The Scholarship, Education and Defense Fund for Racial Equality (SEDFRE, Norman grantee 1966–1976) was founded in 1963 to provide legal defense, scholarships, and voter registration support to the Civil Rights Movement. By the early 1970s, the movement’s hard-won legislative victories had begun translating into electoral power. Black candidates were winning office across the South for the first time since Reconstruction, but winning an election and governing were two very different things. Newly elected Black officials had almost no infrastructure of support and often faced hostile city councils, underfunded budgets, and entrenched white bureaucracies, along with legal challenges designed to limit their authority.

SEDFRE pivoted from their original mission to meet this need, developing their Technical Assistance Program to provide training, legal support, and strategic guidance to new Black officials in the South. When A.J. Cooper became the first Black person to defeat a white incumbent mayor in Alabama in 1972, Norman supported his victory by giving a grant to SEDFRE for technical assistance, helping Cooper’s administration navigate political and legal obstacles. The foundation also earmarked $40,000 for SEDFRE to open an Atlanta office to expand the Technical Assistance Program to rural communities with newly elected or appointed Black officials.