Memorandum re: LDF Takes Three Test Cases to High Court Asking End to Southern School Bias; Background on the LDF's Case Challenging the Constitutionality of the Death Penalty

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President 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Diets sae 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. GE ares 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson $-8397 es i Gee 

FOR RELEASE : 
TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY 

April 2 & 3, 1968 

MEMORANDUM 

TO: WASHINGTON PRESS 

RE: LDF TAKES THREE TEST CASES 
TO HIGH COURT ASKING END 
TO SOUTHERN SCHOOL BIAS 

QUESTION PRESENTED: Can a southern school board use a "freedom of 
choice" desegregation plan where and when 
evidence shows that such a plan perpetuates 
the dual racial system and that other plans 
will produce substantially more desegregation? 

WASHINGTON--~Argument will be presented before the U.S. Supreme Court 

here on Tuesday and Wednesday in cases brought to halt evasion of 

integration by southeru school boards. 

Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 

(LDF) will present arguments to the High Court in cases arising from 

New Kent County, Virginia; Jackson, Tennessee; and Gould, Arkansas. 

The cases are of broad national concern. 

It is generally believed that they are the most important school 

cases before the Court since 1954. 

"During the 1966-67 school year, a full 12 years after Brown v. 

Board of Education (1954 Supreme Court school integration ruling), 

more than 90 per cent of the almost three million Negro pupils in 

the 11 southern states still attended schools which were over 95 per 

cent Negro," the LDF asserts. 

The tactic of adopting a “freedom of choice" plan, used by the 

majority of southern school boards, is under attack in all three 

cases, although the Jackson, Tennessee case also involves gerry- 

mandering of school district lines. 

LDF lawyers will stress that each of the three school districts 

involved in litigation, like thousands of others across the South, 

uses the "freedom of choice" plan. 

Under this plan, each student is free to assign himself to any 

school in his district. This has become the pattern across the South 

the attorneys assert, despite the fact that assignment solely on | 

geographic grounds would achieve integration. | 

More than 80 per cent of the Negro children in the three dis- 

tricts under appraisal attend all-Negro schools because white 

students are allowed to pick their own schools, the LDF maintains. 

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THE OVERVIEW 

These cases present an issue of paramount importance regarding 

the desegregation of public schools throughout the southern and 

border states. 

More particularly, the question is whether in the mid-sixties, 

a full generation of public school children after Brown, school 

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rs, ee 

boards may continue to adopt so-called "freedom of choice" desegre- 
gation plans which tend to perpetuate segregated schools. 

The question is more acute in light of the fact that evidence 
shows that there are other methods which would bring about quicker 
integration. 

For example, in all three cases, different assignment methods 
would have resulted in disestablishment of racial segregation: 1) in 
Gould, which has two schools, if one were designated an elementary 
school and the other designated a high school and students were 
assigned on the basis of grade, complete integration would be achieved; 
2) in New Kent, if students were assigned to the schools nearest their 
homes, complete integration would be achieved; 3) in Jackson, if the 
junior high school zones were drawn differently, complete integration 
could be achieved. 

The most marked and widespread innovation in school administratia 
in the southern and border states in the last fifty years has been the 
change in pupil assigninent method in the years since Brown, from a 
geographic attendance zone system to the so-called “freedom of choice." 

Prior to Brown, systems in the North and South, with rare excep- 
tion, assigned pupils by means of zone lines drawn around each school. 

Under an attendence zone system, unless a transfer request is 
granted for some special reason, stude=-s living in the zone of the 
school serving their grade would norma>.iy attend that school. 

Prior to the relatively recent controversy concerning segregation 
in large urban systems, assignment by geographic attendance zones was 
viewed as the soundest method of pupil assignment. 

This was not without good reason; for placing children in the 
school nearest their home would often eliminate the need to fvrnish 
transportation, encourage the use of schools as community centers 
and generally facilitate the task of planning for an ever-expanding 
school population. 

In states where separate systems were required by law, the zone 
assignment method was implemented by drawing around each white school 
attendance zones designed to accommodate whites in the area, and 
around each Negro school attendance zones for Negroes. 

In many areas, as in the cases before the Court, where the entire 
county was a zone, lines overlapped because of the lack of residential 
segregation. 

Thus, in most southern school districts, school assignment was 
largely a function of three factors: race, proximity, and convenience 

The Alternative 

After Brown, southern school boards were faced with the problem 
of "effectuating a transition to a racially non-discriminatory system" 

The easiest method was to convert the dual attendance zones, 
drawn according to race, into single attendance zones, without regard 
to race, so that assignment of all students would depend only on 
proximity and convenience. 

With rare exception, however, southern school boards rejected 
this relatively simple method in favor of the complex and discrimina- 
tory procedures of pupil placement laws and, when those were invali- 
dated, switched to what has in practice worked the same way--the 
so-called "freedom of choice." 

Local Circumstances 

Jackson, Tennessee is a medium-sized city in the midwestern part 
of the state with a school system of almost 8,000 students, about 60% 

(more) 



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white-and 40% Negro. This case will be argued by LDF Associate 
Counsel James M. Nabrit III of New York City. 

New Kent is a rural county in eastern Virginia, east of Richmond. 
There is no residential segregation; yet a dual school system exists. 
The case will be argued by LDF Cooperating Attorney Samuel W. Tucker 

of Richmond, Va. 

Gould, Arkansas has a small population of 3,000 with a school 
enrollment of 879. Two school complexes are maintained about ten 
blocks apart, one white, the other Negro. The case will be argued 
by LDF Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg of New York City. 

EDITOR'S NOTE: The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 
(LDF), which has more cases before the U.S. Supreme Court than any 
other private agency, is a separate and distinct organization from 
the NAACP. Its correct designation is NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, Inc., which is shortened to LDF. 



NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE 

. ; Lorn id 

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efense “lund 

AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 

leg 
= Director, Pub 

Jesse DeVore, Ir. 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 © JUdson 6-8397 NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

}oV April 3, 1968 

FROM: Jesse DeVore, Director of Public Information 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, CONTACT: Attorney Jack Himmelstein 

Bourbon Orleans Hotel 
Telephone: 523-5251 

BACKGROUND ON THE LEGAL DEFENSE FUND'S CASE 
CHALLENGING THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE DEATH PENALTY 

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is 
presently representing, or assisting private attorneys who are repre- 
senting, more than half of the 400 men on the death rows of America. 

The LDF involvement grew from years of experience with death cases 
in the South where Negroes had received the death penalty for the rape 
of white women. Of the 400 persons executed for the crime of rape 
since 1930, 90 per cent have been Negroes; yet this figure alone was 
not considered proof of racial discrimination in the courts. 

The LDF sponsored an extensive sociological survey during the 
summer of 1965 of 2,500 rape cases in the 11 southem states, involving 
both white and Negro defendants, to determine objectively and scienti- 
fically where any factors other than racial discrimination could account 
for the high rate of death sentences for the Negroes convicted of raping 
white women. 

Results of this survey have been introduced into evidence in courts 
throughout the southern states. The Supreme Court of the United States, 
in one of the cases, has ruled in effect that the claims are worthy of 
careful consideration in the courts. 

As a result of this experience the LDF has become familiar with 
the procedures which underlie the administration of capital punishment 
in the United States, both for Negroes and whites. These procedures, 
the LDF believes, result in the haphazard and arbitrary imposing of 
the death penalty. 

The LDF learned that, after the routine state appeal had ended, 
the vast majority of these condemned men were left penniless, fre- 
quently friendless and lawyerless in the face of death. 

The LDF, therefore, took action (and will continue to do so) on 
behalf of men of all races on death rows across the country, challenging 
under the Federal Constitution what it feels are egregious failures in 
the administration of capital punishment. 

LDF Legal Arguments in Louisiana 

1. Stacked, or Death Oriented Juries 

That persons opposed to capital punishment (now 50 per cent of the 
population) are excluded from service on the guilt and penalty deter- 
minations of capital juries, leaving the decision in the hands of the 
less enlightened, more vengeful elements of society. This claim is 
under consideration in the Supreme Court of the United States in two 
cases. 

2. Juries Not Instructed _as_to Factors to Consider in Sentencing 

‘That the law provides no legal direction for the choice between 
life and death, leaving the decision in the unfettered and arbitrary 
discussion of this jury. 

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LDF BACKGROUNDER =2= 

ic } Cruel _and Unusual Puni 

That the death penalty, when considered in light of evolving 
standards of decency, has become cruel and unusual punis 
today's society. 

4. Single v. Split Jury 

The determinations of both guilt and penalty are, uniquely to 
capital cases, made at the same time by the same jury forcing the 
defendant either to refrain from placing evidence in mitigation on 
the penalty question before the jury or giving up the privilege against 
self-incrimination on the guilt issue In other words, he is denied a 
fair trial, on either the, guilt issue or the penalty issue or both. 

5. Denial of the Right of Effective Counsel 

That. Louisiana law provides for court-appointed attorneys to 
represent indigents for the purpose of trial and initial appeal, but 
there is no provision for appointment of counsel to aid in preparation 
of petitions for further appeals which are possible to avoid the death 
penalty, including administrative proceedings seeking executive clemency. 

The focal points of the LDF litigation have been in California and 
Florida. Courts in these states have issued class stays to all of the 
50 men on death row in Florida and the 72 men on death row in California, 
procedure unique to capital litigation. 

Executions have Mase halted in cases pending in Alabama, Colorado, 
Georgia, Louisiana, cth Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, 

Virginia, and oes sy seg with LDF counsel traveling on a moment's 
notice to stop executions where assistance is sought. (No execution 
has been carried out in the United States in nine months.) 

During this nine-month period--when Florida and California efforts 
won impressive results--through the present, action has been taken on 
behalf of more than 170 persons. 

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NOTE: The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is a 
separate and distinct organization from the NAACP. Its correct desig- 
nation is NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., which is 
shortened to LDF.