Statement by Jack Greenberg, director-counsel

    Statement by Jack Greenberg, director-counsel 
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc, 
Americana Hotel, Sunday, May 24, 1964, 1 P.M. 

We are using the occasion of our Convecation on Equal | 

Justice Under Law, marking the 25th anniversary of the j 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the 10th anni- 

versary of the historic U. S, Supreme Court school integration 

ruling---which was brought and won by Legal Defense Fund 

attorneys---to announce our plans for supporting increased 

civil rights activity this summer. 

First, we are happy to announce that the Legal Defense 

Fund has just received a gift of a half million dollars--- : 

the largest single contribution to any organization in civil 

rights history. 

The generous donor has asked to remain anonymous. 

The gift, which has been bestowed in anticipation that 

“tens of thousands, who will presumably be arrested in future 

non-violent demonstrations, will need legal representation, 

"In addition," our benefactor states, "the need for new 

test cases in the higher courts will doubtless continue and 

even increase. Enactment of the civil rights bill is almost 

certain to generate massive resistance to its enforcement 

(especially as to access to public accommodations and as 

to voting in the South) thus giving rise to continued demon- 

strations and to a great volume of litigation. 

"Moreover, there is reason to believe that, as in the 

past, the main burden of the entire private legal effort 

for equal Negro rights will in practice have to be borne 

by the Legal Defense Fund for some years to come." 

Our Board of Directors, in accepting this gift, asserted 

that massive civil rights legal effort needed "will require 

legal resources not contemplated heretofore," 

Accordingly, the Legal Defense Fund budget has been \ 

upped to one and a half million dollars for 196; the same 
‘X 

for 1965; and two million for 1966. 

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Take 2 

With this financial platform, we move into the second 

phase of our program for supporting increased civil rights 

activity in five different ways: 

1. 

3. 

The Legal Defense Fund has assigned New York staff ' 

to work, on a rotating basis, in Memphis, Tennessee 

(just across the northern Mississippi border) and 

in Jackson, which is further south in Mississippi. 

This means that a full time team of Legal Defense 

Fund lawyers will be on hand to work with our three 

cooperating Mississippi attorneys at all times. 

These two legal outposts will coordinate and super- 

vise activities of other civil rights attorneys 

slated to assist in Mississippi this summer. 

Legal Defense Fund staff lawyers from our New York 

City headquarters and key cooperating attorneys, will 

conduct legal seminars at Western College for Women, 

Oxford, Ohio in late June for college students slated 

to go south for the "Freedom Summer" program of C.0.R.E., 

$.C.L.C., S.N.C.C., and the N.A.A.C.P, in Mississippi. 

These combined organizations are hoping to mobilize 

2,000 students for work in educational and voter 

registration activities in that hard-core state, 

Legal Defense Fund attorneys will counsel these stu- 

dents on their legal rights and obligations during 

the Ohio deliberations. 

We will administer a seminar June 6 and 7 at Columbia 

University Law School for the Lawyers Constitutional 

Defense Committee. This project will be directed for 

the Legal Defense Fund by Dr, Marvin Frankel of 

Columbia, The Legal Defense Fund will provide text- 

books and faculty. 

Volunteer lawyers trained here will join our coopera- 

ting attorneys this summer in key southern areas. Mor‘s 

than 60 northern lawyers are expected to participate 

in this specific project. 

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Greenberg 
Take 3 

4. The Legal Defense Fund will sponsor its largest Civil 

Rights Law Institute in Atlanta, Georgia, on May 30th 

through June lst. Cooperating attorneys from Alabarh, 

North and South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia and 

Missouri will be in attendance. 

This Institute, along with five others being held 

this year, will be taught by faculty from Harvard, 

Howard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell and other leading 

law schools, plus members of the Legal Defense Fund , 

staff. 

These Institutes are designed to keep our attorneys 

abreast of legal problems in the areas of: 

Protest Demonstrations: State restrictions and 

conditions; when to pursue administrative pro- 

cedures; the problem of vague statutes, etc. 

State Action: What is coming to be included in 

state action; existing and emergency areas of 

controversy: hospitals, professional societies 

(medical, dental), labor organizations, housing 

and urban renewal. 

State Criminal Procedures: Continuing jury issues; 

preserving federal rights through the procedural 

maze, etc. 

School Integration: The current cases; how to 

appraise and when to attack, etc. 

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Take 

5S. We are adding three new full time attorneys to our 

permanent New York staff, one from Columbia and the 

other two from Harvard law schools. Our legal intern 

program, the only one of its kind in the nation, will 

bring in three additional law school graduates to 

work with our New York staff for one years 

Upon completion of their internship, they will be 

placed in strategic areas of the south, where there 

is a shortage of civil rights attorneys. 

Additional summer staff will include one law professor 

and six law students to assist in the heavy research 

load. Our regular full time staff, in and out of New 

York City, now stands at 17. They will work with our 

120 cooperating attorneys (an increase of 18 since 

January) situated throughout the south. 

It is in this climate of vigorous expansion that we hold 

our Convocation on Equal Justice Under Law here at the Ameri- 

cana, Wednesday and Thursday of this week, May 27th and 28th, 

under Chairmanship of Dr. Ralph J. Bunche. 

This is an unprecedented gathering. 

Legal scholars, attorneys, civil rights leaders and stu- 

dents will specifically discuss what we conceive to be a 

crisis involving the rule of law in America today. 

Among our speakers are Martin Luther King, Herbert 

Brownell, Dr. Bunche, Francis Keppel, Samuel I, Rosenman, Carl 

Rowan, Thurgood Marshall, Eugene V. Rostow, Michael Harrington, 

James Meredith and Roy Wilkins. 

There are other noted participants who are listed in 

the Convocation outline program which has been sent to you 

and is available today. 

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