Through an anonymous contribution of $40 million, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund launched a scholarship fund on Martin Luther King Day to finance the education of 50 law students who will work for civil rights causes across the country, ABC News reports.

The newly-established scholarships will pay for law school and some other expenses for the students, who pledge to spend eight years working for civil rights groups, including a two-year post-graduate fellowship with the Atlanta-based organization.

“The donor came to us,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the Legal Defense and Educational Fund. “The donor very much wanted to support the development of civil rights lawyers in the South. And we have a little bit of experience with that.”

Founded by future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund provides scholarships for civil rights lawyers around the US.  It was established at a time when Black students rarely had an opportunity to go to law school because of racism in admissions or lack of financial resources.  It also provided seed money for Black- and interracial-founded law firms, particularly in the South.

“While without question we are in a perilous moment in this country, we are also in a moment of tremendous possibility, particularly in the South,” Ifill said. “The elements for change are very much present in the South, and what needs to be strengthened is the capacity of lawyering.”

The scholarship will be called the Marshall-Motley Scholars Program, named after Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court justice and for Constance Baker Motley, the first Black woman federal judge who was an LDF attorney just a few years out of Columbia University Law School when she wrote the initial complaint that led to the court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling outlawing racial segregation in public schools.