Supreme Court Clears 3,000 Student Sit-In Demonstrators

Press Release
December 16, 1964

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- 28209384-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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Press Releases, Volume 2. Supreme Court Clears 3,000 Student Sit-In Demonstrators, 1964. 28209384-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/29fef9f1-d8d8-4d3c-a06d-6dc91bda776e/supreme-court-clears-3-000-student-sit-in-demonstrators. Accessed November 06, 2025.

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

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

: FOR RELEASE 
President 

Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers Wednesday, 
Director-Counsel December 16, 1964 

Jack Greenberg 
Associate Counsel 

Constance Baker Motley 

SUPREME COURT CLEARS 3,000 
STUDENT SIT-IN DEMONSTRATORS 

NAACP Legal Defense Fund Ends Four Year Drive 

WASHINGTON---Four years of NAACP Legal Defense Fund labor came to 
fruition here this week when the U.S. Supreme Court wiped out 
charges against some 3,000 participants in peaceful sit-in 
demonstrations. 

Jack Greenberg, director-counsel of the Legal Defense Fund, 
greeted the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling, saying it vindicates "these 
young people whose courage awakened the conscience of the nation and 
led to passage of the Civil Rights Act." 

Mr. Greenberg announced a three-point follow-up to the ruling: 

* A "massive mop-up operation to clear all Chey | of 
all charges against them. 

* Plans to "call upon the Community Relations Service 
which was set up by the new Civil Rights Act...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 agreement, we are 
ready to proceed in court....." 

Thurgood Marshall, former Legal Defense Fund Director-Counsel, 
now a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second 
Circuit pledged defense of “every peaceful non-violent demonstrator", 
when the most recent rash of sit-ins spread in 1960. 

"We have now kept that pledge," Mr. Greenberg asserted. 
"The Legal Defense Fund now represents more than 13, OCO persons 

arrested for various types of demonstrations against racial 
discrimination---sit-ins, freedom rides, peaceful parades and down 
the line," he added. 

This week's ruling grew out of the cases of Arthur Hamm and the 
late Rev. C. A. Ivory of Rock Hill, S.C., and Frank James Lupper and 

*Thomas Robinson of Little Rock, Ark. 
: The demonstrations, in these cases, took place in 1960, 
before passage of the new Civil Rights Act. 

$ Backed by a battery of 16 attorneys, Mr. Greenberg argued 
before the Supreme Court in August of this year. 

long 

This marked the Lega? Defense Fund's fifth annual appearance 
before the Supreme Court on the issue of sit-in demonstrations. 
Under direction of Mr. Marshall in 1960 and Mr, Greenberg from 
1961 on, there has been one series of sit-in cases per year before 

the high court. 

saps 

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

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Supreme Court Clears 3,000 Student Sit-In Demonstrators

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