The U.S. Supreme Court was petitioned this week to review the cases of 34 Negro students…

    PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
TO COLUMBUS CIRCLE + NEW YORK19,N.Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS oe THURGOOD MARSHALL 
Prosident Director-Counsel 

July 28, 1961 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The U. S. Supreme Court was petitioned this 

week to review the cases of 34 Negro students who conducted a lunch 

counter "sit-in" in Richmond, Va., last year. 

In a petition for certiorari filed July 22, attorneys for the 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund ask the nation's highest 

court to review an April 24, 1961 decision by the Supreme Court of 

Appeals of Virginia which upholds the students' convictions. 

The students, who attended Virginia Union University, demonstra- 

ted at Thalhimer's, one of Richmond's largest department stores, on 

February 20, 1960, and were arrested and fined $20 each. 

They had attempted to obtain service at two lunch counters, a 

soup bar and a restaurant reserved for white people. The store main- 

tains a lunch counter for Negroes in its basement. 

During the demonstration, which was entirely peaceful, the Negro 

group was refused service and asked to leave the store. When they 

remained, police were called and the students were arrested, 

Their cases were tried in a Richmond police court, resulting in 

conviction under a Virginia statute which makes it a crime not to get 

off private property when ordered to do so by an owner, or by someone 

acting for the owner. 

In subsequent appeals, the convictions were upheld by the 

Hustings Court in Richmond, and the aforementioned Virginia Supreme 

Court of Appeals. 

The Legal Defense Fund petition contends that the Virginia 

arrests were motivated by segregation, maintained by state law, and 

‘constituted state enforcement of racial discrimination contrary to 

the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth 

Amendment." 



-2- 

"Thalhimer's," the attorneys argue, “as a great department 

store, is part of the public life of the community. * * * In choosing 

to exclude Negroes from some of its restaurants, and to expel from 

the store all who protest against this humiliation, Thalhimer's 

followed a policy of public racial discrimination." 

The petition also maintains that the students, as citizens, have 

the right to express themselves "on topics connected with their rela- 

tions with the store," and that these expressions were at all times 

moderate and peaceful. 

The Legal Defense Fund attorneys also contend that the convictions 

"were obtained without clear evidence in any of the cases, of notice 

to petitioners of the authority, or even the identity, of the store 

employee who ordered them out." 

The petition attacks the proposition that "...a man, engaged in 

the exercise of his federally protected right of free expression, in 

a public place where he has been invited, must at the command of any 

casual stranger who neither identifies himself nor states his author- 

ity, either cease his expression and leave, or run the chance of 

successful criminal prosecution." 

Though the conviction of the students and their fines are still 

in effect, Thalhimer's, in January, 1961, dropped all color bars in 

all of its facilities, including lunch counters and restaurants. 

NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys for the petitioners are Martin 

A. Martin and Clarence W. Newsome, both of Richmond, Va.; Thurgood 

Marshall, Jack Greenberg, and James M. Nabrit, III, of New York City. 

Charles L. Black, Jr. of New Haven, Conn. and Elwood H. Chisolm of 

Washington, D. C, also assisted in the preparation of the petition. 

- 30 -