Summary of the Annual Report of the N.A.A.C.P. Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

    PRESS RELEASE 

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

THURGOOD MARSHALL ell B. SPINGARN 
Director and Counsel resident 
ROBERT L. CARTER AES WHITE 
Assistant Counsel Secretory 

ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS 
a eae aaa 8 Press Relations freasurer 

FOR RELEASE: January 3, 1955 

SUMMARY OF THE ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 
N.A.A.C.P. LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATTONAL FUND, INC. 

Presented by 
Thurgood Marshall 
January 3, 1955 

NEW YORK,--At the close of last year's report, we reaffirmed as 

the ultimate objective of our work the total elimination of racial 

discrimination and its viruses, segregation and exclusion, in the 

enjoyment of all public institutions, facilities and services. We 

also set out there some dozen or so specific goals as the immediate 

objectives of our 195i program of litigation, education and research 

on facets of racial discrimination in six fields--education, employ- 

ment, health, housing, recreation and transportation, Summarizing 

the past year's achievenents, we report significant progress toward 

our long-range objective and the attainment of many, if not most, of 

the specific goals set for our 195) activities, 

There can be little doubt that the unanimous decision of the 

United States Supreme Court on May 17th declaring segregatien in 

public education to be unconstitutional will be recognized as one of 

the greatest forward steps toward the eradication of race and caste 

from American live, On the other hand, in 195 once again we were 

reminded that we continue to face the dual problem of consolidating 

our gains anc at the same time planning for the future. Once again 

we find that the hard core of un-American opposition to the forward 

trend of democracy will not accept defeat. We find that while the 

opposition is steadily growing smaller in numbers it is becoming more 

consolidated, more determined and more ruthless, We, therefore, 

curing the year 1954, continued our program of staying at least one 

step ahead of this opposition, 

Public and private reaction to the Supreme Court's May 17th 

¢ecision shoulec not have shocked anyone. When public schools opened 



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in September of 195, we foundlecalitias in eight states, including 

states as far south as Arkansas, opened their school doors to Negroes 

for the first time. Baltimore, Md. desegregated its public schools 

as did Washington, D. C., St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo. moved toward 

complete desegregation. Twenty-five counties in West Virginia deseg- 

regated, Wo one could for a moment deny that great progress has been 

made since May. Of course, we have read about the unfortunate situa- 

tion in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., Milford, Del, and in isolated 

areas in Baltimore and Washington. Expert scientists on our volun- 

teer committee have investigated all of these instances and find that 

they were purely local matters and did not in any way detract from 

our major proposition that public schools can be desegregated without 

delay providing there is intelligent leadership in the community. 

In moving to implement the decision of the Supreme Court we 

employed three educational specialists, Vernon McDaniel, Loftus Carson 

and Dr. Margaret Butcher who, after training in this office and at 

Fisk University, have been placed in the field in Arkansas, North 

Carolina and West Virginia to work with local NAACP branches, church 

groups, labor froups, local school boards and others te bring about 

peaceful desegregation wherever possible without legal action, yniess 

necessary. While this program has been under way for several months, 

it is still in its formative stage and we are convinced that we will 

1t desegrega- bring about the necessary community coordination so tt 

tion will wove smoothly in many areas even in the deep South, 

We have also set up a Committee of Social Scientists under the 

leacership of Dr. Alfred McClung Lee, assisted by Dr. Kenneth Clark, 

These experts will use their training and experience to give to com- 

munities working on desegregation the necessary expert advice to 

either prevent the occurrence of school strikes like those in White 

Sulphur Springs and Milford, Del, or to control them once they start. 

In this, as well as other phases of our work we are determined to 

use expertly trained personnel and scientific factual bases to coun- 

teract the unscientific, bigoted and prejudiced rantings of the 

opposition, We are in a position to offer the communities of the 

South the necessary intelligent leadership which will bring about 

desegregation. Finally, in this field we have established a special 



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department for the sole purpose of protecting Negro teachers, prin- 

strative personnel from being made the victims of 

ation program. This department is headed by rx. John 

Davis, former presicent of West Virginia State College, to be 

assisted by Daniel H, Byrd and Elwood Chisolm, all of whom will work 

full time on this one project. 

Overshadowing all else, of course, was the decision of the 

Supreme Court of the United States in the School Segregation Cases, 

declaring state-enforced and state-condoned racial separation in 

public schools to be violative of the Fourteenth Amendment, But out- 

standing victories were also earned in other cases brought in the 

field of public education, and in housing, recreation and trans orta- 

tion, too. 

Three undergraduate colleges in Louisiana and a Texas Junior 

College were forced to accept Negro students for the first time in 

1954 as a result of suits prosecuted by our attorneys. We were also 

successful in cases challeng g Jim Crow public housing projects in 

San Francisco, Camcen and Elizabeth, New Jersey, and Detroit and 

Hamtramck, Michigan. ecisions in still other cases prosecuted by 

our attorneys required a private amusement mark in Cincinnati and 

public recreational facilities in Atlanta, “oucton, Louisville, 

Nashville, a the Oklahoma state parks system to cease excluding 

Negro citizens. And, in the omnibus transportation suit brought 

before the Interstate Commerce Commission on behalf of the W.A.A.C.P., 

its staff and a number of individual complainants, the I.C.C. trial 

examiner recently recommended that the Commission issue an order 

decreeing the discontinuance of racial segregation on railway coaches 

and railroad waiting rooms. 

There have been legal victories in areas not covered in the spe- 

cific goals outlined in last year's report, For example, the Supreme 

Court reversed the conviction of a destitute Negro sentenced to ceath 

for the crime of rape in Birmingham, Ala,, and a lower federal court 

ruled that certain discriminatory voting registration procedures uti- 

lized by Bullock County, Alabama officials were unconstitutional, 

Incidentally, these two decisions highlight the fact that our job is 

far more than to expand the law, it is also to vigilantly protect the 



enjoyment anc unrestricted exercise of rights already clearly defined 

as being constitutionally protected, 

All gains made in 195 were not produced as a res 

For, as a result of our community educa tion. tion program and the 

Gissemination of technical information to local lawyers and community 

organizations, additional breaks in the color line were made, In 

Chester, Willow Grove and York, Pa, and in several communities in 

Delaware, West Virginia and Maryland, desegregation in public schools 

became a reality. Furthermore, public recreation facilities were 

desegregated in a half dozen or more Texas communities and private 

and parochial elewentary, secondary and collegiate institutions 

accepted Negro students, even in states such as Oklahoma and Tennessee 

which make it a criminal offense for private schools to operate on a 

non-segregated basis. 

Although these achievements give some insight into our 195, 

activities, they alone cannot set the tempoa the tone for the entire 

year's work. There have been exciting new developments in ‘iany 

fields. =In plic honsing, for instance, not only was the volume of 

litigation increased, but new aspects of the housing problem were 

attacked, The right of a federal agency to contribute money toward 

the erection of public housing projects designed for white tenants 

solely was questioned in a suit brought in Savannah; the refusal of 

@ private building contractor to sell homes to Negroes when the con- 

struction of such housing is insured by the federal housing authority 

was contested in the Shreveport case; and the right of Negro on-the- 

site-tenants (displaced by a Birmingham slum clearance and redevelop- 

ment project) to unsegrerated relocation in federally-aided public 

housing was raised in still another case, Moreover, research and 

planning for a suit attacking racial discrimination in the procure- 

ment of housing in a total-community-development project, such as 

Levittown, were completed; and this suit isto be filed early in 1955, 

In the field of public recreation, we sought to expand the 

thrust of the Suprene Court's decision in the School Segregation 

tases, We prepared and have now pending in a federal appellate 

courts and a state trial court, four suits which raise this issue. 

‘to of these cases involve bathing facilities in Maryland state parks 

and others concern municipal golf courses in Atlanta and Charlotte. 



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New developments were produced by litigation and field activi- 

ties directed against discrimination in public schools. We all 

anticipated that a favorable decision in the School Segregation Cases 

would give rise to a variety of new problems, such as the enforcement 

and implementation of the decision itself and the protection of Negro 

teachers in their jobs. But, we did not expect a decision which 

declared the right not to be segregated in public schools yet withheld 

affirmative relief, pending further reargument before the Supreme 

Court on this question. 

Preparation of the brief on further reargument began in June. 

Again we gathered together for a series of conferences a group of 

lawyers, educators, sociologists and psychologists. Specific research 

assignments were given staff members and consultants, Research memo- 

randa were evaluated and revised by the group. Finally, this wealth 

of data was compressed into the brief which we filed November last. 

The anticipated problems of implementation, enforcement and pro- 

tection, on the other hand, were also faced up to. The scope and 

substance of our over-all program was modified in view of the May 17th 

decision, Major emphasis was placed upon community education and 

professional assistance to local school boards, In Delaware, West 

Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas, our field workers and educa- 

tional experts worked hand in hand with local school boards and pro- 

fessional educational organizations to draft and put in action 

desegregation plans, Community civic and professional groups were 

solidified to support desegregation throughout all of the southern 

and border states, Legal techniques and theories were tested. A 

case was brought before the New Jersey Division Against Discrimination 

to find out whether a school board, prohibited from operating segre-— 

gated schools, is required to maintain maximum integration, Two 

cases, one in Delaware and the other in Ohio, were brought to deter- 

mine whether a local school board can order re-segregation after it 

desegregated its schools and actually enrolled Negro pupils on a non- 

discriminatory basis, Staff attorneys also participated in a 

Tennessee case which protected the job rights of a Negro school 

teacher discharged because his superiors foresaw that he would soon 

be teaching white pupils. 



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All in all, the foregoing developments sketch the nature and 

quality of the Fund's activities over the past twelve months, Some 

idea of the quantum of the work shouldered by the legal staff may be 

inferred, too. However, a more definite index to the volume of our 

legal work can be supplied by the following statistics: Our lawyers 

participated in over one hundred judicial and administrative proceed- 

ings; ten briefs were prepared in cases brought to the Supreme Court 

of the United States; ten briefs were submitted to state supreme 

courts and federal courts of appeals; and the number of pleadings, 

motions and memoranda of law prepared and filed far exceeded the 

100-plus proceedings in which we were involved, 

The decision of the Supreme Court on May 17th, the encouraging 

march toward complete desegregation is so strong, as to give those of 

us who have been working in this field renewed conviction that vic- 

tory is in sight. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, on the 

horizon to interfere with this prediction unless it be the faint 

hearted hope of the die-hard Dixiecrats that we ourselves will falter 

in the last stages, We, as an Association, as an integrated body of 

Americans of all races, have news for these die-hards to the effect 

that their fondest hope of a collapse from within this group of Negro 

Americans and their supporters of other racial groups, is completely 

without foundation, 

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