Greenberg Statement on Court Declaring Civil Rights Act Constitutional and on Sit-In Cases

Press Release
December 14, 1964

Cite this item

Greenberg Statement on Court Declaring Civil Rights Act Constitutional and on Sit-In Cases preview

Document text

The following text has been generated automatically during the document scanning process. It may contain errors, omissions, or incorrect formatting. Please refer to the PDF document if this text is not usable.

Download

By downloading, publishing, or reusing the Materials outside of the Website, you hereby confirm and attest that you have read and agree to the LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use linked below. We draw your attention to the following:

For those Materials owned by LDF, your use of the Material outside the Site is solely for one or more of the following (the “Permitted Purposes”):

Non-commercial research and private study;
Teaching, scholarship and instruction (including distance learning);
Non-commercial print and non-commercial online use;
Criticism, comment or news reporting; or
For people with visual disabilities (See Section 121 of the Copyright Act).
For those Materials not owned by LDF you understand that:
- It is your responsibility to determine whether the way you plan to use the materials falls within the copyright exception of Fair Use.
- For any use outside of Fair Use, it is your responsibility to seek and obtain all required permissions from any existing rights holders.

LDF hereby grants you the right to use LDF owned Materials for the Permitted Purposes without seeking further permission from LDF.

If you publish or redistribute any Materials (including excerpts and quotes), you must include a credit line and/or proper citation to the source of the Material. However, you may not use the name of LDF in any manner which creates any false association between you and LDF or that incorrectly implies any sponsorship or endorsement of you by LDF.

NOTICE: Uses that do not comply with these Terms or that do not fall under Fair Use (or another exception) may make you liable for copyright infringement.

Read the full LDF Archival Collection Terms of Use Here.

I agree to the terms and conditions for use of this content.

If you would like to use this content in other ways, contact us at

Collection
- Press Releases
Creator
- LDF
Taxonomy
Identifier
- 53209384-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

Cite this item

Press Releases, Volume 2. Greenberg Statement on Court Declaring Civil Rights Act Constitutional and on Sit-In Cases, 1964. 53209384-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/2965048d-ac93-4e6a-a43e-2370473dfb33/greenberg-statement-on-court-declaring-civil-rights-act-constitutional-and-on-sit-in-cases. Accessed June 01, 2025.

Copied!

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

NAACP

ee . Ty Legal Defense and Educational Fund
PRESS RELEASE Statement by Jack Greenberg

x Director-Counsel
preteens NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Inc. Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers
Director Counsel

Jack Greenberg
Associate Counsel

Constance Baker Motley

Monday, December 14, 1964

The court's holding that the Civil Rights Act is constitutional

was anticipated and directly supports a score of cases we now have or

are about to file to enforce it. But beyond this the Court also made

a@ historic decision with regard to sit-ins which occurred before there

Act was passed. The court held that a Negro who peacefully sought

service at a lunch counter before the passage of the Civil Rights Act

cannot now be sent to jail.

In 1960 when teins began, Thurgood Marshall pledged that

the Legal Defense Fund would defend every non-violent demonstrator.

We have kept that pledge and now represent more than 13,000 persons

arrested for various types of racial demonstrations including sit-ins,

freedom rides, peaceful parades and so forth. Approximately 3,000 such

sit-in cases are now pending in various courts all over the South. We

have now launched a massive mop-up operation to secure the release of

all these defendants. We plan to call upon the Community Relations

Service which was set up by the new Civil Rights Act and is headed by

Governor Leroy Collins to use its good offices to persuade local

prosecutors to drop these prosecutions and spare us the expense and

labor of further litigation. But when cases cannot be settled by agree-

ment we are ready to proceed in court to defend these young people whose

courage awakened the conscience of the nation and led to passage of

the Act.

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

Copyright notice

This collection and the tools to navigate it (the “Collection”) are available to the public for general educational and research purposes, as well as to preserve and contextualize the history of the content and materials it contains (the “Materials”). Like other archival collections, such as those found in libraries, LDF owns the physical source Materials that have been digitized for the Collection; however, LDF does not own the underlying copyright or other rights in all items and there are limits on how you can use the Materials. By accessing and using the Material, you acknowledge your agreement to the Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Materials.

Additional info

To the extent that LDF includes information about the Materials’ origins or ownership or provides summaries or transcripts of original source Materials, LDF does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy of such information, transcripts or summaries, and shall not be responsible for any inaccuracies.

Greenberg Statement on Court Declaring Civil Rights Act Constitutional and on Sit-In Cases

Collection

Creator

Taxonomy

Identifier

Cite this item

Copyright notice

Additional info

You may also be interested in