The NAACP Legal Defense
and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) will honor Sean "Diddy" Combs for his
efforts in raising voter awareness in the last presidential election.
The annual National
Equal Justice Award Dinner (NEJAD) is an awards dinner that celebrates the courage
and achievements of equal justice champions.
The honorees are
luminaries in politics, communications and popular culture who have collectively
made outstanding contributions to the spirit of equal justice that NEJAD celebrates.
Combs became very
active in the last Presidential race in 2004 when he launched "Citizen
Change," a national, non-partisan and non-profit organization created to
educate and motivate eligible Americans aged 18 to 30 to vote.
The mogul held
registration drives on college campuses and helped register new voters for the
2004 election.
The 2005 event
will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a transformative
law that LDF played a major role in helping to create and protect.
Other honorees
include Congressman John Lewis (D-Ga.) ,who will be presented with the Thurgood
Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award for his leadership and commitment to the
civil rights movement and Linda Johnson Rice, President and CEO, Johnson Publishing
Company.
National Equal
Justice Award Dinner Set for November 3, 2005 at the Hilton New York & Towers
in New York, New York.
Tickets start at
$500 per person.
In related news,
Combs is in talks with property developers to open his own hotel in Atlantic
City, New Jersey.
