Photo by Erin Mizclle
Winston-Salem Urban League CEO James Perry, right, accepts the
award for the organization. The City of Winston-Salem is the sponsor.
Ernie Pitt helps give the award.
Winston Salem
Urban League
Organization of the Year
The Winston-Salem Urban League empowers and advocates for a diverse
community, and promotes socioeconomic progress and parity through educa
tion, training, and civic engagement.
Founded through the efforts of James G. Hanes, a local community leader
who was concerned about negative race relations, the "Community Relations
Project" was formed. This became the Winston-Salem Urban League in 1953
and was chartered in as an affiliate of the National Urban League in 1955.
In December 2015 James Perry was named as its new president. Perry, who
relocated to Winston-Salem from New Orleans where he was chief executive of
the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center for 10 years, plans to con
tinue the programs of the Urban League, which focus on access to jobs, health
care, education and housing, with a personal goal of making the Winston-Salem
Urban League the best in the nation.
Photo by Tevin Stinson
Tenika Neely, a student with Wake Forest University Innocence &
Justice Clinic, accepts the award for the organization. The City of
Winston-Salem is the sponsor.
Innocence and
Justice Clinic of
Wake Forest
University School of
Law
Organization of the Year
The Innocence and Justice Clinic grew out of the Innocence Project at Wake
which began in 2007 and gave students an opportunity to conduct initial case
reviews to see if DNA existed which could exonerate the inmate. The Innocence
and Justice Clinic was launched in 2009 to provide students with the unique
opportunity to learn about the various causes of wrongful convictions - mistak
en eyewitness identification, invalid or improper forensic science evidence, jail
house informants, false confessions, ineffective assistance of counsel, police
and prosecutorial misconduct - while giving them the opportunity to apply this
knowledge to the investigation of cases where newly discovered evidence can
prove a client's innocence.