Legal Defense Fund Lawyers Take Park Segregation Case Before U.S. Supreme Court

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New York, Ny, 10019 
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NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

President 
Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers 

Jack Greenberg . cee 

November 9, 1965 

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND LAWYERS 
TAKE PARK SEGR 
BEFORE U. S. SU 

Challenge Provisions of Segregationist's Will 

WASHINGTON, D,. C,---NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund 

attorneys today will appear before the U. S. Supreme Court to 

challenge the segregation policy of a Macon, Ga., park. 

Jack Greenberg, Fund director-counsel, wili head a team of 

lawyers presenting the case, which bears a strong similarity to the 

situation at Girard College in Philadelphia, Pa. 

Coincidentally, the man with whom Mr. Greenberg argued many 

Legal Defense Fund cases before the high court will also argue a 

Supreme Court case today. 

U. S. Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall, who Mr. Greenberg 

succeeded at the Legal Defense Fund, will be appearing to argue a 

case for the Federal government, 

The Legal Defense Fund suit is in behalf of five Macon Negroes, 

who are seeking to overturn lower court rulings that use of the 

facility may be limited to whites. 

The park, known as Baconsfield, was established in 1911, by the 

will of the late Georgia senator, Augustus Octavius Bacon. 

Sen. Bacon left the land to the City of Macon and established 

a trust fund to pay costs of administering the park. The will 

stipulated that the park be used only by whites, 

Philadelphia's Girard College was also established by a will 

as a school for white orphan boys. There have been.numerous 

demonstrations in Philadelphia, protesting the»segregated policy of 

the school, which is situated in a predominantly Negro neighborhood. 

The Macon park was administered by a board of managers 

appointed by the mayor and city council until the Spring of 1963, 

when Negroes began using the fecility. 

(more) 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Rlyerside 9-8487 Ss 



Legal Defense Fund Lawyers -2- November 9, 1965 
Take Park Segregation Case 
Before U. S. Supreme Court 

After members of the park board of managers filed suit seeking 

enforcement of the racial restri tions, the City of Macon, 

claiming it had no authority to enforce segregation, was allowed 

by SHERer orci Superior Court to resign as trustee of the park. 

The court appointed three private citizens as trustees in 

place of the city, and held that it was proper for the trustees to 

bar Negroes from the park in accordance with the terms of the will. 

The Hepat Defense Fund lawyers maintain that substitution of 

private Geeieiduals as park trustees instead of the city was done 

"for the invidious purpose of assuring continued segregation," 

"The courts of Georgia enforced the will provision directing 

exclusion of Negrees in preference to a conflicting! provision 

directing perpetual ownership by the city," according to the Legal 

Defense Fund brief. 

The civil rights lawyers also contend that 

all respects a public facility and part of the p 

" community," and as a charitable trust is subject to continuous 

state supervision and has certain privileges such as tex exemption. 

They argue, therefore, that despite terms of the will, 

segregation of the park is a violation of the equal protection clause 

of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Another contention is that state laws. encouraged the senator 

to include the segregation clause in his will. 

Assisting Mr. Greenberg in the case are James M, Nabrit, II1; 

Michael Meltsner and C. Stephen Ralston, all of the Legal Defense 

Fund's New Yerk staff, and Donald L. Hollowell, William H,. 

Alexander and Howard Moore, Jr., Fund cooperating attorneys in 

Atlanta. 

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