Interview with Professor Irving L. Joyner

We Got to Keep On Pushing

AN INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR IRVING L. JOYNER

or thirty-seven years, Professor Irving L. Joyner has embodied North Carolina Central University School of Law’s spirit of service and sacrifice. Though he is one of the longest-serving faculty members at NCCU, Professor Joyner does not consider himself special. Over his tenure at NCCU, he has seen many changing points in the school’s history, including the growth of The Legal Clinic at NCCU.

Professor Joyner has long served his community by taking a plethora of civil rights cases, including employment discrimination, voting rights, and police misconduct cases. Currently focusing on voting rights cases, which he finds personally satisfying because of the high success rate in voting rights litigation. One of the most important cases that Professor Joyner contributed to was the Wilmington 10 case. This case covered nearly forty years but was worth the time and effort because the surviving victims were awarded compensation.

The self-satisfaction that Professor Joyner derives from his work makes up for the sacrificed required to do civil rights work. Often, he receives little to no financial compensation for his efforts. Civil rights work, however, has its peculiar compensation. Professor Joyner knows that he strove on behalf of people who deserve to be represented and have their voices heard. Often the victims of discrimination never have their stories told, and many individuals are satisfied with having their day in court

and knowing that they were able to tell their stories of abuse and violations they have experienced.

In recognition of his sacrifice and service, The NAACP awarded Professor Joyner the 2019 William Robert Ming Advocacy Award. This award is presented annually to an attorney who exemplifies the spirit of financial and personal sacrifice that Mr. Ming displayed in his decades oflegal work for the NAACP. Professor Joyner received this award because of his work serving as the legal counsel for the NC NAACP and as the chair of the Legal Redress Committee.

The struggles of his family dealing with Jim Crow led Professor Joyner to pursue a career advocating for those who couldn’t advocate for themselves. Professor Joyner recalls how his grandparents were unable to register to vote prompting him to encourage everyone to vote. He makes a point of voting in every election to honor his grandparents and the hardships they endured. When he was seven years old, Professor Joyner’s cousin was shot down by the police. He remembers the difficulty and intimidation that his grandfather experienced attempting to bring about justice. Professor Joyner is also no stranger to discrimination himself having experienced employment discrimination. He knows firsthand the frustration of knowing you have been discriminated against, but not being able to prove it.

Professor Joyner began his career in Civil Rights activism at early age. In high school, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement to confront segregation, Jim Crow laws, barriers against voting, and police misconduct. While he did not participate in the Royal Ice Cream Sit-In or the Sit-In at Greensboro A & T, these demonstrations led him to visit A & T and visit the Woolworths and meet the students who did participate. Hearing these students’ stories inspired Professor Joyner to continue in the struggle. Those efforts led him to become a community organizer where he traveled around the country working with community groups and organizations to deal

with specific problems. One problem was the difficulty local organizations had finding attorneys to champion their causes in court. This difficulty led Professor Joyner to attend Rutgers’s Law School.

An avid sports fan, Professor Joyner, attends as many basketball and football games that he can, both at NCCU and at other schools. For the last 12 years, he has enjoyed leading a group of students every yearto South Africa to learn about their history and present situation. Most of his time, however, is spent serving as a professor or with his Civil Rights activity. Professor Joyner has this message for NCCU on our 80th Anniversary:

I am honored to have been chosen to have worked here at institution that I have always held in high regard, an institution that I had placed on a pedestal in regard to what it was able to do or making a way out of no way when things were not favorable, this institution survived and worked its way through it, so the success that has occurred here has been an inspiration, so I am honored to have had this opportunity to share, but that I also try to be a positive image for the university so that whatever I do I want it to reflect favorably on the institution that I am apart of as well as my own reputation and image. So, I guess my message would have to come from the temptations to keep on pushing with what we try to do and without this push there wouldn’t be any successor as Fredrick Douglass would say without agitation there is no progress, I am strong supporter of that notion, and that be my message to the institution and those who make up the institution we got to keep on pushing.

Professor Joyner sets a high bar for all Legal Eagles, past, present, and future. He exemplifies the spirit of service and sacrifice so integral to NCCU’s mission to give voice to the voiceless.