Supreme Court Brief Filled in Baton Rouge, Louisiana "Sit-In" Cases

    PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
10 COLUMBUS CIRCLE + NEW YORK 19,N. Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS © eS THURGOOD MARSHALL 
President Director-Counsel 

SUPREME COURT BRIEF FILED IN BATON ROUGE, 
LOUISIANA "SIT-IN" CASES 

August 29, 1961 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund attorneys filed August 

25 their brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in three combined "sit-in" 

cases involving Negro students convicted of lunch counter demonstra- 

tions in Baton Rouge, La. during April, 1960. 

The Baton Rouge cases will be the first "sit-in" convictions to pe 

reviewed by the Supreme Court. Argument before the Court is schedulec 

for October 18, 1961. 

The Supreme Court decided on March 20, 1961 it would hear the 

three cases together. All deal with "sit-in" convictions by a Baton 

Rouge trial court April 27, 1960, and a Supreme Court of Louisiana 

decision of October 5, 1960 upholding the trial court. 

The three "sit-ins" were at lunch counters of the Greyhound Bus 

Station, a Kress store, and a drugstore in Baton Rouge. The students, 

from Southern University, were arrestéd in each instance under a 

Louisiana "disturbing the peace" statute by Baton Rouge police captain 

Robert Weiner, 

When brought to the witness stand in the trial court, Captain 

Weiner testified that the "sit-iners" were "disturbing the peace" 

simply "by the mere presence of their being there," 

It was brought out at the trial that there was no violence, threat 

of violence, or public disturbance at any of the demonstrations. 

In the bus station case, for instance, Fund attorneys contend in 

their brief that "...the waitress' testimony contains no hint of any- 

thing other than an occasion profoundly peaceful.... Her refusal to 

serve petitioners was based solely on their race in itself," 

The Fund brief asks the Supreme Court to rule that racial segre- 

gation of the type which exists at the Baton Rouge lunch counters is 



",.ein obedience to a statewide custom..." of segregation, publicly 

endorsed and practiced by the state, and by state officials. 

"(T)heir convictions," it is argued, "clearly contravene the 

decisions of this Court that racial segregation, enforced by state 

authority, violates the Fourteenth Amendment." 

Fund attorneys also argue that the Louisiana statute under which 

the convictions were made is "vague, indefinite and uncertain," and 

that the conviction unwarrantly penalizes the Negro youths for the 

exercise of their constitutional right to freedom of expression. 

Fund attorneys for the students are A.P. Tureaud, of New Orleans, 

La., Johnnie A. Jones of Baton Rouge, La.; and Thurgood Marshall, 

Jack Greenberg, Charles L, Black, Jr., Elwood H. Chisolm, William T. 

Coleman, Jr., James M. Nabrit, III, and Louis H. Pollak of New York 

City. 

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