Interview with Author and Lawyer Nkechi Taifa

Nkechi Taifa is President of The Taifa Group LLC, a social enterprise firm whose mission is to advance justice. She is a Senior Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Justice, and convenes the Justice Roundtable, an advocacy coalition advancing progressive justice system transformation. Over the course of her career Taifa has served as Advocacy Director for Criminal Justice at the Open Society Foundations; legislative and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and Women’s Legal Defense Fund; founding director of Howard University School of Law’s Equal Justice Program; staff attorney for National Prison Project; Network Organizer for Washington Office on Africa; as a private practitioner representing adult and youth clients; and as a first grade teacher at NationHouse Watoto School.  

An award-winning attorney, Nkechi Taifa is past president of the D.C. chapter of the National Conference of Black Lawyers. She is a founding member of N’COBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. She serves as a Commissioner on the National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC), and on the governing board of the Corrections Information Council.

Nkechi Taifa is the author of a new memoir - Black Power, Black Lawyer:  My Audacious Quest for Justice (2020). The book has been described as “an engaging memoir of not just a fascinating woman, but a history of a movement.” – Kirkus Reviews.  She co-authored, along with Dr. Imari Obadele and Attorney Chokwe Lumumba, the pioneer book, Reparations Yes (1987).  She is also the author of several classic books for children, Shining Legacy: Storypoems and Tales for the Young, So Black Heroes Forever Will be Sung (1983); Three Tales of Wisdom (1983); and The Adventures of Kojo and Ama (1992).