Greenberg Views Defense Fund Activities During Coming Year

    “ PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
TOCOLUMBUS CIRCLE + NEWYORKI19,N.Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS JACK GREENBERG CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY 
President General Counsel Associate Counsel 

5 

GREENBERG VIEWS DEFENSE FUND 
ACTIVITIES DURING COMING YEAR 

January 16, 1962 

NEW YORK - An all-out desegregation attack on Mississippi, the 

legal defense of protest demonstrations, and the advance of school 

desegregation up from 'tokenism" will be the major areas of civil 

rights legal activity during 1962, Jack Greenberg said today. 

Mr. Greenberg recently succeeded Thurgood Marshall as 

Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. 

"Within the next year or two Mississippi will cover ground 

that took decades for the rest of the South," Greenberg predicts. 

He expects legal inroads to be made into segregated public facili- 

ties such as hospitals, parks, beaches, public transportation, and, 

in the near future, public education. 

Legal Defense Fund policy toward protest demonstrations was 

enunciated by Thurgood Marshall when the sit-ins began in 1960. 

Mr. Marshall stated that the Defense Fund would represent every 

person convicted in such demonstrations that sought its help. 

"Mr. Marshall's policy will continue," assures Greenberg. 

The Defense Fund is now involved in approximately 2,400 

sit-in and 350 Freedom Rider cases. The U. S. Supreme Court has 

heard only one sit-in case. It ruled in December, 1961, in favor 

of 16 Negro students who were convicted of “breach of the peace" 

in Baton Rouge, La. The Supreme Court may hear other sit-in cases 

this year, as seven more cases have gone through all proceedings 

short of petitioning the high Court. Some of these cases involve 

the still undetermined legality of state trespass laws. 

When the Freedom Rides began last Spring, Defense Fund attorneys 

filed federal suits in Jackson, Miss. and Montgomery, Ala. seeking 

to enjoin state prosecutions of interstate travelers who were using 

public transportation facilities on a desegregated basis. The 

federal court in Montgomery entered an injunction banning the dis- 

crimination and the Jackson case is currently being appealed to the 

U. S. Supreme Court. 



Fund attorneys are also cooperating in the defense in state 

courts of the more than 300 Freedom Riders who were arrested in 

Jackson. 

In the area of school desegregation, Greenberg sees the current 

struggle in terms of a "trench warfare" against "tokenism,"” 

"The defense of 'token' plans by southern officials has now 

moved into a sort of white collar crime category," he says. "We 

don't get the obvious ‘we don't want any Negroes in our schools! 

argument, but rather, a reliance on technicalities and the conceal- 

ment of the true reasons for exclusion.” 

Greenberg sees no alternative other than to fully support such 

"trench warfare" actions until the total number of Negro children 

in desegregated schools is substantially increased. 

Only 7.3% of Negro children in the South are in desegregated 

schools. In Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina there has been 

no school desegregation. In other areas, "token" plans such as 

grade-a-year desegregation, permissive transfers of a few "approved" 

Negro students, and rezoning of school districts have been used to 

slow down total desegregation. 

Finally, Greenberg hopes to widen the scope of legal activity 

during 1962 into the areas of hospital discrimination, teacher 

desegregation, and voting. As always, Defense Fund attorneys take 

cases in which there is violation of constitutional rights of a 

criminal defendant. 

NEW YORK - Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal 

Defense and Educational Fund, announced this week that Leroy D. 

Clark of New York City has joined the Fund staff. 

Mr. Clark, 27, is a 1961 graduate of the Columbia Law School. 

He has worked since his graduation in the office of the Attorney 

General of New York State. 

Mr. Clark completed his undergraduate work at City College of 

New York in 1956 where he won Phi Beta Kappa honors and a Tremaine 

Scholarship. Before entering Law School, he attended the New York 

University Graduate School of Psychology under a United States 

Public Health Fellowship. 



The Defense Fund legal staff, with the addition of Mr. Clark, 

has now been expanded to six attorneys, said Greenberg. The staff 

had been reduced to five last Fall due to the resignation of 

Thurgood Marshall to take a federal judgeship and the induction of 

attorney Norman Amaker into the U. S. Army. 

Married to the former Florence Gomez of New York City, the 

Clarks live at 2394 Seventh Avenue, in Manhattan. 

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