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ICYMI: Eric Holder Commemorates the 30th Anniversary of the Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers

Washington, D.C. – On Saturday, November 22, Eric H. Holder, Jr., the 82nd Attorney General of the United States and Chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee (NDRC), delivered the keynote speech at the 30th Annual Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers (MABL) Foundation Gala, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. 

In his speech, Attorney General Holder warned about the ongoing assault on democracy and voting rights by the Trump administration and an ideological Supreme Court, and encouraged members of the audience to step forward to carry on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement and protect hard-fought fundamental rights.

The full speech, as prepared for delivery, is below: 

The Honorable Eric H. Holder, Jr.

82nd Attorney General of the United States

Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers (MABL) Foundation Gala

Remarks As Prepared For Delivery

November 22, 2025

Thank you for that kind introduction—and thank you all for welcoming me back to the great city of Minneapolis. 

It’s a pleasure to be with you this evening, and a tremendous honor to join you in celebrating three decades of principled advocacy and vital community stewardship. Each and every day—thanks to the leaders in this room, and so many members and supporters all across the state—MABL’s work is living proof that justice is built, not declared.

For thirty years, this organization has helped ensure that opportunity is not confined to privilege, and that the next generation of Black lawyers stands on a foundation of courage, integrity, and purpose.

Yet as we mark this milestone—and rightly lift up the legacies and ongoing work of this Association and its members, past and present—it is essential that we also speak plainly about the darkness of the moment in which we gather… and the unique challenges facing our nation in this extraordinary and consequential time.

We stand at an inflection point in American history—a time that requires profound and piercing clarity. The forces reshaping our country are testing not only our institutions, but our collective capacity to defend them. And they require from all of us a clarity of purpose that is equal to the rising stakes.

Restricting voting rights… curtailing the promise of “equal justice under law”… attempting to erase Black history… even overturning the basic architectures of our democracy: we have confronted these deeply un-American threats before. We know, based on our not-so-distant past, that they demand an answer rooted not in rhetoric, but in the disciplined work from those who know what and whom the law can protect.

That’s why it is a privilege to be in Minneapolis tonight.

Because your skills, your dedication, and your drive—to “Let Justice Reign” where cynicism and fear would otherwise take root—are needed now more than ever.

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For the legal profession—as for the American people writ large—we are entering a period as consequential as any since the end of the Civil Rights Movement.

This is not simply political turbulence. It is a test of the character of our people and our democracy and the resilience of the institutions that sustain both.

All around us, the rule of law is facing a coordinated assault. We are watching, in real time, a deliberate effort to weaken the foundations of our constitutional system and reverse decades of hard-won progress. And this is not an accident or a deviation; it represents the calculated execution of a long-held agenda—and the culmination of a movement that has spent years preparing for this moment.

As we speak, the current administration—assisted by an overtly ideological United States Supreme Court—is making real the ambitions that some of the most extreme elements in our politics have harbored since the New Deal era.

In the era ninety years ago, this nation forged a new social compact: one that broadened basic freedoms, expanded fairness, and gave ordinary people a greater measure of security and dignity. Two generations later, during the Civil Rights Movement, that compact was extended—against the force of fire hoses, billy clubs, bullets, and bombs—to millions who had been systematically denied its promise.

Those victories were not abstractions. They were paid for in blood: Medgar Evers. Jimmie Lee Jackson. Viola Liuzzo. Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And countless others, their names known and unknown to history, who

risked—and too often gave—everything so that equality could advance from aspiration into law.

Even the hardest-won progress of the Civil Rights era has always been more tenuous than most of us realize—and for 90 long years, this broader social compact has been under relentless attack.

But today, for the first time, its fiercest opponents stand on the verge of dismantling what they could never defeat at the ballot box—despite overwhelming public support for the protections so many have fought, bled, and died to secure.

What we are witnessing is the accumulation of extraordinary power by a narrow and deeply ideological minority. Through the blueprint represented in Project 2025, they are pursuing an agenda designed to unravel the social safety net, undo civil rights laws, and tear down the architecture of a more free and more just society, starting from its very foundations.

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As members of the bench and bar, you understand the weight of precedent, the demands of history, and the indispensable role of our most cherished institutions. That is why we must also speak plainly about the judicial counter-revolution in the Supreme Court now underway; not the lower federal courts—the Supreme Court.

We have watched as campaign finance safeguards were dismantled and anti-corruption laws cast aside. We have seen the evisceration of the Voting Rights Act and the Court’s refusal to restrain abusive partisan gerrymandering. Now, even what remains of the Voting Rights Act, Section 2, is hanging by a thread—threatened in ways that could legalize racial gerrymandering and shift the partisan makeup of as many as nineteen congressional seats through judicial fiat.

Of course, this is the same Court that also overturned Roe v. Wade, stripping away a constitutional right that generations of women had relied upon. And in a direct attack on the structure of the Executive Branch, the Court is poised to erase a New Deal-era precedent that preserves the independence of federal agencies—threatening the continuity and expertise that has allowed our government to function effectively for nearly a century.

Yet it’s the issue of race that exposes perhaps the deepest hypocrisy and most shocking incoherence. After all, the very same Court that has barred even indirect consideration of race in college admissions… then endorsed the use of race and racial profiling in violent ICE raids, detentions, and deportations without due process.

This is not neutral jurisprudence. It is outcome-driven ideology.

And the consequences are profound. The practical impact of such rulings is to weaken democracy and embolden would-be authoritarians, concentrating power in the hands of corporations and billionaires while stripping essential protections from voters, workers, consumers, communities, and the environment.

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As if the dismantling of decades of hard-won progress wasn’t enough, this hard-right agenda is now accompanied by an unprecedented effort to curtail the independence of the judiciary itself.

This is not a dispute over legal philosophy, but a wholesale attempt to discredit, intimidate, and ultimately dominate the sole branch of government designed to stand apart from political pressure.

We have all seen the unhinged rhetoric coming from senior figures in this administration and its ideological architects—accusations of “judicial insurrection,” threats of mass impeachments, open talk of purging judges whose rulings they happen to dislike. This is not normal disagreement. It is an effort to erode the legitimacy of any institution that refuses to bend the knee.

The goal is clear: to punish truth tellers whenever they speak plainly, to chill the independence of career civil servants and nonpartisan judges, and to weaponize the machinery of government against those who question the party line or defend the rule of law.

And we cannot overlook those in Congress who have enabled this decline. An utterly supine legislature—content to surrender its constitutional authorities, abandon all oversight responsibilities, even look the other way in the face of corruption as obscene and offensive as a CAVAbag stuffed with $50,000 in cash—has opened the door to a consolidation of power so sweeping that the courts, the agencies, and even Congress itself are being bent to the will of an extreme political faction.

Nor can we ignore the complete destruction of the norms surrounding the agency I once headed, the United States Department of Justice. The crassly political determination to bring cases without any merit solely because the so called “defendants” dared raise their voices in defense

of democracy is truly frightening and those who participate in this process must be held accountable—at the end of this nightmare—by official guardians of the bar around the country.

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This is why lawyers generally—and Black lawyers in particular—have a unique and non-negotiable role to play in this moment. We—again—have a solemn responsibility.

You are the ones on the front lines of our legal system, positioned to defend the hard-won rights that have come under direct assault. You have the skills, the training, and the moral and professional obligation to fight back—in the courts, the law school classroom, and the day-to-day practice of your craft.

In each context, every day, you confront injustice not just in theory, but in the harsh light of reality. You understand that every right we cherish was carved out of resistance, upheld through vigilance, and defended through sacrifice. Above all, you carry forward the legacy forged ninety years ago in the New Deal and expanded sixty years ago in the crucible of the Civil Rights Movement.

Now… I know the weight of this charge, and the scale of what we’re up against, can feel overwhelming.

It is only human to hope for someone else to step in. To pray for a miracle or a savior. To look to the horizon… hoping to see the cavalry, coming to the rescue.

But here is the hard truth:

There are no reinforcements on the way. No “miraculous rescue” is coming.

We are the cavalry.

If this seems daunting, I invite you to take solace in the fact that this is how it has always been. The fights for due process, equal protection, and constitutional democracy have never been won by spectators. This work has always been carried by people like you: advocates… litigators… jurists… law students… defenders of even the unpopular and the vulnerable.

Justice is never self-executing. Rights do not defend themselves.

If you want to see the heirs of those movements that secured vital progress ninety years ago… the heirs of those who ratified and expanded it sixty years ago… and have kept it alive ever since—just look around this room.

We owe a profound debt to the generations who sacrificed so much to secure these rights. We have had opportunities they were so shamefully denied. We must honor them by the work we must do. But we owe an equal debt to generations yet to come. And we can only truly honor our past by ensuring those who come after us will inherit an America truer to its promise.

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In the months and years ahead, this work will produce doubt and fear. You may wonder whether you have the strength to meet this moment.

But just think of the giants on whose shoulders we stand: Dr. King, John Lewis, Diane Nash. Fred Shuttlesworth. Thurgood Marshall. Fannie Lou Hamer. Constance Baker Motley. Dorothy Height. Young Black men and women—many of them lawyers—fighting to rip down a system of American apartheid.

They confronted violence and hatred and impossible odds. But they fought through adversity as surely as they faced down their own inner doubts and fears. And they prevailed.

We cannot be the generation that yields to fear. We cannot shrink from the responsibility that rests, in this uniquely consequential moment, in our hands. Above all, we cannot become complicit through silence or inaction or capitulation. This is not a season for caution.

This fight requires all of us, the full spectrum of our community.

It requires young people—like the rising generation of law students and aspiring MABL leaders whom our efforts tonight will most directly benefit—just as so many of the Founders, Civil Rights heroes, and suffragettes who helped change the course of history were often young people themselves.

But it also requires the experience and wisdom of more seasoned practitioners. Those who have acquired certain stations in life have a special responsibility to pay it forward, and those who are more senior possess invaluable power, wisdom and insight that can only be gained from life experience.

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In challenging moments like this one, just as I did during the weightiest hours of my tenure as Attorney General, I often reflect on the words of Dr. King, when he assured us that: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

What he said is true—but only because, throughout our history, every generation of Americans has stepped forward to bend it, to pull it towards justice.

From the fields of Yorktown and Gettysburg to the beaches of Normandy… from Selma to Montgomery… from a tavern called Stonewall to the courtrooms and communities where ordinary citizens summon the courage, every day, to insist on extraordinary change—each generation has answered the call. Each has pulled that arc closer to justice. Each has worked to protect… renew… and strengthen our democracy, widening our capacity for self-determination.

No American generation has ever failed to do its part.

Now… it is our turn. Your turn.

So before we lament the scale of the challenges before us—or despair in the darkness of the precarious moment we face—allow me to remind you it was also Dr. King who taught us that: “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”

Tonight, once again, it is dark enough.

But the stars he spoke about are not a metaphor or a memory.

They are the people who step forward in times like this one—those who refuse to mistake cynicism for wisdom or fear for inevitability. Leaders who choose not merely to speculate about the future, but to shape it.

So when this gala ends—when the music fades and the lights come up—I invite each of you to ask yourself the only question that truly matters: Not only “what did you accomplish yesterday?”… but “what will you do tomorrow?”

How will you carry the fight for justice forward—whatever that may look like in your own life and career—next week? Next month? Next Year?

Whatever your individual path may be, there is only one way to answer that question: through action. You must use your voice, your vote, and our shared vocation to protect the fragile promise of justice—not just for the powerful, but for all.

That arc is in our hands. What history will record of this generation—and what achievements this organization will gather to celebrate in another 30 years’ time—is now up to all of us.

We must endure. We cannot fail.

Working together, we will triumph.

Thank you all.

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