Antonio L. Ingram II serves as Senior Counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, where he works on cases and matters that advance racial justice in educational equity and political participation. Prior to joining LDF, Mr. Ingram litigated as a senior associate at Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, where he maintained an active pro bono practice and represented incarcerated individuals in Post-Conviction Relief Proceedings seeking to overturn non-unanimous jury verdicts. Mr. Ingram began his career at Morrison and Foerster LLP, where he was a junior litigation associate and represented unhoused plaintiffs challenging a city’s anti-homeless ordinances, a family who experienced an unreasonable search by a police department and a refugee in removal proceedings because of ineffective assistance of counsel claims. Mr. Ingram received his J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law and B.A. from Yale College and served as a law clerk to the Honorable Ivan L.R. Lemelle on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana and Chief Judge Roger L. Gregory for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. Between his federal clerkships, Mr. Ingram served as a Fulbright Public Policy Fellow to Malawi where he served as a special assistant in Malawi’s Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Project: My research will entail examining how recent attacks on critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion in southern legislative bodies in Florida, Alabama, and Texas seek to change our national self-perception in a way that is incongruent with democratic institutions and norms containing a multiracial citizenry. Through looking at the legal text and the political discourse surrounding anti-critical race theory and anti- diversity, equity and inclusion laws, I want to examine how the pursuit of revisionist histories and mythologies function to undermine the rationales for policies which can be used to remediate historical inequities in political participation, educational equity, and criminal justice. For example, I will examine the relationship between the Florida legislature banning critical race theory and attempts by that same legislative body to curtail felony disenfranchisement in the state. I also will examine the relationship between the Alabama legislature banning diversity, equity and inclusion and the political battle over creating non-racially gerrymandered congressional maps in the Black Belt. Finally, I will examine the relationship between the Texas legislature banning diversity equity and inclusion in higher education and proposed laws which would have deputized private citizens to serve as border patrol on the southern border.