These regal men and women are our professional ancestors. We do more than stand on their shoulders. From that position, we reach new heights. They, and the work they did, made me, and because of them, I made The Arc.

-Derrick Alexander Pope, J.D.

Founder and Managing Director, The Arc of Justice Foundation

A composer and conductor of ideas.

That is how our founder and managing director describes himself and The Arc of Justice Foundation is just one of those ideas.

The Arc began with one simple thought. While on a field trip with his daughter and her sixth-grade class, Derrick Alexander Pope had an idea to develop a cultural exhibit that would pay tribute to the heroic and vital contribution lawyers and judges made to the civil rights movement. Several years later, the idea gained traction as part of a working group within the State Bar of Georgia Committee to Promote Inclusion in the Profession. From that The Arc became a reality.

An Atlanta native, Derrick is a graduate of Morris Brown College and the Loyola University School of Law in New Orleans, Louisiana, earning top honors in the Loyola Law Clinic. He is a member of the State Bar of Georgia where serves on three standing committees (Vice-Chair, Communications/Cornerstones of Freedom Program; Editorial Board of the Georgia Bar Journal, and the Advisory Committee on Legislation, and Past Co-Chair of the Committee on Inclusion in the Profession), the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, the United States Supreme Court Historical Society, and the Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc.

Derrick is the author of By the Content of Our Character: A Declaration of Independence for Colored Folks, Negroes, Black People, and African Americans and Thy Will Be Done: An African American Guide to Estate Planning. He has written several articles in the Georgia and National Bar Journals, and a major scholarly piece entitled A Constitutional Window to Interpretive Reason: Or in Other Words...The Ninth Amendment and he is host of the Arc’s critically acclaimed podcast called Hidden Legal Figures. He says his favorite project came back in 2012, working with his daughter on their spoken word project - The Race Track.

When he is not “on the arc”, Derrick teaches at the Georgia State University College of Law and at the Stetson School of Business and College of Professional Advancement at Mercer University.