The Norman Amaker Public Interest Law and Social Justice Retreat is named in honor of the late Professor Norman Amaker of the Loyola University School of Law in Chicago.

Professor Amaker committed his life to social justice issues. After graduating with honors from Amherst College (1956) and attending Columbia Law School (1959), he was hired by Thurgood Marshall to serve as Staff Attorney and first assistant Counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

He represented plaintiffs in numerous civil rights cases challenging racial discrimination in public schools, public accommodations, jury selection, voting, capital punishment and employment defended thousands of protest demonstrators across the South, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and argued scores of cases in state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.

Following his work at the NAACP, he served as the Executive Director of the Washington D.C. Neighborhood Legal Services Program, and then as General Counsel for the National Committee Against Discrimination in Housing. Before coming to Chicago in 1976 to join the Loyola University School of Law faculty, he taught at the University of Maryland and at Rutgers University in Newark. While a law professor, Professor Amaker wrote widely about race and law, was a co-founder of the Midwest People of Color Scholarship Conference which supports faculty of Color Scholarship Conference which supports faculty of color in presenting their scholarship and was named Professor of the Year at Loyola in 1995. He was a model for students interested in public interest careers.

Above: Norman Amaker (second from right) celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Day with (left to right) Fr. Ronald Ferguson, S.J. (Staff Assistant to the President of Loyola University), Dean Nina Appel, The Honorable Shelvin Louise Hall (Illinois Appellate Court), and Professor Neil Williams. (Photo courtesy Loyola University of Chicago). Contact amaker@iupui.edu for more information.