Memorandum from Lani Guinier to Chambers, Schnapper, Hair, Fins, Wright, Reed, and Jones Re Voting Rights Alert 85-2

    10 Columbus Circle 
New York, N.Y. 10019 
JUdson 6-8397 

Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 
President 

Hon.-Francis E. Rivers 
Director-Counsel 

Jack Greenberg 

Statement by Jack Greenberg on HEW School Desegregation 
Guidelines, Tuesday, March 8, 1966, NAACP Legal Defense & Edi Fund 

The new guidelines' effectiveness in desegregating % 

public schools will depend fundamentally on whether the Adminds= ‘ 

tration is willing to make a powerful political commi tna Mee 

om manpower and funds to achieve desegregation. We have had ne 

encouragement in this area. 

Paper promises over the past decade have meant nothing 

because unfortunately local school officials have not hesitated 

to lies Enforcing the guidelines, even with a great commitment 

of appropriations and manpower, will nevertheless be difficult 

because of their complexity, permissiveness in many areas, and 

wide scope of exceptions. 

The exception which permits school boards which have been 

operating under court orders to continue as in the past, even 

though such orders fall far short of the guidelines, is 

extremely unfortunate, 

Millions of children in every major city in the South 

and many small towns and rural areas in which the Negro 

community is most active now are covered by court orders entered 

well before the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

Negroes will be paying a penalty for insistence upon 

their civil rights in the fifties and early sixties. The only 

remedy which the guidelines offer is that victims of 

segregation can go back to court. 

Beyond that, we fail to see specific standards for 

eliminating gerrymandering, selection of school sites for new 

construction or expansion of existing facilities, favorite 

tactics of districts that want to continue segregation far into 

the future, 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 RIverside 9-8487 So 



Statement by Jack Greenberg 
Tuesday, March 8, 1966 , 

We ate shocked by the admitted total failure to treat 

northern segregation erouiene: re 

We are happy, however, that finally the Depaeenent has © 

Tetreated from its position that it can do nothing about the 

wanton firing of Negro teachers and has adopted a regulation 

forbidding it. 

-30- 

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