counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. After working at the Ford Foundation, she returned to the Fund as associate director-counsel. She also taught at Harvard Law School and New York Law School. ( Cornegy)
LL:2017/45