Legal Defense Fund Files 20 New Complaints Hitting Racial Bias in Hospitals

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May 27, 1965

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Legal Defense Fund Files 20 New of Hospital Bias (Special to N.Y. Times and Washington Post)

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- 83b393fe-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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Press Releases, Volume 2. Legal Defense Fund Files 20 New Complaints Hitting Racial Bias in Hospitals, 1965. 83b393fe-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/4c776b61-d6b4-4a9e-806e-46772abd4fc4/legal-defense-fund-files-20-new-complaints-hitting-racial-bias-in-hospitals. Accessed November 23, 2025.

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    TIMES LBGAL DEFENSE FUND FILES ay 27, 1965 
; 20 NBY COMPLAINTS HITTING : 

RACIAL BIAS IN HOSPITALS 

Urge Cut-off of Federal Funds 

WASHINGTON, D.C.---Twenty complaints of racial discrimination in 

federally assisted medical facilities in seven Southern states were 

filed here today with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare 

by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the NAACP. 

A total of ninety-eight (98) complaints alleging various forms and 

practices of bias against Negro patients, physicians, and employees 

have now been filed by the civil rights attorneys since February. 

In a letter to Anthony J. Celebreeze; who heads the Department, 

Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg of the Legal Defense Fund and counsel 

J. Francis Polhaus of the NAACP asked that further payment of federal 

funds to the hospitals named be held up pending investigation of the 

complaints. 

Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, provides for the cut-off 

of federal dollars to facilities that discriminate. According to 

Legal Defense Fund lawyers, the enforcement machinery of the Department 

is "woefully inadequate." 

Among the hospitals charged with discrimination was the Laurens 

County Hospital in Dublin, Georgia. There the staff allegedly removed 

racial signs, and closed the Negro nursery and dining room prior to a, 

federal inspection. The segregated facilities were reopened after the 

inspectors left. 

Other complaints attacked drastically inferior provisions for 

Negro patients, such as at Lake Shore Hospital in Lake City, Florida, 

where only one toilet and bathtub is available for Negroes--men, women, 

patients, employees, and visitors. 

In several of the jim crow facilities, Negro doctors are not 

permitted to practice. In many others, Negro patients are placed in 

hallways, rather than in empty beds in all-white wards. 

=a0=

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Legal Defense Fund Files 20 New Complaints Hitting Racial Bias in Hospitals

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