Rights Lawyers List 1966 Legal Emphasis
Press Release
January 5, 1966

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Press Releases, Volume 3. Rights Lawyers List 1966 Legal Emphasis, 1966. 0b22909b-b692-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/4bdcf7f8-c2b6-4dea-b0cc-53191b355ad0/rights-lawyers-list-1966-legal-emphasis. Accessed April 19, 2025.
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10 Columbus Circle New York, N.Y. 10019 JUdson 6-8397 NAACP Legal Defense and Educational F‘ und. PRESS RELEASE President Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers asel FOR RELEASE reenberg Wednesday, January 5, 1966 RIGHTS LAWYERS LIST 1966 LEGAL EMPHASIS it e ae NEW YORK----Programs emphasizing employment, housing, health care, schools and administration of justice will be the focus for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in 1966, Jack Greenberg, Fund director-counsel, said here today. Noting "signs of disenchantment" with enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 evidenced in school segregation demonstrations in Crawfordville, Ga.; Natchez, Miss.; Huntsville, Texas and other communities, Mr. Greenberg said the Fund will em- phasize implementation of the Act. The Legal Defense Fund, which handles an estimated 95 per cent of all southern civil rights litigation not handled by the Justice Department, operated on a budget of $1.7 million last year. The 1966 budget is estimated at $2 million. The first dozen suits charging employment discrimination under the Act were filed in 1965, he said, but indicated that many more will be filed this year. Mr. Greenberg said the Legal Defense Fund will select the suits from more than 1,500 complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by the Fund and the NAACP, The 1966 employment program will concentrate specifically cr the southern textile industry, the construction trades and bankince and finance. It will pay special attention to apprenticeship programs and segregated lines of seniority. Increased use of anti-trust laws to combat housing discrimi- natn was also predicted by Mr. Greenberg. Housing is not ‘covered by the Civil Rights Act. One such suit in Trenton, N. J., last year resulted in the admission of a Negro realtor to the previously all-white realtors association. (more) Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 Rights Lawyers List -2- January 5, 1966 1966 Legal Emphasis The Legal Defénse Fund also plans suits challenging site EOS Sek ee a eee selection sfor public housing which virtually guarantees that the ed RA : projects will be segregated, Mr. Greenberg said. Civil Rights Act section which specifically calls for cutting off Federal money from seoregated facilities, government money is still Z being paid. * : Part-time field workers in both northern and southern states, Mr. Greenberg said, will work to inform citizens of their rights with respect to health care. The workers will also help accelerate the filing of. complaints with the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Mr. Greenberg said the Fund will continue to file suits in precedent-making cases until HEW takes action to enforce the law. More than 175 school cases are pending on the Legal Defense Fund docket, and new ones will be filed only when they can set new precedents, Mr. Greenberg said. Suits will also be brought to integrate abou districts which heve refused Federal funds, and t exempted from the 1 Rights Act. f The firing of Negro teachers, something tetally neglected by HEW, will also be the subject of a great deal of litigation, Mr. Greenberg said. A new division of Legal Information within the Fund will, among other duties, gather information on implementation of school desegregation plans to make a forceful presentavion to HEW in hopes of bringing about more rigid enforcement of the law, Mr. Greenberg said. Wide scale affirmative action to require jury commissioners to integrate their juries will be undertaken this year. The tech~- nique of seeking reversals of individual convictions because of segregated juries has proved ineffective, Mr. Greenberg sai An attack on court systems in which justices of the ; ea paid on the basis of the amount of fines they collect will also be pressed. Such cases, which the justices have incentive to convict innocent persons, often Negroes incapable of obtaining ada>quate counsel, are pending in Alabama and Mississippi. Data compiled in a massive survey of 2,700 rape cases in the South is presently being evaluated, Mr. Greenberg said. He said the data should show that in the South, Negroes re- ceive the death penalty when the victim is a white woman, although other defendants in rape cases are rarely, if ever, so punished. To improve the training of the limited number of civil rights lawyers available in the South, the Legal Defense Fund sponsors six Lawyers Training Institutes each year. The program, conducted by some of the most eminent law professors in the nation, will be expanded this year to bring in more northern lawyers, as northern and southern problems come to resemble each other more, Mr. Greenberg said. 150 school reby ‘been -20-