NAACP Pushes Housing Discrimination Fight in South

    PRESS RELEASE @ ® 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
107 WEST 43 STREET * NEW YORK 36, N. Y¥. © JUdson 6-8397 

THURGOOD MARSHALL reuldines B. SPINGARN Director and Counsel salah 
ROBERT L. CARTER WALTER WHITE ‘Assiicat Corset atey 

ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS Bente DENIES ‘ Press Relations ‘reasurer 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 

NAACP PUSHES HOUSING DISCRIMINATION 
FIGHT IN SOUTH, 

NEW YORK, May 27 - In its continued fight to eliminate 

racial discrimination and segregation in all phases of American life, 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund filed two suits on May 21 

involving discrimination in housing projects in the South, One in- 

volves a federally-aided public housing project in Savannah, Ga., 

and the other an FHA mortgage insured housing project in Shreveport, 

La. 

In the Savannah suit the Public Housing Administration, 

the federal agency which administers the federal government's low- 

rent housing program, is made a defendant along with the local 

housing authority. 

It was filed in the Federal District Court in Savannah and 

brought in behalf of 18 Negro families who seeked admission in the 

Fred Wessels Homes, a project built on the "Old Fort," a traditional- 

ly Negro residential area. 

Everybody living in the area had to vacate to make way for 

the project. According to public housing requirements, all are eli- 

gible for federally-aided low rent housing anywhere in the city. The 

Negroes were, however, refused admission to the new project solely 

because of their race, 

The second suit was filed in the Federal District Court 

for Western District of Louisiana in Shreveport against the FHA 

(federal Housing Administration) and the Sponsor of a cooperative 

individual homes project in Shreveport called the Clark Terrece, It 

was filed in behalf of two World War ITI veterans, John H, Wilson and 

Richard E, Stewart, who sought to purchase homes in the project and 

had made the required downpayments. 



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The project was originally planned and constructed for 

Negroes, but because of the objections of a few local white citizens, 

including a white church located across the street and the police 

jury of Caddo Parish, sponsors and the FHA turned the homes over to 

whites, A new project in a less desired neighborhood was then 

suggested and is now being planned for Negroes, 

After being turned down because of their race, Wilson and 

Stewart sought the aid of the Shreveport Branch of the NAACP to aid 

them fight for their right to purchase a home in the Clark Terrace 

project where their downpayments were first made and accepted, 

Legal Defense attorneys for the Negro in both cities are 

Thurgood Marshall, Director-Counsel for Legal Defense, and Constance 

Baker Motley, assistant counsel. Local counsel in Savannah is Frank 

A. Dilworth, III, and in Shreveport Jessie N,. Stone, Jr, 

The Negro families in both suits feel that in view of the 

recent Supreme Court decisions discrimination and segregation in 

public and publicly-aided housing is a violation of their constitution- 

al rights, 

Both suits were filed three days before the U. S. Supreme 

Court, on May 2h, 1954, refused to review the ban on segregation in 

public housing in San Francisco, Calif, 

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