Ryan Doherty, a 2025 graduate of the University of Richmond, was recently selected as a Marshall-Motley Scholar by the Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

Doherty, of Charlottesville, is part of the program’s fifth and final cohort. Named in honor of civil rights leaders Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, the program provides a full law school scholarship covering tuition, housing and living expenses. Scholars also receive summer internships, a two-year postgraduate fellowship with civil rights organizations in the South, and specialized training through LDF and the National Academy of Sciences.

Doherty plans to attend Yale Law School  this fall. He earned degrees in history and Africana studies and minored in creative writing. During his time at Richmond, he served as vice president of the university’s NAACP chapter and was a humanities fellow.

“One of my proudest undergraduate accomplishments was successfully advocating for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to create a historical marker for an otherwise unrecognized freedmen camp buried beneath a Confederate Museum at Chimborazo Park in Richmond,” Doherty said. “This scholarship will make it so much easier for me to become the advocate I aspire to become.”