Board Director
Attorney, Southern Poverty Law Center, Focus: Education, Youth Advocacy
Originally from Tunica, Mississippi, Arielle Hudson-Vinson is an attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center where she focuses on education litigation and youth advocacy. In May 2025, Arielle graduated from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor degree. In July 2022, Arielle graduated from the University of Oxford in Oxford, U.K., with a Qualifying Law Degree. She obtained her BA in Education from the University of Mississippi in 2020 and is licensed in secondary education in the State of Mississippi.
Arielle serves on the Board of Directors for the ACLU of MS and as a member of the Mississippi Free Press Advisory Board. Arielle recently served as the National Attorney General and as a board member on the national board of directors for the National Black Law Students Association, the largest student-run 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation in the United States. She is also an inaugural, alumni fellow of the John Robert Lewis Scholars and Fellows Program.
Arielle is a second-cohort member of the Marshall-Motley Scholarship Program, created and funded by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund to endow the South with its next generation of civil rights leaders. Arielle believes in the power of movement and community lawyering and hopes to use the law as a tool to advance the task of liberation for Black people and other marginalized communities.
At the University of Mississippi, Arielle served as the President of the Black Student Union and Chairwoman of the Associated Student Body Senate’s Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Engagement Committee. Through her roles, Arielle successfully advocated for the relocation of a Confederate statute and mandatory diversity, equity, and inclusion training for students and faculty. Arielle’s advocacy and organizing sparked others in Mississippi to challenge and advocate for the removal of Confederate iconography across the State of Mississippi, including the changing of the state flag. In 2020, Arielle became the first African American woman from the University of Mississippi to become a Rhodes Scholar. She was also inducted into the university’s Hall of Fame. Arielle has appeared on PBS Newshour and has been featured on BET.com and Essence.com.
In August 2026, Arielle received the 2026 Hezekiah Watkins Trailblazer of the Year award at the MS Votes Freedom & Justice Gala in Jackson.