Legal Defense Fund Holds 25th Anniversary Session

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Press Releases, Volume 1. Legal Defense Fund Holds 25th Anniversary Session, 1964. 22e140e6-b492-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/072bdb23-2b06-4a39-a530-af823b7a78bc/legal-defense-fund-holds-25th-anniversary-session. Accessed December 08, 2025.

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    10 Columbus Circle 
New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
President 

‘ Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers 
Director-Counsel une oy nee Jack Greenberg 
Associate Counsel 
Constance Baker Motley 

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND HOLDS 
25th ANNIVERSARY SESSION 

NEW YORK, N.Y.--The NAACP Legal Defense Fund noted the 25th anniver- 

sary of its founding along with the 10th anniversary of the historic 

1954 school integration ruling here last week with a convocation of 

the leading names in civil rights, 

Fund Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg and Associate Counsel 

Constance Baker Motley were joined by notables such as Rev. Martin 

Luther King, Dr. Ralph J, Bunche, James Meredith, James Farmer and 

Roy Wilkins. 

Also participating in the two day deliberations were Eugene V. 

Rostow, dean of the Yale Law School; Herbert Brownell, Jr., former 

attorney general; Samuel I, Rosenman, former counsel to Presidents 

Roosevelt and Truman; Dr. James M, Nabrit, Jr., president of Howard 

University. 

Highlight of the Fund's Convocation was presentation of the 25th 

anniversary award to Federal Judge Thurgood Marshall, former 

director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, which was founded in 

1939 by a group of distinguished members of the NAACP Board of 

Directors. 

The legal work was separated from the Association's lobbying and 

propaganda work so that contributions made to the Fund could be tax 

exempt. 

Since then, the Fund has continued in its dedication to the 

NAACP's goals and continues to work closely with the Association, 

although separate and apart. 

Fund attorneys represent SCLC, CORE, SNCC and members of ad hoe 

-organizations and individuals working for civil rights. 

Director-Counsel Greenberg told the Convocation that the Brown 

decision "has become a dynamo that may help pull society out of a 

mire in which it has been trapped, immobile for generations. 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 Ss 



Legal Defense Fund Holds -2- June 5, 1964 
25th Anniversary Session 

"Brown is an engine of social change for many of our unsolved sccial, 

political and economic problems.... 

“Full equality without regard to race will be most difficult to 

achieve in an economy spotted with hard cores of poverty," Greenberg 

aid. 

Poor people often tend to be "those trapped by the accident of race 

and kept down by the economic consequences of discrimination, "he said. 

en the eve of the Convocation, Mr. Greenberg annotiieed a five poin: 

end program for the summer months: 

*rotation of New York staff in Mississippi so as to provide perma- 

nent assistance for the Fund's three cooperating attorneys there, 

*legal seminars for college students slated to participate in the 

Mississippi "Freedom Summer," 

: *seminars at Columbia University for volunteer attorneys planning 

to go south to assist in civil rights litigation, 

*training institutes across the country to keep the Fund's 120 

cooperating attorneys abreast of latest trends of the law, 

*expansion of the Fund's New York City headquarters staff by three 

additional attorneys, meaning that the Fund now employs 17 full 

time attorneys in and out of New York City: 

Additional Convocation speakers included Francis Keppel, U.S, 

Commissioner of Education; Harvey B. Gantt of Clemson College; Edwin 

C. Berry, Chicago Urban League; Michael Harrington, author, “The 

Other America, Poverty in the U.S." 

Also Jacob S. Potofsky, general president, Amalgamated Clothing 

Workers of America and Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers, president of the 

Legal Defense Fund. 

= 30 =

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Legal Defense Fund Holds 25th Anniversary Session

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