Sylvia Drew Joins LDF Staff, Daughter of Dr. Charles Drew, Distinguished Surgeon

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Sylvia Drew Ivie Oral History

    168 

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President 

Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel 

egal efense und seek Ceseabers 
Director, Public Relations fs 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Toate DeVore, Je. 1 

10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

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NEW YORK, N.¥.--A young lawyer whose father's contribution to 

medical science goes on saving lives on the battlefields, in 

hospitals and wherever else it's needed has become a staff | 

attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 

(LDF) . 

Attorney Sylvia Drew, the daughter of the late Dr. Charles 

Drew--distinguished surgeon, professor, and founder of the present 

day blood bank which is used to store blood plasma-joined LDF's 

team of civil rights lawyers this month. 

A pretty 5'6" native of Washington, D. C., Miss Drew graduated 

last June from Howard University Law School, and is the seventh 

woman lawyer to join LDF's staff to begin a career in civil rights 

law. 

“with my major interest being civil rights," she says, "I 

feel that LDF is excellent for me. I think that without question 

there isn't a more expert team of civil rights lawyers anywhere." 

Miss Drew began forming many of her views about the Negro 

struggle for full freedom and the law while attending a Quaker 

school in upstate New York and at Vassar where she received a 

bachelor of arts degree. 

"I think the law is a tool," she says, "that can be used to 

effect full justice and self determination, although it is limited 

to a certain extent and is often a slow process. We need more 

civil rights lawyers, especially in many parts of the South--Florida, 

Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee to name a few." 

“Though emphasis has shifted to urban problems, and certainly 

these problems have to be dealt with, it does not mean that the 

many injustices we suffer in the South have been eliminated." 

The young lawyer feels that when Negroes in the South are 

accorded the same freedom enjoyed by southern whites, they 

will not migrate North and that this in itself will help solve 

many urban problems. 

She thinks that most Negroes consider physical warfare in the 

urban centers futile and are busy emphasizing other tactics. We 

are setting up small businesses, fighting for school decentraliza- 

tion, and for control of our communities, emphasizing black culture, 

etc. This will help us change our own image of ourselves, and 

once and for all win full freedom in America," she says. 

Not only is Miss Drew interested in civil rights for Negroes, 

put she sees a direct relationship between the problems of the 

American redman and those of black people. 



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"Many of the fundamental problems are basically the same," 

she says, "although the Indians, in almost every instance, suffer 

more severely than we do." 

"The government tells them how much money they can have, how 

to spend it, what they can do, what they can't do. Likewise, we 

are presently fighting for self determination," is how she ex- 

plains it. 

One of her primary functions at LDF will be to establish a 

program for Indian affairs, in addition to working on housing 

and rural poverty cases. 

She first saw a connection between the problems of the Negro 

and Indians when she worked last summer with the Citizen Advocate 

Center's Indian Program. 

She has worked with her own people in Mississippi as a school 

investigator for the Housing Education and Welfare committee; in 

her hometown with the National Association for Redevelopment; and 

in Poughkeepsie, New York tutoring school dropouts. 

Miss Drew, who strikes one as a fighter for what she believes 

in, does not wish to rest on her father's accomplishments and has 

every intention of being a professional in her own right. How- 

ever, it just may be that history someday will crown her too for 

some notable contribution to humanity. 

=30- 

NOTE: The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is a separate 

and distinct organization from the NAACP. Its correct designation 

is NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc,, which is shortened 

to LDF.