In 1876, in an office on Nassau Street in Manhattan, with a powerful staff of three, the first legal aid organization dedicated to defending low-income people in the United States was born.
Within its first year, the nascent organization, then called the German Legal Aid Association, would represent 212 immigrants who could not afford a lawyer. By the end of the first decade it was would help restore the current equivalent of $3.6 million in wages for German immigrants. And just a few years later, it would shorten its name to Legal Aid Society and expand its mandate to include not just newcomers, but New Yorkers more broadly.
Today, 150 years after she tried her first case, the Legal Aid Society is the largest public defense provider in the United States, funded by a mix of government and private money. In honor of the To mark the nonprofit’s bicentennial, the New York Historical unveiled a special exhibit earlier this month featuring relics from the Legal Aid Society’s history, including artwork created by young clients and anti-incarceration activists and early photographs of the organization’s work.
“Justice isn’t just legal. It’s also cultural,” said Twyla Carter, CEO and chief counsel of the Legal Aid Society. Hyperallergic in a telephone conversation. “I think this exhibition shows how law and lived experience intersect.”
Over the past year and a half, Carter said she has reached out to former and current employees to identify artifacts that would chronicle the organization’s history for the special exhibit, titled Delivering justice: 150 years of the legal aid association.
In a small shop just outside the historic NY lobby, newspaper clippings, collages, and archival and contemporary photographs chronicle the association’s most significant legal achievements, including a poster expressing support for the leaders of the 1971 Attica prison uprising. The Legal Aid Society defended the incarcerated individuals who rebelled against intolerable treatment in state prison.
Among the handful of artworks is a poster calling for the closure of the infamous Rikers Island prison, created by Josh MacPhee, a Brooklyn-based artist and founder of the political art distribution collective Just Seeds.
Late last year, the Legal Aid Society won a lawsuit against the use of cruelty against incarcerated people in prison. This decision mandated court-appointed oversight of the facility, removing control from the hands of the mayor, a move heralded as a victory over the prison’s inhumane treatment of incarcerated individuals. The prison must close by law in 2027 and will be replaced by a controversial prison system in the boroughs.
Although MacPhee has never worked with the Legal Aid Society in its class actions against the embattled prison, his anti-Rikers poster and foam fist, with the message “Close Rikers,” reflect the nonprofit’s position.
“They contacted me, I think, because my work has been one of the more visible cultural elements of the movement over the last decade,” MacPhee said. Hyperallergic in a telephone conversation.
“We’re starting to shift culturally toward understanding that the materials people produce and use in organizing are just as valuable in telling that story as written accounts or documentary footage,” he said.
MacPhee handed out his foam fists, one of which is currently on display at the NY Historical Society, during a demonstration march to Rikers in 2016.
When asked if the exhibit is related to any upcoming fundraising efforts, Carter said the organization hopes to reach new audiences through the exhibit and related activities.
“We hope that all of this together will spark the interest of people who didn’t know who we were, but who might have known us or heard of us,” Carter said. “Americans who have the luxury of not knowing who we are, who can enjoy the Oscars or go out on a Saturday night and not know that there are people actually doing Freedom Fighter-type work.”
Recounting some of the organization’s major lawsuits, Carter noted that the 1981 victory ordered the city to provide shelter for single homeless men. These rights were later extended to women and children.
Carter also pointed to recent work by attorneys at the Legal Aid Society, including the creation of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, which she described as the nation’s “first publicly funded universal representation program” for individuals facing deportation.
“I think the exhibit reminds us that every generation faces challenges,” Carter said. “The fight for dignity, fairness and equality is constant.”
The works will remain on display until July 5, 2026.
