NAACP Legal Defense Gets $15,000 from Field Foundation

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NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
107 WEST 43 STREET + NEW YORK 36, N. Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

ARTHUR B. SPINGARN o> THURGOOD MARSHALL 
President Director and Counsel 

WALTER WHITE ROBERT L. CARTER 
Secretary Assistant Counsel 

ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS ARNOLD De MILLE 
Treesurer . Press Relations 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE GETS $15,000 
FROM FIELD FOUNDATION April 27, 1955 

NEW YORK.--A $15,000 contribution was made to the NAACP Legal 

Defense and Educational Fund, Inc, this week by the Field Foundation, 

Inc., of 250 Park Avenue, to be applied to the continuation of the 

organization's work in the field of intercultural and interracial 

relations. 

The award was granted in the form of a resolution passed by the 

Foundation's board of directors and is to cover the period of one year 

beginning May 1, 1955. 

The Field Foundation was established in 190 by Mr. Marshall 

Field and seeks, wherever possible, to relate its grants in child wel- 

fare and in intercultural and interracial relations to the "lessening 

of emotional difficulties," and to the "development of ways and means 

of keeping people well, happy and effective," 

Legal Defense has been the recipient of a Field Foundation award 

for several years, 

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SUPREME COURT ASKED TO SAVE MISSISSIPPI YOUTH 

WASHINGTON, D.C,--The U. S, Supreme Court was asked last week to 

save the life of a 17-year old Negro youth convicted and sentenced to 

death by an all-white Mississippi jury. 

The request was made in a petition filed with the high Court by 

attorneys for NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund who charge 

that the youth, Walter Johnson, an airman stationed at the U. S$, Air 

Force Base at Keesler Field, Miss., was denied his constitutional 

right to a fair and unprejudiced trial, 

Johnson was arrested March 30 following the complaint of a 20-yoar 

old white resident of Hamilton County and her 15-year old sister, They 

claimed they had been accosted on a main street of Biloxi by a Negro 

man dressed in women's clothing and compelled to enter a vacant shed 

off the street at knife point, The older girl accused him of having 

sexual relationships with her, 



Shortly after the alleged attack, an alarm was sent out. Johnson 

-2- 

was stopped as he was returning to the base at Keesler Field carrying 

a bundle of women's clothing under his arm, Upon close examination, 

he was discovered wearing women's underwear, He was arrested and con- 

fessed to committing the act, 

Upon later examination at the U. §. Veterans Hospital in Gulford, 

Miss., he was found to be mentally i11 and "not conscious of right or 

wrong." However, he was tried and convicted for the crime of rape 

without recommendation of mercy, The penalty for rape in Mississippi 

is death. 

An appeal was made on January 3, 1955 to the Mississippi Supreme 

Court asking for a new trial on the grounds that Johnson had not re- 

ceived a fair and just trial. The motion was denied. 

In their petition to the U. S. Supreme Court today, NAACP Legal 

Defense attorneys ask that the high Court reverse the Mississippi 

Supreme Court's denial and order a new trial for the Negro airman on 

the grounds that he was convicted by a jury from which members of his 

race were systematically excluded. 

"It has been the clear and consistent rule of the court that a 

conviction of a Negro upon an indictment handed down by a grand jury 

from which Negroes are systematically excluded violates the Fourteenth 

Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. This proposition 

has been repeatedly reaffirmed," the lawyers state, 

They also point out that only two Negroes have qualified for jury 

duty in Harrison County in 35 years, despite the county's 13,21 non- 

white population. 

The costs of Johnson's mental examination and expert testimony on 

his mental state in the Mississippi courts was paid for by two white 

residents of Mississippi who felt that the Negro youth is "mentally 

sick and morally and legally irresponsible" for his act, "No white 

man has ever suffered death for rape in Mississippi," they say. 

Johnson was defended in the lower court by a court-appointed 

attorney who admitted that he had not tried a capital case in 25 years 

and does not regard himself a criminal lawyer. 

In appealing to the Mississippi Supreme Court for a new trial, 

the lawyers handling the case contended that if the District Attorney 

had not been so determined on the death penalty, and the state not 



Soe ae 

given the jury the understanding that it was demanding and expecting 

the death penalty, the sentence might have been different, 

"It is doubtful if there could possibly be a more intense and 

passionate prejudice than that of a Southern white man against a Negro, 

any Negro, sane or insane, who violates the person of a white woman: 

we understand (and perhaps we even share) that invincible prejudice; 

it is easy to inflame, as it certainly was in this case--just as a 

lighted match thrown into an open tank of gasoline," the Mississippi 

lawyers argued, 

", . » white citizens who are really as much concerned to save the 

good and fair name of Mississippi from what they honestly believe 

would become and be a scandal and a disgrace, as they are to save the 

life of a 17 year old sex-crazy Negro boy. Killing the boy off is an 

easy thing to do--perhaps he would be better off, but the State of 

Mississippi could 111 afford to take the easy way out. The problem is 

not that simple, although it may seem thet simple to the average juror," 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund was asked to intervene 

in the case following the Mississippi Supreme Court denial of the mo- 

tion for a new trial, The attorneys are Thurgood Marshall and Jack 

Greenberg, of New York. 

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APPEAL HILLSBORO SCHOOL SEGREGATION CASE 

CINCINNATI, Apr. 27.--The Hillsboro school segregation case 

landed in the federal court again today with attorneys for NAACP Legal 

Defense and Educational Fund. asking the court of appeals to reverse a 

federal district judge's action in refusing to enjoin the Hillsboro 

Echool Board from continuing to maintain the Lincoln School as a 

school for Negro children only. 

In a brief filed today with the U. S. Court of Appeals for the 

Sixth Circuit Legal Defense attorneys for the Negro children raise the 

question whether the district judge, in refusing to issue a permanent 

injunction enjoining the Hillsboro School Board from enforcing a 

polley of racial segregation, could bow to conveniences rather than 

weigh the facts and consider the law, 

The appeal developed out of an order of the U. S, District Court 

of February 16, 195), denying the request for a permanent injunction, 

The injunction was sought after Negro children had enrolled and 

attended classes in two previously all-white schools. After enrollment 



Pay 

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the board, using the subterfuge of school zone lines, forced the 

Negro students to withdraw and have since sought to require them to 

enroll in the Lincoln School on the ground that they live in the 

Lincoln school zone, 

The decision of the district court judge which in effect com- 

pels the Negro children to return to the segregated school, Legal 

Defense attorneys argue, does not only deprive the children of their 

constitutional rights and inflict irreparable injury on them, but 

also permits the school board to break the federal law and the law 

of the State of Ohio, 

The brief notes that when the Supreme Court announced its 

decision in May 1954, "every American elementary school pupil ac- 

quired a federal right against all state authority, legislative, 

judicial and administrative, not to be segregated solely because of 

' and that prior to this decision their race in the public schools,’ 

students attending school in Ohio had a right not to be segregated 

under the law of the state since 1887, 

With respect to the Supreme Court's decision of May 17, 195), 

the brief states: 

"This decision all courts must follow as the supreme law of the 

land, although an entirely distinct and separate question arises in 

the five cases before the Supreme Court as to how an adjustment to a 

non-segregated system is to be made from an existing segregated 

system under circumstances peculiar to each of those cases, There- 

fore, since the U,. S. Supreme Court has declared the law, the court 

below should have followed it with respect to the school attendance 

zones established »by appellees in this case in September 195) which 

were intended to be, and which in fact are, a new strategom for 

achieving racial segregation in the public schools." 

The attorneys contend that the judge gave consideration to com- 

munity hostility against minority groups and allowed it to take 

precedence over the law. 

Legal Defense attorneys for the Negroes are Thurgood Marshall 

and Constance Baker Motley of New York and Russell L. Carter and 

James H, McGhee of Dayton, Ohio. 

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