Appeals Court Hears Detroit Housing Bias Base

    PRESS RELEASE ® e@ 

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

ARTHUR B. SPINGARN oa THURGOOD MARSHALL 
President Director and Counsel 

WALTER WHITE ROBERT L. CARTER 
Secretory Assistant Counsel 

ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS ARNOLD De MILLE 
Treasurer Press Relations 

Apr#l 20, 1955 

APPEALS COURT HEARS DETROIT HOUSING BIAS CASE 

CINCINNATI, April 21,--The U. S, Court of Appeals for the 6th 

Circuit at Cincinnati, Ohio, will hear argument of the lawyers for the 

Detroit Housing Commission today on why a federal injunction order 

restraining the Commission from discriminating against Negroes should 

be modified, and also why the Commission needs time in which to bring 

about gradual integration of public housing projects. 

The injunction order enjoining racial segregation in the Detroit 

public housing projects was issued on June 21, 195 by Federal District 

Judge Arthur Lederle, but upon application of the lawyers for the 

Detroit Housing Commission, final injunction was stayed pending an 

appeal to the U. S. Court of Appeals, 

The Detroit Housing Commission argued that the U. S. Supreme Court 

had not formulated its final decrees in the school segregation cases 

spelling out the methods by which desegregation should be brought about 

in those cases, The stay was sought on the ¢round that the district 

court should have waited until the decrees were handed down. 

The injunction was won by NAACP attorneys representing the Negro 

families, 

The suit was brought on June 5, 1950, by NAACP attorneys repre- 

senting Negro families who had been refused admission to certain public 

housing projects because of the racial segregation policy enforced by 

the Detroit Housing Commission, 

The district court indicated immediately after the filing of the 

complaint that it was of the opinion that racial segregation could not 

be enforced in public housing. 

However, the court pointed out at the time it issued its final 

injunction that it gave the Detroit Housing Commission every opportun- 

ity to voluntarily change its segregation policy, The final injunction 

enjoined discrimination in the selection of tenants, the maintenance 

of separate lists of eligible Negro and white occupants and the main-~ 

tenance of separate public housing projects. 



se ® ® 

In 1952, following a preliminary hearing in the case, the Commis- 

sion adopted a resolution which purported to do away with the racial 

segregation policy in public housing. Pursuant to this resolution, two 

new public housing projects which opened in Detroit since 1952, the 

Douglass Homes and the Jeffries Homes, have been integrated and a third 

project presently under construction is designated for interracial 

occupancy. However, four older permanent projects remain segregated. 

With respect to integration of these older projects, the Detroit 

Housing Commission contends that it is necessary to first condition 

both the adult occupants of public housing and the home owners in areas 

surrounding public housing units. Such conditioning is more difficult 

and more acute in housing than in schools where the integration of 

children alone is involved, the Commission argued. 

NAACP attorneys argue that it is not necessary to grant time in 

which to integrate since integration in public housing is necessarily 

gradual, Eligible Negro families cannot be admitted to vacancies in 

white projects any faster than vacancies occur in these projects. 

The attorneys argue that the district court has already allowed the 

Detroit Housing Commission four years in which to integrate. They say 

also that the district court has given consideration to the possibility 

of racial conflicts arising from integration of public housing projects 

and from his personal knowledge of the situation has concluded that race 

relations in Detroit have advanced to the point where it is apparent 

that Negroes are able to move not only into white projects without fric- 

tion, as in the case of Douglas and Jeffries Homes, but are also able to 

move into formerly all-white private residential areas without conflict. 

Attorneys for the Negro families in this case are Thurgood Marshall 

and Constance Baker Motley of NAACP Legal Defense staff in New York, 

and Francis M. Dent, Willis M. Graves and Edward Turner of the Detroit 

Branch of the NAACP, 
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