Rights Lawyers List 1966 Legal Emphasis

    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 

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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 
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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 

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