J. Greenberg Statement on Why a National Office for the Rights of the Indigent

    Statement by Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel 
NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund,Inc. (LDF) 
10 Columbus Circle, New York City, November 22, 1966. é 

Why a National Office for the Rights of the Indigent 

Racial segregation has, for generations, obscured the issues of 

poverty, As long as Negroes could be kept behind the curtain, literal-~ 

ly and figuratively, the country could ignore their schooling, their 

economic status, their housing. But once the decisions of the Court . 

said that in principle all persons, without regard to race, must be 

treated as part of this country, that Negro school children may not 

be kept in segregated schools, awesome implications appeared. 

The Negro kid who was admitted to a white school didn't come from 

a decent colored school, much less a deségregated one. He most likely 

came from a home lacking much of the background that helps a child 

succeed in school. He came quite likely from an unlivable slum, He 

possibly had no father at home and his mother, or father, if he had 

one, couldn't get a decent job. ilaybe the parent was unable to get 

work because of race, Just as likely the parent had no training to 

do a job under the néw regime of automation and mechanization even if 

a job could have been had. 

In short, problems of society generally began to emergu. And 

they are not problems of race, but of poverty. 

In a certain sense, if we ever find any satisfaction in the 

legaty of slavery, it is that it generated enough emotional and poli- 

tical force to make the nation undertake an attack on poverty in 

general. 

Those of us who years ago were concerned solely with what I might 

call orthodox issues of civil rights, therefore, have little by little 

nd more with 

questions of poverty and issues that affect al] Americans. 

car
 ome involved in cases seeking 3 At the Legal Defense und we have bec 

to make precedent on poverty law questions just as we have over the 

years been involved in civil rights cases, “le mow have welfare cases 

» involving the man-in-the-house rule and the employable mother rule; 



JACK GREENBERG 

housing cases, involving the rights of public housing agencies to evict 

without a hearing, or to refuse to house mothers with illegitimate 

children; in private housing, there is litigation over the right of 

poor persons to defend eviction proceedings without having to post a 

bond in twice the amount of the rent; in criminal prosecutions, there 

are suits over the right of an indigent to be released without bail 

where an affluent person would have been released because he had the 

money to put up bail; and the right of an accused misdemeanant to 

request and have granted court appointed counsel. 

How the National Office for the Rights of the Indigent Will Work 

It will work in conjunction with all local law offices concerned 

with the problems of the poor in an attempt to provide thorough and 

expert advocacy of major appellate cases, consistent and controlled 

development of precedent, and where appropriate, coordination of legal 

approaches to comparable problems. 

Many cases for poor clients will be settled simply by proper 

advice or by litigation that does not go beyond a trial or negotiation. 

But the real task of making new law for the poor will of necessity 

require much appellate work and the fashioning of strategy and goals 

which have as much nationwide impact as possible. 

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