Legal Defense Fund Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Conviction of Alabama Negro

Press Release
August 25, 1964

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Legal Defense Fund Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Conviction of Alabama Negro preview

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  • Press Releases, Volume 1. Legal Defense Fund Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Conviction of Alabama Negro, 1964. ed504e36-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/21d83168-f57a-4acb-9186-8d33c9894f24/legal-defense-fund-asks-supreme-court-to-reverse-conviction-of-alabama-negro. Accessed August 19, 2025.

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    10 Columbus Circle 

New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELE/ 
President 

Dr. Allan Knight Chaimers 

FOR RELEASE MONDAY 
August 24> 1964 

25, 

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND ASKS SUPREME COURT 
TO REVERSE CONVICTION OF ALABAMA NEGRO 

Washington, D.C.--NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys asked the 
U.S. Supreme Court today to upset the 1962 conviction of Robert 
Swain on the grounds that Negroes are and have keen systematically 
excluded from juries in his native Talladega County, Ala. 

Fund lawyers based their appeal for Swain, who was sentenced 
to death for the alleged rape of a white woman, on the fact that 
while a few Negroes are inciuded on the jury rolls, they have 
been consistently struck by prosecutors. 

Thus the Defense Fund is attacking a practice by which num- 
erous Southern counties circumvent the constitutional proh ion 
against jury discriminaticn. The Supreme Court first declared 
such discrimination illegal in 1880, 

This appeal is one of five cases brought to the nation's 
highest court by the Fund within the space of one week. Others 
include two sit-in convictions, and a case involving the 1961 
Freedom Riders from Yale University. 

In the Swain case, Fund lawyers pointed out that despite 
the token inclusion of Negroes on the jury rolls, no Negro has 
ever served on a trial jury in Talladega County, in both civil 
and criminal cases, 

Further, Fund attorneys asserted, the prosecutor who con- 
sistently strikes Negroes from the jury lists is a state official, 
According to a 1951 Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 
this is standard practice in many parts of the deep South. 

Appearing on the brief for the Legal Defense Fund are Jack 
Greenberg, director-counsel; Constance Baker Motley, associate 
counsel; and James M. Nabrit III, all of the Fund's New York 
City headquarters; and Orzell Billingsley Jr. and Peter A. Hall 
of Birmingham. 

Also participating in the case were NAACP Legal Defense 
Fund staff lawyers Michael Meltsner and Frank H. Heffron of New 
York City, as well as volunteer attorney Henry M. diSuvero. 

=), 30= 

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

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