LDF Cases and Income Hit Record High in '68

    24 

are Francis E, Rivers 

nN) PRESS RELEASE Director Counsel 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

Director, Public Relations 
May 23, 1969 Jesse DeVore, Jr. NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. , 

10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 FOR RELEASE MAY 28 ™°Tgp yy" 212-749-8487 

LDF CASES AND INCOME 

HIT RECORD HIGH IN '68 

NEW YORK, NEW YORK--A record 593 separate cases were handled during 1968 by attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 

This is an increase of 161 over the preceding year during which the LDF handled 432 cases. 

The legal group's income during 1968 also showed marked increase of $833,471.59 over the previous year for a total of $2,887,688.16. 

“The Quiet Revolution" is the name of the LDF's 1968 annual report which was released during the week commemorating the 15th anniversary of the Supreme Court's historic school integration ruling. 

Its release also marks the 30th anniversary of the founding of the LDF, which has grown to become the legal arm of the entire civil rights movement. Although LDF was established by the NAACP, it has since the early '50's had its own board, staff, budget and policies and represents all civil rights organizations as well as persons not connected with any organization. 

The year "1968 may have introduced the most crucial period for the rights of America's black citizens since the reaction which followed Reconstruction," said LDF Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg. 

Nevertheless, the LDF report chronicles an array of pioneering victories, particularly in education, labor, housing, poverty and capital punishment--"1968 became the first year in U.S. history 
without an execution." 

The ban on legal death came into being while “courts across the land halted executions pending the Supreme Court's consideration of an LDF challenge to the constitutionality of the death penalty. 

By the end of 1968, LDF attorneys were representing over half the 476 men on death row. 

In education, the report credits the U.S. Supreme Court with issuing “its most significant school desegregation opinion since the 1954 Brown decision in Green v. School Board of New Kent County, Va." 

The LDF reopened 200 pending school suits across the South as a result of the Green ruling which said that school boards must come up with desegregation plans "that promise realistically to work now." 

The ruling ended the “freedom of choice" strategem which was utilized widely across the South to slow school integration progress. 

LDF attorney Franklin E. White, director of its school inte- gration program “estimates that 35 to 40 per cent of Negro children will be in white majority schools by the fall of 1969." 

Mr. White added that 60 to 70 per cent of the southern Negro children will be integrated by the school year 1970-71--"with 
es 

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. 

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NAACP Legal Defense and Educational FOR RELEASE MAY 28,1969 

Fund, Inc. b) 

205 

integration in the South a reality except in big cities where 

administrative issues are different." 

Elsewhere in education, the LDF report revealed that ten Negro 

students are attending the University of Mississippi law school 

under special scholarships, and that 144 others are attending white 

state universities under scholarships, from the LDF's Herbert 

Lehman Education Fund. 

The other highly important cases argued during 1968 before the 

U.S. Supreme Court were: 

*Thorpe v. Housing Authority of the City of Durham, N.C. asks 

whether tenants in public housing projects may be evicted 

without reason or hearing; 

*Sniadach v. Family Finance Corporation which seeks to alter 

garnishment procedures in 17 states. 

LDF attorneys gave substantial effort to labor discrimination 

suits during 1968 with outstanding success in two areas: 

In a suit against the Philip Morris Company which was a precedent 

ordering equal pay for equal work, and the right to promotion 

without loss of seniority. 

In a suit against Seaboard Coast Lines Railway, procedures 

were established whereby aggrieved citizens need not await con- 

ciliation procedures by the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity 

when it cannot act because of limited funds and staff. 

The decision allows the filing of many more cases with antici- 

pated job gains for hundreds of thousands of employees. 

Among firms against which the LDF won some of its 26 settlements 

during 1968 were A&P Food Stores, Newport News Shipbuilding and 

Dry Dock Corporation and the Georgia State Employment Service. 

In housing, a federal court in Lansing, Michigan, “held that 

zoning rules which bar the construction of low cost housing 

outside racial ghettos are unconstitutional." 

In San Francisco a federal court halted an ongoing urban renewal 

program for the first time. 

These cases provided precedent for lawyers and community groups 

across the country to challenge federally sponsored programs which 

fail to take the needs of the poor into account, the report said. 

The projected budget for 1969 is three million dollars. 

=S0=: 

NOTE: Please bear in mind that the LDF is a completely separate 

organization even though we were established by the NAACP 

and those initials are retained in our name. Our correct 

designation is NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, 

Inc., frequently shortened to LDF.