[12] In 1963, the coalition, the NAACP, and the United Auto Workers convened at Manhattan's Roosevelt Hotel to decide how to influence comprehensive civil rights legislation being spearheaded by President John F. Kennedy.

[15] The coalition helped establish Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday in 1986,[9] and led an effort to reject Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1987.

[16] The LCCR also stopped the Ronald Reagan administration from "weakening" an executive order on affirmative action, and was "instrumental" in the Republican-led Senate Committee on the Judiciary's rejection of William Bradford Reynolds' nomination for the role of Associate Attorney General.

By the late 1980s,[9] the LCCR was serving as an "umbrella" organization for more than 185 national groups, including those representing the civil, disability, elder, labor, LGBT, religious, and women's rights movements.

Wade Henderson, the coalition's president and chief executive officer (CEO), testified in support of Sotomayor and Jackson before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

[26][27] During the first presidency of Donald Trump, the Leadership Conference served as a "strategic hub of the resistance" and as the "nerve center" for defending civil rights.

The center monitors AI-related legislation and regulations, publishes papers, and hosts an advisory group of experts and civil rights organizations.

During his fourteen-year tenure,[18] he "achieved some successes in the face of unremitting hostility, from the extension of the Voting Rights Act in 1982 to the rejection of Robert H. Bork for the Supreme Court in 1987 and the toughening of Federal housing discrimination laws the next year".

[17] In 1987, the newspaper's Lena Williams wrote, "admirers of Mr. Neas say that perhaps his greatest achievement has been holding together such a divergent coalition in the highly conservative climate of the last six and a half years".

[9] The Washington Post has said he "helped strengthen and create ground-breaking civil rights legislation", including the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.