Division of Legal Information and Community Service - Highlights 1971 and 1972

    (_) 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 • 586-8397 

Division of Legal Infonnation and Community Service 

H I G H L I G H T S 

1971 and 1972 

Jean Fairfax 
Director 

Contributions are deductible for U. S. income tax purposes 



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H I G H L I G H T S 

1971 and 1972 

Since it was established in 1965, the Division of Legal 

Information and Community Service has demonstrated the wisdom 

of providing technical assistance to minority communities under 

the auspices of a legal organization. Our focus has been on 

administrative agencies at all levels of government as systems 

for delivering to citizens the rights and benefits created by the 

constitution, statutes and the courts. 

The administrative agency is a powerful gate-keeper in 

the American system. With an imaginative and affirmative approach 

to its mandate, an agency can often expand opportunities created 

by law and intervene successfully to end the cycles of poverty 

and injustice. Officials who are resistant, incompetent or 

racist can effectively repeal laws which are crucial to the 

survival and welfare of black and poor people. 

Our Division is committed to the principle that minority 

group citizens must be empowered to work for their own liberation. 

Our role is to heighten their consciousness of their legal rights 

and to assist them in developing strategies to make bureaucracies 

accountable. Litigation is not always the most effective device 

for assuring that administrative agencies obey their own laws 



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and do so creatively arrl compassionately. Legal action is 

often cumbersome, time-consuming and expensive. However, it 

is a necessary means for breaking open entrenched systems so 

that citizens can exercise a wider range of options as watchdogs 

of their own freedom. The selective and timely use of litiga­

tion to achieve broad administrative reform can best be accom­

plished when the community worker and lawyer function as a team, 

furnishing coordinated and mutually strengthening resources. 

This report deals only with our programs in education, em­

ployment, juvenile justice and communications. Our current 

efforts in other areas, such as health and housing, to which we 

intend to devote more staff time in coming months, will be re­

ported later. In addition to our work in the United States, the 

director of the Division, who is a member of the Commission on 

the Programme to Combat Racism of the World Council of Churches, 

is able to incorporate into an international program many of 

the experiences and insights gained here. 

EDUCATION PROGRAMS 

Primary and Secondary Schools 

By the fall of 1971, our education program, which with the 

exception of our Child Nutrition and Title I Projects had been 



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focused primarily on the South, had become national in scope. 

Specifically, this has meant: 

l. We have shifted in the South to a concentration on 

urban school districts whose patterns of racial seqreqation, 

thouqh de jure in oriqin, are frequently and erroneously described 

in the de facto lanquaqe of the North. In the winter of 1971~72, 

we provided about half the manpower for an interagency investiga-

tion of the status of desegregation in 43 southern urban school 

districts. The findings, reported in "It's Not Over in the South," 

counteract the widespread notion that the constitutional right 

to a nonsegregated education has been secured for the majority 

of the region's black pupils. In many communities outdated court 

orders, intransigent school officials or resegregation limit the 

amount of integration which has been achieved. But even where 

physical desegregation has been substantial, "second generation" 
t 

problems of inschool discrimination are pervasive: tracking, the 

discriminatory administration of discipline and racism in the 

classroom, in the curriculum and in extracurricular activities. 

Parodoxically, the implementation of desegregation plans has 

often provided further evidence of deep-seated racial prejudice. 

Good black facilities have been closed because of the reluctance 

to assign white children to formerly all-black schools, especially 

if they are in black neighborhoods. Busing plans often place 



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a disproportionate burden on black pupils even where cross­

busing would be fairer and clearly more efficient. So called 

unitary systems have been achieved at the expense of black 

staff who have been fired, demoted, humiliated and denied 

supervisory and administrative assignments. 

Solutions to many of these problems are available within 

the context of the constitutional mandate to dismantle dual 

school systems but a tremendous investment of staff time has 

been required. Division staff members, coordinated by Robert 

Valder in our Charlotte office, have documented the facts of 

discrimination, advised parents and children of their rights, 

filed complaints to Federal officials and served as liaison 

between communities and LDF attorneys. We have also worked 

closely with the lawyers in fashioning, testing and ascertain­

ing the limits of new tools for assuring equal educational 

opportunity, e.g. metro school integration plans, which have 

nationwide potential. Mr. Valder, who helped compile evidence 

of official discrimination by housing, urban renewal, trans­

portation and school officials in Charlotte - which documentation 

was decisive in convincing judges of the need for a comprehensive 

plan of reorganization - undertook similar research in St. 

Louis in 1971 and 1972. 

Litigation alone cannot solve the education problems of 



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blacks. Even in the South where it has historically been 

the main tool for restructuring race relations, legal action 

will undoubtedly play a decrea~ing role in fulfilling the goals 

which black parents have for their children. Therefore, we 

have been heartened to discover a new breed of able and aggres­

sive blacks - often young and sometimes in key decision-making 

and administrative positions - who are concerned about the 

whole spectrum of educational issues and who are eager to pursue 

multiple strategies to make public schools responsive to the 

needs of black people. Providing technical assistance to them 

is one of our main tasks. A very successful project in 1971 

was centered around black members of bi-racial committees which 

Federal district court judges have officially appointed to monitor 

desegregation orders. We sponsored a weekend leadership training 

seminar for them and have continued to work with them in their 

local districts on specific issues. 

2. We launched a Northern Schools Project in the fall of 

1971 under Mrs. Shirley Lacy as director. In the first phase, 

we have been concentrating on medium-size school districts in the 

Midwest. Our triple concerns are: racial exclusion, isolation 

and discrimination; parent empowerment and the local implementation 

of Federal programs. After consulting for several months with 

parents, community leaders, elected officials, educators and civil 



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rights enforcement officers from Federal and State agencies, 

we decided to focus on Illinois and Ohio. 

The promulgation in 1971 by the state superintendent of 

education of regulations to implement the Armstrong Act opened 

an unprecedented opportunity to reduce discrimination in Illinois' 

public school systems through the exercise of state administra­

tive power. our Division is committing resources to strengthen 

the role of local black citizens as change agents in this process. 

The state has already cited 21 school districts for noncompliance. 

Many of the same problems with which we have become familiar in 

the South are present in these Illinois communities: high en­

rollment of black pupils in racially identifiable schools, low 

percent of black faculty and a scarcity of black administrators, 

inschool problems, massive resistance by school authorities and 

fears in black parents. 

Beginning with one community, we are helping citizens to 

undertake their own audit of the compliances status of their 

district and to monitor the actions of local and state officials. 

Also, we are providing outside experts who will assist in the 

preparation of a community-initiated desegregation plan which 

can be used if private litigation becomes necessary. 

3. We have addressed key issues which have become national 

and controversial and have been participating in the public debate 



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with information and insights gained from our southern programs. 

In March 1972, we convened a national consultation on busing to 

which we invited educators, lawyers, foundation executives and 

civil rights leaders. A major recommendation from this gather­

ing concerned the need to disseminate facts on busing to the 

mass media and to opinion-makers in both races. 

·!In May 1972, we released "It's Not the Distance, 'It's 

the Niggers'," which was our attempt to bring facts and reason 

to bear on the current hysterical and politicized .discussion about 

busing. It presented the findings of Division staff members who 

visited school districts with recent court orders to assess the 

impact on busing; interviewed school transportation officials 

in four southern state departments of education .and compiled 

statistics from national experts •. our research revealed that 

publicly subsidized pupil transportation, which has 'increasingly 

been used by educators to promote safety and the efficient use 

of facilities as well as to broaden educational opportunities, 

represents a modest percent of total expenditures. Busing for 

integration.has not been "massive" - in fact there is no evidence 

that desegregation has significantly increased the aggregate 

amount of busing - has not required a major reallocation of 

scarce funds and has usually been accepted once plans have been 

implemented. 



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We have distributed almost 12,000 copies of the report 

to date. 

In September 1972, Richard Fields of our staff completed 

a preliminary study of private segregated academies in eleven 

southern states. This project marks the intensification of 

LDF's efforts, since the closing of public schools in Prince 

Edward County in 1959, to prevent public support to institutions 

which are havens for whites seeking to escape integrated public 

schools. Mr. Fields' document has national significance for 

the current debate about tuition grants, tax credits and other 

forms of direct and.indirect support to private and parochial 

schools often takes place without facts about the impact of 

such aid on public schools. Our study revealed that the flight 

from integrated public schools .in rural counties with heavy 

black enrollments may have leveled off. But new developments -

anticipated pressures for metropolitan school integration, weak 

enforcement by the Internal Revenue service, HEW and the Justice 

Department and a national climate favorable to aid to private 

schools - have alerted us to the need for renewed vigilance to 

assure that integrated public schools are not financially under­

mined. LDF's suit to enjoin Mississippi from providing text­

books to segregated academies will be heard by the U.S. Supreme 

court this term. The task of this Division is to feed information 



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from the South into the national debate while we are getting 

more documentation about the nature and impact of public aid 

to segregated academies. 

4. We have increased our monitoring of Federal education 

programs which have special importance to black and poor children. 

The Title I Project, our most comprehensive, operates at national, 

state and local levels. Inasmuch as 38% of all black children 

were below the poverty line in 1970, securing the imaginative 

implementation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 

has high priority. Since our report, "Title I of ESEA: Is It 

Helping Poor Children?" which was published jointly with the 

Washington Research Project in 1969, we have kept pressure on 

the Office of Education (OE) to promote full compliance with the 

law. During 1971 and 1972, the principal compliance issues on 

which we focused our national efforts were: (a) Oj;:'s obligation 

to prevent the misuse of Title I funds for general aid and to 

require restitution of misspent monies; (b) the implementation 

of the statutory requirement for district-wide Parent Advisory 

Councils (PAC) with .a majority membership of parents of eligible 

children; and (c) the enforcement by July 1972 of "comparability" 

i.e. the application of sanctions against districts that use 

Title I to make up for an otherwise inequitable distribution of 

.funds between poor and nonpoor schools. 



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Mrs. Phyllis McClure in our Washington office regularly 

reviews HEW audits, exposes their findings, arouses public con­

cern about nonenforcement and makes recommendations to OE offi­

cials concerning specific steps which could be undertaken to 

assure compliance with the law. A kit, "Title I in Your Community," 

which she has prepared and frequently updates, gets information 

out to the grassroots. It also stimulates feedback to her office 

about local developments which she uses in her contacts with OE. 

Over 7,000 kits have been distributed so far and a Spanish version 

will be available soon. 

All of our field offices have had state or local Title I 

projects which focused during 1971 and 1972 on financial account­

ability and parent empowerment. Our most ambitious endeavor was 

in California. earl Ulrich, director of our California Education 

Project, provided staff assistance to Black and Chicano parents 

of Title I children who organized a state-wide California Parent 

Congress. They held a conference of 600 participants and commanded 

respect and responses from a state bureaucracy that had attempted 

to defeat this mobilization of poor parents. As an.immediate 

result of the conference and through the coordinated efforts of 

attorneys in California and our Washington office, a proposed 

charge by school districts of indirect costs for administrative 

.overhead which might have reached 39% of the Title I budget was 

prevented. 



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Richard Fields, in our Memphis office, assisted parents in 

McNeil and Taylor, Arkansas, in filing complaints which led to 

investigations from OE and the state-wide exposure of Title I 

violations and which generated a strong set of state guidelines 

for parent participation. Poor parents in Memphis with whom he 

worked formed the Parents Action Committee on Education (PACE), 

protested the misuse of Ti~le I funds, substantially redirected 

the Title I program and now have control over the official district­

wide PAC. He has assisted citizens and lawyers in Nashville in 

filing a Title I suit against the state of Tennessee. 

Mrs. Lacy has been developing a state-wide Title I Project 

in Opio. With the cooperation of Mr. ~ields, Mrs. McClure and 

Title I parents from Wilmington, Delaware, Mrs. Lacy has provided 

technical assistance to community groups in Youngstown, Canton, 

Akron and Cleveland. She organized a state leadership training 

conference which was jointly sponsored with the Ohio State Legal 

Services Association in October 1972. 

Projects at the local level range from moral support and 

technical assistance to an embattled Title I parent in Egg Harbor, 

New Jersey, to indepth analysis of Title I violations and the 

filing of a comprehensive complaint in Richmond County, Georgia. 

In many cases we use experienced Title I parents who are models 

of the effective use of parent power in their home communities. 



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0 To respond to increasing demands for this kind of sharing from 

the grassroots, and to develop a cadre of paraprofessionals who 

will extend our outreach, we plan to have a workshop in the fall 

of 1972 to train parents as consultants. 

During the past two years, we have followed closely the 

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Emergency School Assistance Program (ESAP), particularly the im-

plementation of the provision which authorizes grants to community 

groups. In the fall of 1971, Robert Valder, our Southeastern 

Regional Director, served on a HEW panel to review applications 

from community groups in that region. Recognizing the advantage 

of monitoring a process from within, he and another panelist, 

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Rims Barber of the Delta Ministry, supplemented their personal 

observations with interviews of HEW officials and data from 

official files and submitted a report to HEW Secretary Elliot 

Richardson in August 1972. They reported chaos, discrimination 

against worthy potential grantees, serious political interference 

and consultants who used their links with officialdom to gain 

personal financia·l advantage. 

Since the release in 1968 of "Their Daily Bread", a study 

of the National School Lunch Program, we have closely monitored 

the nation's Child Nutrition Programs. After the enactment of 

reform legislation in. 1970, we shifted our emphases. In 1970 

and 1971, we felt that our role should be the wide dissemination u 



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of infonnation about the right of poor children to free and 

reduced price meals. About 40,000 copies of our brochure, "Feed 

kids - it's the law!" have been distributed. In 1971, we focused 

our efforts on monitoring USDA' s implementation of the statutory 

requirements for the development by states of child nutrition 

plans as a prerequisite for Federal financial assistance and 

I ' l gave sfiecia 
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attention to California since Superintendent Riles 

had declared his commitment that all poor children would be fed 

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at school. 
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To test this commitment, Carl Ulrich organized a school lunch 

project in Richmond, California. Under his guidance, a broadly 
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based community group documented and publicized the inadequacies 

and illegalities in the local program and sought voluntary com-

pliance from the district and the state. In .February. 1972, LDF 

filed a suit to compel intransigent school officials to feed all 

needy pupils in Richmond. This suit has national significance 

but also a novel twist: poor black children are denied free 

meals when they are enrolled in schools out of their neighborhood 

under a voluntary integration plan. 

5, We have developed companion projects in northern and 

southern states around issues of national concern to black 

children. In 1971, earl Ulrich assisted attorneys who were pre-

paring a suit challenging the discriminatory procedures used to 



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classify black children as mentally retarded. At the same 

time, Richard Fields was getting involved with acute problems 

related to special services for poor black exceptional children 

in Memphis. Title I parents with whom he was working succeeded 

in concentrating Title I special education funds, which pre­

viously had been used for children of all income levels, on 

eligible poor children. By the end of 1971, he was providing 

staff assistance to an ad hoc, interracial and state-wide group 

of citizens - educators, parents of retarded children and lawyers -

who were concerned to secure in Tennessee a court order similar 

to the consent decree in Pennsylvania Association for Retarded 

Children et. al. v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Extensive 

preparations were being.made for litigation when the legislature 

passed a model and comprehensive law. Unfortunately, the law 

has not b.een implemented so litigation to secure compliance is 

now being considered. This Division intends to give increased 

attention to discrimination in classification and to programs to 

meet the needs of exceptional children. 

The plight of the black stud.ent pushout has also led us to 

launch a national program which will have companion projects in 

the North and South. We had been aware for some time of the 

discriminatory administration of discipline in southern schools 

as their black enrollments increased. However, the urban school 



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district monitoring project and reports from colleagues in 

northern communities alerted us to the seriousness and the 

national dimension of this problem. All over the nation black 
... 

students are.being suspended or expelled at an increasing and 

alarming rate. 

Under the leadership of Mrs. Shirley Lacy of our national 

office and Robert Valder in Charlotte, the Division convened 

a national consultation on the Black Student Pushout in June 

1972. Over.40 participants - attorneys, school administrators, 

students and students' rights advocates - met for a weekend to 

share views and to consider strategies to cope with this problem 

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which has become a eris.is in many communities. We are aware 

of the interrelationship between the pushouts and the failure 

of middle-class public school officials to meet the needs of 

minority group pupils on the one hand and the crisis over 

juvenile justice on the other. 

The Division is now developing two pilot projects, .North 

Carolina and Pennsylvania. With a commitment from the RFK 

Memorial Foundation to assign fellows to these projects, we plan 

to (a) document the black pushout problem statewide; (b) mobilize 

concerned citizens and youth; (c) explore the feasibility of 

training laymen to represent students at administrative hearings, 

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and (d) work with LDF attorneys who are testing various possible 

legal remedies to meet this problem. 



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6. We have made available to other ethnic groups our 

experience in monitoring Federal programs. In January 1971, we 

published "An Even Chance", an expose of the illegal use of Federal 

funds (Johnson O'Malley, Impact Aid and Title I of ESEA) appro­

priated to public school districts with concentrations of.Indian 

pupils. This report climaxed a year's investigation by Mrs. 

Phyllis McClure of our Washington office, an Indian educator 

who coordinated the field work and a team of Indian parents and 

community workers who conducted the local interviews. Over 13,000 

copies of "An Even Chance" have been distributed with government 

officials often our best customers! The Office of Education sent 

the report to all state departments of education urging full 

participation by Indians :in Title I programs. Law and Social 

Order, the law journal of Arizona State University, reprinted 

the report in its entirety in the 1972 winter journal. 

After the report was published, our main concerns were to 

identify Indian organizations that would assume responsibility 

for follow up, to keep pressure on Federal agencies until tougher 

regulations were developed and enforced, to ensure that Indian 

communities are advised of their rights and to provide technical 

assistance to concerned local and national groups. During 1971, 

Mrs. McClure coordinated the efforts of representatives of pri­

vate agencies (The Harvard Center on Law and Educat.ion, the 



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Native American Rights Fund, Americans for Indian Opportunity, 

the American Indian Law Students Association and the National 

Indian Leadership Training Program) who worked to change the 

Bureau of Indian Affairs' regulations for the Johnson O'Malley 

Program. After a number of meetings and confronted with a 

model draft prepared by these private agencies, top officials 

committed BIA in December 1971 to revamp completely the JOM 

Program. 

NILT, based in Albuquerque, emerged as the Indian organiza-

tion willing to provide national and regional leadership. Its 

role, under its director Attorney Myron Jones, has been out-

standin,g. It has forced the complete reorganization of JOM in 

New Mexico. 

She has been 

' Mrsi. McClure's role is now primarily supportive. 

abl~ 
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to assist organizations of Indians and their 

advocates to secure Federal and foundation funds. With her help, 
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NARF received money to run know-your-rights workshops in four 

states .with heave( concentrations of Indian students. Law suits 

have been filed on. the basis of our report. 

'The major impact of "An Even Chance" has been on Indians at 

the grassroots who are demanding official accountability and on 

Federal officials who are now beginning to recognize the need for 

the involvement of Indian parents in decisions affecting the 

education of their children. The Education Amendments of 1972 



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have clear language mandating such' participation. We believe 

we have contributed toward the creation of legal framework within 

which effective Indian control over the education of the children 

can eventually be a reality. 

Higher Education 

The Reorganization of Southern State Systems of Higher 

Education is one of the newest projects of this Division although 

legal challenges against discrimination in higher education were 

the forerunners of the civil rights movement. Our first task was 

to ascertain the present goals of blacks in the area of higher 

education and to define the scope of our concern. 

In the spring of 1971, we held a consultation in Atlanta on 

this subject, the co-cha~:cmen of which were three young black 

LDF attorneys. Background papers had been prepared by a team of 

graduate students at the Harvard Law School and the M.I.T. Depart­

ment of Urban Studies and Planning. Participants included faculty, 

students and alumni of black public colleges, black faculty and 

students from predominantly white southern universities, representa­

tives of agencies with concerns about black higher education, black 

elected officials.and lawyers. 

In June 1971, we summarized our findings and observations 

in a paper, "Black Perspectives" which we have used to stimulate 



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discussion on issues we have identified that must be addressed 

as we seek to dismantle dual systems of higher education. 

Whether individual members of minority groups will enjoy in fact 

their right to equality of opportunity in higher education will 

not be determined by the racial mix at a particular institution 

but by a confluence of decisions affecting the total system and 

reaching such areas as: governance, access, admissions, recruit­

ment, financial aid, retention, patterns of funding, employment 

practices and the status of the formerly all-black public colleges. 

By the fall of 1971, we had established the general outlines 

of our project and had created a task force to implement it: 

1. Research and Fact-Finding 

Our research has two objectives: to help us understand 

the nature of the dual system, i.e. what discrimination in higher 

education means specifically, and to suggest viable remedies avail­

able through legal action. Much of our research so far has been 

the compiling of data on the historic and current patterns of 

funding and their implications for blacks. Professor M.M. Chambers 

of Illinois State University, a national authority on financing 

higher education, did an analysis for us on "State·Tax Support 

of Black and White Higher Education in Five Southern States, 

1960-1972." We have asked a Congressional committee to undertake 

a stµdy of discrimination in the allocation of land grant funds 

since 1892. Jean Fairfax served as an adviser to the Southern 



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0 Education Foundation as it prepared its study of Federal funding 

to black colleges. We have encouraged blacks to do their own 

research to determine discr;i.mination in funding patterns in their 

states - a very difficult task since data are not always available 

even to black college presidents! 

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Derrick Bell, a profes~or at Harvard Law School, who is the 

chairman of our legal research committee has involved his students 

in research on legal remedies. 

2. Community Analysis 

We originally identified four states as targets butdevelop-

ments beyond our control have forced us to get involved in practi-

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cally all of the southern states with previous patterns of dualism. 

Using members of our task force as consultants, we have been 

gathering information on higher education from the perspective of 

black communities in a number of states. Their reports include: 

racial data on sthdent enrollment, staff employment and membership 

' on decision-making boards; comparative information on curriculum, 

available data on inequities in funding patterns, an. analysis of 

the politics of higher education, developments re governance and 

the restructuring of higher education and the attitudes of blacks 

about the future of the black colleges. So far we have extensive 

reports on Tennessee and Louisiana and preliminary reports on 

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Alabama and South Carolina. Our consultants are: George Harris, 



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formerly a graduate student at the Woodrow Wilson School at 

Princeton and presently on the staff of the Southern Regional 

Council; John Egerton, a free lance writer on educational issues; 

Reginald Stuart, a journalist and television commentator from 

Nashville. 

3 .. Technical Assistance 

We were delighted to discover a group of blacks who have 

taken initiatives on all issues relating to higher education which 

are of concern to blacks in Maryland. Beginning as the Black 

Coalition on the University of Maryland Campuses under Howard 

Rawlings, this group has become a broad community organization. 

Since this is a model which we are eager 'to replicate, we have 

been finding ways to support it and to ensure its success. We 

intervene to raise funds for the Coalition, participate in its 

strategy sessions,. provide opportunities for the lei;idership to 

get exposure out of the state and are a liaison with LDF lawyers 

who are exploring litigation to challenge employment discrimination 

in the University of Maryland system. 

We believe the most important kind of technical assistance 

which we should be prepared to provide involves the development 

of state plans for the restructuring of .higher education. We are 

currently looking for experts. But we are also trying to find 

ways of involving black citizens in developing plans. As a test, 



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we convened a Working Party in June 1972 to develop guidelines 

for a state plan for the reorganization of higher education in 

Tennessee. 

4. Liaison between the black community and lawyers and 

between lawyers and educational experts 

Since so many complicated issues are involved, we see 

our role as providing opportunities for lawyers to listen to 

the community and of putting lawyers in contact with experts who 

can r.elate. local situations to larger national developments in 

higher education. Lawyers have called for assistance from Texas,. 

Virginia, Georgia, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Alabama, 

Tennessee. 

5. Stimulating educators and community leaders to think 

creatively about new roles for the formerly all-black 

colleges 

The future of black institutions within the framework 

of reorganized, integrated systemsraises questions not only about 

our definition of a "unitary system" but about the character of the 

institutions, .their role in a new structure, their new constituencies 

and their service orientation. Clearly, this is the most difficult, 

challenging and exciting issue which cannot be determined by LDF. 

We are using every opportunity to get it raised and discussed. 



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JUVENILE JUSTICE PROGRAM' 

During 1971-72, LDF launched a national program to provide 

legal services to black youth who are caught up in the juvenile 

justice system. This is now a new concern for this Division. 

In the late 60's, we conducted on site visits to document segrega­

tion at the youth training.centers in Florida that were being 

sued by LDF and later monitored the desegregation order which 

brought sweeping reforms to these institutions. We also gathered 

information about correctional institutions in other southern 

states in preparation for filing complaints and law suits. This 

was part of a larger effort to persuade HEW to include special 

sahoqls in it.s civil rights enforcement activities. 

The Divi.sion' s present concern is broader than the segrega­

tion issue and goes to the basic question about whether most of 

the youth whd are· in these institutions should be the.re. We are 

scrutinizing the points at which black youth enter the criminal 

justice system - hence the tie in with our black student pushout 

project. We are seeking the opinions of experts on the effective­

ness of incarceration and the. feasibility of abolishing institu­

tions in favor of community based programs of rehabilitation. 

Mrs. Phyllis McClure, who is coordinating our program, is 

reviewing. juvenile programs in state plans developed pursuant. 



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to the regulations of the Law Enforcement Assis-tant Administration 

(LEAA). We will probably concentrate on Maryland and the two 

states where our black student pushout projects will be developed 

and possibly also on Tennessee and Arkansas. 

The Maryland project is already underway. Mrs. McClure has 

visited state officials and judges and has creat.ed a task force 

of black community leaders who will visit correctional institutions 

and make recommendations for a plan of action which may include: 

the documentation of the interface between public schools which 

are failing black youth and the juvenile court system; the mobiliza­

tion of citizens in behalf of juveniles who are in trouble; liti­

gation involving the correctional institutions; the involvement 

of the black colleges and the development of community.,.based 

alternatives to incarceration. 



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EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM 

Pervasive discrimination in employment is the factor pri­

marily responsible for the low economic status of black Americans. 

Strategies, therefore, that challenge institutional racism and 

that 'are specifically directed toward the availability and quality 

of jobs for blacks have a priority claim on our time, imagination 

and energies. The elimination of patterns of discrimination, i.e. 

systemic change, is the goal of our emplo}>ment program, which is 

coordinated from Memphis by the deputy director of the Division, 

Allen Black, Jr.· 

Our specific objectives have been: (1) to restructure 

employment patterns through industry-wide approaches; (2) to 

make an impact on selected geographic areas by securing visible 

reforms in key pattern-setting firms; (3) to create SO!lle models 

of nondiscrimination in public agencies; (4) to secure broad 

orders from Federal courts designed to end discrimination, to 

assure genuine equality of job opportunity, to compensate blacks 

for past sufferings and to force Federal officials to obey their. 

own laws; and (5) to ensure the national enforcement of effective 

remedies through the vigorous exercise of administrative power 

by Federal agencies with authority to compe.l civil rights com­

pliance. 



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The Pulp and Paper Project 

Of our three targets for industry-wide projects - textiles, 

paper and petro-chemicals - the pulp and paper industry has re­

ceived the most extensive programing by our Division. Six years 

of sustained efforts are now bearing fruit. We have documented 

the patterns of discrimination throughout the southern region: 

the refusal by management to recruit, hire and/or assign blacks 

especially to higher paying jobs, the illegal use of nonvalidated 

tests, classifications which segregate or restrict blacks, dis­

crimination in promotion and seniority systems, limited opportuni­

ties for black women and.discrimination by unions. By the. sununer 

of 1972, we had assisted over 3,000 blacks to file complaints 

of discrimination to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

(EEOC), the Office of· Federal Contracts Compliance (OFCC) and 

the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

The filing of comprehensive complaints after full on-site 

documentation by LDF staff, instead of depending on scattered 

individual charges, was. an important part.of our strategy and 

usually led to official investigations, findings of discrimination 

that covered entire. facilities and efforts to conciliate by EEOC. 

However, conc.iliation was not successful. Affirmative action 

plans, which were developed at the insistence of government offi­

cials, were inadequate to cope with the magnitude of the problems 



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which we had specifically identified and were poorly monitored. 

Hadnott v. Laird, LDF's massive suit which was filed in 1970 on 

behalf of 119 plaintiffs and which charged that the Department of 

Defense had illegally awarded contracts to paper firms that prac­

ticed discrimination, was stalled in the courts. The Jackson 

Memorandum of Understanding, an agreement that OFCC had negotiated 

with the International Paper Company for its Southern Kraft 

Division, was effectively undermined by 100 pages of mind-boggling 

interpretative language. This· is where we were at the end of 1970. 

Despite this discouraging situation, our commitment to 

multiple strategies and the persistence of our staff have paid 

off .. During 1971 and 1972, our focus shifted to corporate level 

contacts and litigation. 

For some time we had been urged to seek direct contacts 

with corporate management. In March 1971, Jean Fairfax and Allen 

Black met with 19 top executives in the paper· industry at a 

sess.ion convened by Edwin A. Locke,. Jr., president of the American 

Paper Institute (API) . The purpose of the meeting was to con­

front chief executive officers with facts on discrimination in 

their southern mills, and to urge them to take immediate corrective 

action, to subsidize the training of blacks for skilled, technical 

and managerial positions a.nd to support the development of black 

business enterprises related to the paper industry. This was a 



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tough but not unproductive encounter. Some participants ex­

pressed interest in further conversations and in creating a 

task force of executives to work with us but later met opposition 

from within their own ranks. 

The chief executive officer of the Kimberly-Clark Corporation, 

concerned that we had not commented on favorable developments, 

urged us to visit a facility in South Carolina. We sent Robert 

Valder to tour the plant and communicated back to API's president 

that we were indeed heartened to find an enlightened local manager 

and practices far ahead of those generally seen.. We. called atten­

tion to the unfinished business - jobs for blacks at the mana­

gerial level - and to entirely different situations at other 

Kimberly-Clark plants which we. had investigated. Mr. Locke 

urged us to attempt direct negotiations with Kimberly-Clark. 

The Coosa Pines, Alabama, facility.of K-C had been the 

target of a local employment committee that Mr. Black had 

organized in Talladega in 1967. Since that time, over 300 blacks 

had been referred tp the plant who had been screened by the 

committee and who had gone through job applicant training sessions. 

Yet five years later, only 133 out of 1,600 employees were black, 

in an area where blacks are 40% of the population, and most of 

these workers were in .the lowest categories. There were only four 

black females and these were service workers. WE! also had ex-



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tensive documentation on discriminatory patterns in K-C's Memphis 

plant. 

TWo K-C officials came to LDF's offices in January 1972 to 

hear our report and our plea that K-C should accomplish elsewhere 

in the South 

accepted our 

what it was already doing 

of fer to set up a meeting 

in South Carolina. They 

with black citizens in 

Alabama. This session was held at the company's golf course on 

June 20. Present were: officials from K-C's corporate head-

quarters in Wisconsin as well as from the Coosa.Pines facility, 

deans and placement directors from black colleges throughout 

Alabama, civil rights leaders, persons knowledgeable about voca-

tional schools in the area and Mr. Black. 

It was clear to us after this meeting and following 15 

months of discussion with corporate management tha~ K-C was un-

willing to undertake voluntary action to end discrimination at 

the older plants. Our Division prepared the materials for 

suits which were later filed by LDF against the Coosa Pines 

and Memphis facilities. 

LDF has filed 24 suits against paper companies to date. 

At this stage in the struggle for equality of opportunity in 

employment, Federal .courts are needed to define what discrimina-

tion is, to articulate remedies, to set standards of restitution 

(back pay) and to clarify the rules under which administrative 



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agencies must fulfill their far-reaching compliance responsi­

bilities. The Supreme Court's decision in LDF's precedent-setting 

case, Griggs v. Duke Power Company, was the occasion for a new 

Jackson Memorandum of Understanding which dealt with the use of 

tests by paper companies. Federal administrative agencies up-date 

their demands as a result of victories won by LDF in the courts. 

Litigation has had an impact on the paper unions, for they 

are usually defendants in our suits. An extraordinary out-of­

court settlement was reached with unions in the spring of 1972 

in LDF's suit against the Pine Bluff facility of International 

Paper Company. The unions declared that they would no longer 

fight black advancement, would actively work for the specific 

demands of our black plaintiffs and provide for black participation 

in grievance and negotiation sessions .. 

The Division's crucial role in the litigation against the 

paper firms includes: orientation of lawyers about the operation 

of paper mills, assistance to lawyers in depositions and in the 

preparation and analysis of interrogatories, the interviewing of 

witnesses, participation in hearings and negotiation sessions, 

the monitoring of court orders and liaison between black community 

and the lawyers. 

In the long run, our support to the black employees themselves 

may turn out to be the Division's most significant contribution. 



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Our first concern when we launched the Pulp and Paper Project 

was community organization. This led to the formation of the 

Black Association of Millworkers, which now has seven strong 

chapters in key paper communities. Our efforts would have 

failed without BAM because it is difficult to sustain morale in 

the face of a long, protracted struggle involving highly complicated 

issues and years of complaints, investigations, administrative 

reviews and litigation. Furthermore, each victory and each set 

back requires careful local monitoring. Division staff members 

provide moral support and technical assistance to BAM and inter­

vene to assure that BAM is representec'I at negotiation sessions 

which Federal officials tend to convene without inviting blacks. 

We delight to see the organized black wor.ker emerge as the true 

leader in this fight. 

Litton Ship Systems 

Litton Ship Systems (Ingalls Shipbuilding Corporation) of 

Pascagoula, Mississippi, is the largest employer in the state. 

It is also the largest single installation which this Division has 

monitored. After an indepth investigation which documented 

discriminatory practices throughout the system, and concerned be­

cause Litton was receiving huge defense contracts, we submitted 

our findings to President Lyndon Johnson in January 1968. Mr. 

Black organized a local action group which has provided a strong 



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and sustained black voice and which has monitored the actions 

of officials of Litton and of Federal agencies. He has assisted 

local blacks in filing charges. Since our initial report, l,800 

specific complaints have been filed, of which 300 have been re-

solved. EEOC, OFCC and the Department of Defense have all con-

ducted investigations and the Maritime commission has established 

a monitoring office in the facility. Litton published an affirmative 

action plan in January 1972. Blacks are dissatisfied with the 

implementation of this plan, particularly at the East Bank which 
I 

is the older section, and have requested legal assistance to 

secure their rights. 

Public Employment Projects 

A major attack against discrimination in public agencies is 

long overdue. Job opportunities in public agencies are increas-

ing at a faster rate than in private agencies, especially at the 

local level. Public employment has traditionally been a vehicle 

for upward mobility for poor whites and immigrants but discrimina-

tion against blacks in the public sector is widespread and is 

not confined to the South. Even where jobs have been available, 

such as in Federal service where the proportion of blacks approxi-

mates the popula~ion ratio, blacks have been locked into the 

lower echelons. The U.S. Civil Service Commission reported that 



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0 in 1969 10.7% of government employees were black. However, of 

these 138, 000 black employees, 73. 8% were concentrated in G .• $. . . .. 

Grades 1-61 only about 1.9% were in Grades 13 and above. 

The new statutory authority, administrative regulations 

which are nationally enforceable, plus two important legal 

victories won by LDF attorneys have combined to make a systematic 

attack feasible. In Chance v. Board of Examiners, the courts have 

substantially circumscribed the role of an agency which had 

effectively limited the entry of blacks and Puerto Ricans into 

administrative.positions in the New York City .schools •. The Griggs 

decision has broad implications about the validity of civil ser-

0 
vice, merit system and other tests used by public agencies. We 

are eager to increase our programing in this area and will build 

on the modest but significant gains we have achieved. 

-Mr. Black has assisted blacks in filing charges of discrimina-

tion against public agencies and has represented them at formal 

administrative hearings. Twenty complaints have been filed.against 

the Tennessee Valley Authority in Alabama and Tennessee, six of. 

which have g0 ne to hearings. Two charges were made against Fort 

Rucker in Alabama. 

He has filed "third party" complaints in the name of our 

Division in which we document patterns of discrimi.nation affect-

u 
ing a class without naming individuals. Three have been filed 



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against the Aeronautical Chart and Information Center (ACIC) 

in St; Louis; one against the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama; 

one against the state agency for the blind in Tennessee and 

another against the Shelby County Health Association in Memphis. 

Exhausting administrative remedies has been a long and time­

consuming process. Some cases have been won. In many instances, 

the.hearing officers have ruled against the complainant but the 

agency has then proceeded to give him or her the job anyway. 

Sometimes the class action aspects or the third party intervention 

has been dismissed. Many of these cases are still on appeal. 

As a result of the ACIC charges, the agency adopted an affirmative 

action plan which included the mandatory attendance by top 

executives in courses on black history and human relations at 

the University of Missouri. 

Mrs. Phyllis McClure, following up a newspaper article about 

black firemen who were challenging discrimination in the District 

of Columbia Fire. Department, served as a liaison between them 

and an LDF national staff attorney who is now preparing a suit. 

Richard Fields has documented discrimination against black 

teachers in Memphis and assisted attorneys who filed a suit 

protesting the use of the National Teachers Examination (NTE). 

In the last five years, 46 black and 6 white teachers have been 

dismissed from the Memphis schools solely because of NTE scores. 



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Jean Fairfax, working with the Black Coalition on the 

University of Maryland Campuses, has served as a liaison be­

tween this group and LDF attorneys. A suit against the entire 

University system, which is the largest employer in the state, 

is now being considered. 

The Black Women's Employment Project 

During 1972, we conducted preliminary investigations which 

led to a decision to launch a project to combat discrimination 

in employment as it affects black women. This project will be 

based in our San Francisco and Memphis offices. We plan to 

attac,k discriminati.on by public an.d private employers and by 

professional training institutions, to monitor Federal agencies 

with responsibilities for manpower and civil rights enforcement 

programs and to train paraprofessionals who will help black women 

secure their rights and represent them at administrative hearings. 



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THE COMMUNICATIONS PROJECT 

The way blacks are handled - or ignored - by the mass media 

creates deep resentment. The media play a key role, negatively 

and positively, in creating images, in interpreting life styles 

and in commenting on issues and human needs. Even small stations 

can be pattern-setting employers because some of their personnel 

are so visible. 

Television and radio stations are required, pursuant to 

regulations of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to 

practice fair employment and to sponsor a range of programing 

which serves the tastes of.all segments of their .listening audiences. 

·Every three years, when stations seek the renewal of their broad­

casting licenses, they must assure FCC that they are indeed comply-

ing with these and other regulations. They must give specific 

evidence that they have ascertained the needs and interest of a 

representative sample of the community. The most effective means 

by .. which citizens can express their dissat.is faction with a particu­

lar station is to file a formal petition to FCC to deny the re­

newal of its license within 60 days after it has been submitted. 

Under the leadership of Allen Black, Jr., who has become 

very knowledgeable about communications, the Division has assisted 

groups to file challenges. Budgetary considerations have limited 

us to what we can do through our Memphis and Charlotte regional 



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offices. However, relatively modest investments of staff time 

have had an enormous return. 

1971 was a.relatively quiet year. Our efforts were devoted 

to monitoring agreements which had been negotiated with stations 

in Memphis and St. Louis in 1970. We have been pleased that 

stations have substantially lived up to their commitments and that 

their actions have had an impact on the employment and programing 

practices of stations which refused to sign formal agreements. 

Our main project in 1972 was in the Southeast, under Robert 

Valder. We decided to focus on Virginia and the Carolinas because 

stations were up for renewal during the summer and fall and se.lected 

cities which met the following .criteria: state capitols or hub 

areas with extensive hinterlands, large black populations, signifi­

cant resources such as black colleges, presence of stations wi.th 

strong broadcasting outreach. 

During July Mr. Valder made exploratory visits to key areas 

to discover black concerns, to identify leaders and to assess the 

potential for community. mobilization around the issue of making 

the mass media accountable. In August, he sponsored a Communica-

tions Workshop for concerned citizens from Virginia, North and 

South Carolina and Alabama. This training session provided an 

opportunity for citizens to learn about the very complicated 

FCC regulations and procedures which must be followed and to 



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develop strategies. Mr. Valder then provided technical assistance 

in the field. He assisted citizens' groups as they negotiated 

with stations, gathered documentation for their petitions and 

filed challenges. He is now helping the groups analyze answers 

which have been submitted by the stations. 

Although there were a nU1!1ber of areas where interest was 

high, projects developed in the following cities: 

Richmond, Virginia 

With the help of LDF lawyers and Mr. Valder, a Black Broad­

casting coalition (BBC) was created in August, some of whose 

members had been active in a Media Relations Committee that had 

been formed in 1970 by the Richmond Human Relations council. 

Our role here was a catalytic one: to mobilize concern which 

existed and which had already reached a level of sophistication. 

BBC developed a position paper on the communications situation 

which was widely discussed in the black community. As a result, 

two petitions were filed. One was a massive petition against 

17 television and radio stations charging discrimination in employ­

ment. 

We are most closely .involved in the second, a broad petition 

against WTVR (TV-AM and FM) . WTVR took the unprecedented step of 

filing an "amendment to application~" a 200 page document which 



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opposed the LDF-BBC petition and then reported substantial 

steps taken since our petition which in fact go a long way to-

ward meeting the concerns of the black community. Having done. 

practically no ascertaining before, they reported interviews 
( 

with over 200 persons and proposed new programs dealing with issues 

of concern to blacks. WTVR has committed itself to recruiting, 

training, hiring and promoting blacks and has promised to hire 

a minimun of six new blacks within a year, including an assistant 

manager. and other persons in nontraditional jobs. We shall 

challenge the use of the amendment process to achieve what the 

station should have done before its request for a license was 

submitted because this. is a bad precedent. But whether we win 

or lose on this technical issue, the black community has made a 

major victory. 

Charleston, South Carolina 

Citizens had been expressing black concerns to station offi-

cials for several years and an interracial group had recently 

purchased a radio station. But the employment and programing 

issues had never been broadly raised in Charleston and no com-

plaints had ever been filed before this year. As a result of 

Mr. Valder's initial visit, the Concerned Citizens for Better 

Broadcasting (CCBB) was formed which is an umbrella organization 



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that includes many black and interracial groups in the broad­

casting area. After writing to the three television stations in 

Charleston expressing concerns of the black community and follow­

ing a meeting on these issues with station managers, CCBB decided 

to file a petition challenging WCSC-TV. It raises the issues of 

discrimination in employment and inadequate ascertainment of black 

interests. Mr. Valder assisted in assembling the supporting 

documentation. A LDF national staff attorney, Floyd Peete, pre­

pared the petition which was filed November l, 1972. 

Columbia, South Carolina 

When Mr. Valder visited Columbia in July, he found a black 

group which had filed a petition.in 1970 against a "soul station" 

to deny transfer of ownership but which had not tackled the 

total problem of communications in the area. The Citizens Pro-

moting Concerned Broadcasting was formed which sent questionnaires 

to all radio and television stations in Columbia in mid-August. 

Some of the stations never responded and the lawyer of one station 

advised the citizens that they had. no right to complain. The 

group decided to file an· "Informal Objection" which involves a 

simpler procedure than a formal petition. Mr. valder assisted in 

compiling the supporting materials, which include some very strong 

affidavits from four of the eight black employees, a fired black 

employee and an unsuccessful applicant. Several black organizations 



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joined in filing the Objection. When a black employee was 

summarily fired after the Objection was filed, LDF moved quickly 

to file complaints with EEOC as well as FCC. 

Durham, North Carolina 

Station WTVD-TV in Durham has a Black Advisory Committee 

which Mr. Valder discovered on his exploratory trip. At a meeting 

in mid-October with station officials from New York, Philadelphia 

and Durham, the blacks presented a long list of strong demands. 

The officials not only rejected the demands but told the blacks 

that they were incapable of filing a petition. In a few days, 

Mr. Valder visted WTVD to analyze its license renewal petition -

to the great consternation of the officials - collected some 

affidavits documenting noncompliance and advised the management 

that an LDF attorney from Charlotte was standing by. We were 

ready to file a petition even though the deadline was imminent, 

if a pending final meeting proved to be unproductive. Management 

met with black citizens and agreed to practically all of their 

demands. This is an example of what can happen if local citizens 

know their rights, know what they want and have resources available. 



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THE BLACK APPALACHIAN COMMISSION 

Since 1970 the Division provided technical assistance 

to the Black Appalachian Commission, a new organization of 

black citizens who are attempting to make themselves and 

their needs visible in an area traditionally sterotyped as poor 

and white. We have helped BAC identify leaders in Appalachia and 

develop a program to meet their needs. A major target has been 

the Appalachian Regional Commission which has been challenged 

for its failure to respond to the needs of black people. To 

enable the group to get a statistical overview of blacks in 

Appalachia, we commissioned a study "The Status of Black People in 

Appalachia," which was an analysis of the 1970 census. We assisted 

in preparation for the first conference of blacks from the 13 

states in Appalachia which was held in North Carolina in July 

1971. We helped BAC present its program to foundations. 



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S T A F F 

1971 and 1972 

Jean Fairfax, Director 
New York, New York 

Allen Black, Jr. 
Deputy Director 
Director Memphis Regional Office 
Co-ordinator of Employment Programs 
Memphis, Tennessee 

Richard Fields 
Program Assistant 
Memphis Regional Off ice 
Memphis, Tennessee 

Shirley Lacy (Since October 1971) 
Director 
Northern Schools Program 
New York, New York 

Phyllis Mc.Clure 
Director, Washington Office 
Coordinator, Federal Programs 
Washington, D.C. 

Robert Valder 
Director 
Southeast Regional Office 
Charlotte, North Carolina 

Carl Ulrich (January 1971-March 1972) 
Director 
California Education Project 
San Francisco, California