Statement by Jack Greenberg, director-counsel
Press Release
May 24, 1964

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Press Releases, Loose Pages. Statement by Jack Greenberg, director-counsel, 1964. feae2792-bd92-ee11-be37-6045bddb811f. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/327eef27-7c33-4759-862e-f15784418bd8/statement-by-jack-greenberg-director-counsel. Accessed July 30, 2025.
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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. emora= Greenberg 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. emore= 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. e-more= Greenberg 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. <30-