Attorney and advocate James “Jim” C. Harrington founded the Texas Civil Rights Project on September 23, 1990, having been inspired by and involved with the United Farm Workers’ movement in the Rio Grande Valley. He directed TCRP for twenty-five years, fighting for the rights of Texans with disabilities, immigrants, workers in need of fair labor conditions, and more.

In February 2016, Mimi Marziani, a nationally recognized expert in voting rights and democracy reform, was announced as the group’s next President. Under her guidance, we completed our first-ever strategic planning process and re-structured TCRP to focus our work within three legal programs: Voting Rights, Beyond Borders, and Criminal Injustice. Since 2017, pursuant to our strategic plan, we have deepened our subject matter expertise; established local, statewide, and national partnerships with fellow civil rights organizations; diversified our revenue to ensure long-term sustainability; and invested deeply in our culture and team.

TCRP has also boosted our impact, with myriad key accomplishments in recent years. For instance, in May 2018, TCRP broke the news to the nation that the federal government had begun systematically separating immigrant families from their children by the thousands. The announcement and the group’s work to reunite separated families lifted TCRP into the national spotlight, establishing it as a premier organization on issues of immigration. TCRP additionally won landmark cases in voting rights and criminal justice reform, enforcing the law mandating that Texas state agencies offer to register voters using their services, and forcing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to offer air conditioning to geriatric inmates in a prison unit.