Guinier, Lani

Lani Guinier was born on April 19, 1950, in New York City. Her father, Ewart, was a lawyer, union organizer, and real estate agent, and her mother, Eugenia, was a public school teacher. In the late 1960s, Guinier attended Harvard University and was one of the students who petitioned for the establishment of an African American studies program there, which was later headed by her father. In 1971, she graduated from Harvard's Radcliffe College. In 1974, Guinier graduated from Yale Law School, where former President Bill Clinton was one of her classmates.

During the 1970s, she was head of the voting rights project for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In this position, she helped win major victories in voting rights cases in Alabama and other southern states. In 1998, when Guinier joined the Harvard Law School faculty, she became the first African American woman tenured professor in the law school's history.

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