NEWS: Jack Greenberg Director-Counsel

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L a AYA) NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC 
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NEWS Haerice Miles 
Public Relations Director 
(212) 586-8397 

JACK GREENBERG 
DIRECTOR-COUNSEL 

Few attorneys in the United States have played as significant 

a role in the development of civil rights law as Jack Greenberg. 

Mr. Greenberg's commitment to equal rights can be traced to 

his days as a student at Columbia University School of Law 

where he did volunteer work for the NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund, Inc., the Japanese-American Citizens League 

and the American Jewish Congress. 

In 1949, a year after graduation, Mr. Greenberg joined 

Thurgood Marshall, a founder of the NAACP Legal Defense and 

Educational Fund, Inc., as an associate and immediately began 

work on cases that integrated law schools and graduate schools 

(Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents). 

In 1954, he was one of the lawyers in Brown v. Board of Education 

and the companion School Segregation Cases (he argued the 

Delaware portion), the landmark Supreme Court decision which 

declared "separate but equal" unconstitutional. After Brown, 

he tried cases which struck down segregation in public parks, 

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The NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUCATIONAL FUND is not part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People although it 
was founded by it and shares its commitment to equal rights. LDF has had for over 25 years a separate Board, program, staff, office and budget. 



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beaches and transportation, and racial discrimination in 

voting, jury selection and criminal trials. 

In 1961, when Thurgood Marshall was appointed to the U.S. 

Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, LDF's Board of 

Directors elected Mr. Greenberg Director-Counsel, a post he 

has held since then. Under his leadership, LDF has grown 

from a half dozen lawyers to today's staff of 23 who, working 

with a network of 400 LDF cooperating attorneys, handle 

approximately 1,000 cases. 

Mr. Greenberg believes that litigation is an effective means 

of producing social change, and the NAACP Legal Defense and 
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Educational Fund, Inc., record and program supports his belief. 

Soon after being elected Director-Counsel, Mr. Greenberg and 

the LDF staff were confronted with the legal challenges 

springing from the national civil rights movement. They 

represented thousands of civil rights demonstrators including 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the former Ambassador to the 

United Nations, Andrew Young. In this period, the NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., won over 40 demon- 

stration cases in the Supreme Court and was responsible for 

getting thousands of protestors released from jails. 

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In 1967, Mr. Greenberg established a coordinated national 

drive to abolish the death penalty, because of its racially 

discriminatory impact. Since the effort began, it has resulted 

in a virtual moratorium on executions. An important victory 

came in 1972, in the LDF case Furman v. Georgia, when the 

Supreme Court outlawed existing death penalty statutes declaring 

them cruel and unusual punishment because they were applied 

unevenly and arbitrarily, falling with disparate incidence on 

the poor, uneducated and racial minorities. Mr. Greenberg 

argued one of the cases leading to that decision which saved 

the lives of more than 1,000 persons on death row. A setback 

came in 1976 when LDF lost an effort to have the death penalty 

statutes, enacted after Furman, invalidated. However, a 

significant reform followed in 1977 in Coker v. Georgia, 

which abolished the death penalty for rape of an adult. It 

had been the most racially discriminatory of penalties: Since 

accurate records were first kept, it is known that of 455 men 

executed for rape, 407 were black. Despite the setbacks, LDF 

has been able to prevent executions and continues its efforts 

against capital punishment. 

In 1970, 16 years after Brown, school desegregation continued 

to engage national attention as the Nixon Administration 

sought to block school integration in Mississippi. Mr. 

Greenberg won Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education 

before the Supreme Court, which mandated the end of "all 

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deliberate speed" and required integration "at once." The 

employment discrimination program developed by LDF has won 

most of the landmark cases in the field--securing job rights 

for thousands of minority workers. In 1971, Mr. Greenberg 

argued and won Griggs v. Duke Power Company before the Supreme 

Court, a leading case guaranteeing black workers equal employ- 

ment opportunities. Programs in housing discrimination and 

prison reform litigation have brought significant changes in 

these areas. In 1983 he won Aikens v. United States Postal 

Service by a unanimous Supreme Court decision, thereby pre- 

serving gains made in employment discrimination law over the 

past decade and a half. 

The Earl Warren Legal Training Program, established by LDF in 

1972, and the Herbert Lehman Education Fund provide scholar- 

ships to black students. The Earl Warren Legal Training 

Program is designed to increase the number of black lawyers, 

especially in the South. Since their initiation, these 

programs have awarded more than 1,200 scholarships and nearly 

100 legal internships. 

Mr. Greenberg has consulted on public interest law in India 

and South Africa where he helped establish the Legal Resources 

Center which works on behalf of disadvantaged, usually black, 

individuals. 

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He has taught at Columbia, Yale, Harvard and the City University 

of New York. 

In 1978, Mr. Greenberg was one of three recipients of the 

second Grenville Clark Award for public service (along with 

Theodore Hesburgh and Sydney Kentridge). The Award was 

established to honor private citizens who advance civil 

rights, personal liberty, world peace, good government and 

academic freedom.