One Million Dollar Grant to Assist Poor Given to LDF by Ford Foundation

    NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 

S25 

President 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

AA PRESS RELEASE Direcsot Counsel 

egal efense und dee Ceomnbers 
Director, Public Relations 

WEDNESDAY Jesse DeVore, Jr. 
November 23, 1966 NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

ONE MILLION DOLLAR GRANT 
TO ASSIST POOR GIVEN TO 
LDF BY FORD FOUNDATION 

Will Establish National Office for Rights of Indigent 

NEW YORK---A grant of $1,000,000.00 was announced to the NAACP 
Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) this week by the 

Ford Foundation. 

This money, which is the largest single contribution by a major 
foundation in the history of civil rights, will be used to 
establish a National Office for the Rights of the Indigent. 

Jack Greenberg, director-counsel of the LDF, will also serve 
as director-counsel of the new agency which will be head- 
quartered at 10 Columbus Circle. The LDF operates from the 
same address and the two staffs will be interchangeable when 

and if necessary. 

"If the law is to fulfill its role as a great binding force for 
civil peace in our society, it must be readily at the service of 
all, the poor as well as the rich," said McGeorge Bundy, 
president of the Foundation, in announcing the grant. 

"In strengthening the legal rights of those who are poor and 
those who lack full and fair opportunities, we strengthen the 

rights of all." 

"Respect for law will grow as the law respects the aspirations 
of those who seek to climb out of poverty and discrimination," 
Mr. Bundy added. 

The National Office for the Rights of the Indigent, which is now 
being set up, will be mainly concerned with the systematic 
testing of cases before courts and administrative agencies. 

Based on its own research and contacts with local offices provid- 
ing legal services for the poor, N.O.R.I. will take up cases 
likely to set national precedents in such fields as welfare 
benefits, public housing, landlord-tenant and creditor-debtor 
law, consumer protection, and special problems in criminal, 
family, and juvenile law. 

It will also handle significant cases referred by local-service 
offices and individual practitioners, or supply lawyers to help 
local offices in such cases. It will also provide funds to 
enable specialized lawyers to work on difficult cases, and help 
marshal volunteer services from law schools and law firms. 

N.O.R.I. is thus envisaged as a center of strategy and planning 
in the field of legal rights for the poor, as well as a national 
resource for the hundreds of offices now providing legal services 
for the poor, most of which must cope with heavy caseloads and 
lack adequate staff and funds to underwrite a precedent-setting 
case. 

In its research on poverty law, N.O.R.I. will work with the 
Center on Social Welfare Policy and Law at Columbia University 

School of Social Work. 

It will also conduct meetings with lawyers in large cities to 
deal with the law in relation to problems of the poor and 
techniques for developing issues in a coordinated program of 
litigation. 

(more) 



-2- November 23, 1966 

The LDF=-which is a separate independent organization from the 
NAACP-~just concluded its first national "Conference on Law and 
Poverty" at the University of Chicago. 

Two hundred attorneys, interested in legal problems of the poor, 
attended the three day meeting. 

Mr. Greenberg told the conferees that the LDF “has already 
become involved in cases seeking to make precedent on poverty 
law questions, just as we have been involved with civil rights 

cases over the years. 

“We now have welfare cases involving the man-in-the-house rule 
and the employable mother rule; housing cases involving the 
rights of public housing agencies to evict without a hearing." 

"We also have cases in which mothers of illegitimate children 
have been denied housing; in private housing we have litigation 
over the right of p»or persons to defend eviction proceedings 
without having to post a bond twice the amount of rent." 

"In criminal prosecutions," Mr. Greenberg continued, "there are 
suits over the right of an indigent to be released without bail 
where an affluent person would have been released because he had 
the money to put up bail," Mr. Greenberg enumerated. 

"In short," he concluded, "the problems of society in general 
begin to emerge. And they are not solely the problem of race, 

but of poverty." 

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