Statement by Jack Greenberg , Director-Counsel

    Statement by Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel 
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 
Americana Hotel, Tuesday, May 26, 1964, 12:00 Noon 

The late Senator Herbert H. Lehman had a life-long zeal for 

better educational opportunities for minority group youth. 

Desirous of creating a lasting and meaningful memorial to this 

basic concern of the late Senator, his family, through the Carol 

Buttenwieser Loeb Foundation and the Adele and Arthur Lehman 

Foundation, has established the Herbert Lehman Education Fund with 

an initial grant of $60,000. 

The Herbert Lehman Education Fund will be administered by the 

NAACP Legal Defense Fund under direction of Dr. John W. Davis, 

former president of West Virginia State College and Director of 

the Department of Teacher Information and Security of the Fund. 

This is the first public announcement of this program. 

The Lehman Education Fund seeks to promote good-will and 

understanding through education by providing scholarships and 

financial assistance to students to enter desegregated schools, 

colleges and universities. It seeks also to inform Negro parents 

of opportunities for their children to attend newly desegregated 

elementary and high schools. 

The program, after a brief experimental phase, has just 

commenced functioning on the elementary and secondary levels. We 

are about to launch the higher education phase for the forthcoming 

school year. 

Perhaps the best way to illustrate this program is by giving 

you some idea of the responsibilities of Miss Betty Stevens, our 

southern school coordinator who joined our staff in February of 

this year. 

Miss Stevens visits southern Negro communities which request 

her services through local civil rights organizations or through 

the 120 cooperating attorneys of the Legal Defense Fund. 

Her job is one of community organization. She informs Negro 

families of their right to attend schools desegregated by court 

actions we have won. She publicizes enrollment dates, assists in 

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~»7 — Statement by Jack Greenberg (Cont'd) 2, 

filling out application forms, helps allay fears that parents may 

have that their child will be the only Negro child in a newly 

desegregated school. Her task is made difficult by the fact that 

the conventional means of communication: radio, TV and press, 

are invariably denied for obvious reasons. 

She works through church and community groups...organizes door- 

to-door teams...makes mailings...and arranges for sessions to 

explain the mechanics of school application and transfer. 

These procedures stress to Negro parents, of elementary and 

secondary school youngsters, the value of nonsegregated education. 

She attempts to show to 

* Negro parents how their children are being shortchanged 

as matriculants in inferior and segregated schools; 

* how segregation curtails the Negro child's motivation to 

study and learn; 

* she seeks to encourage Negro parents to enroll or transfer 

their children to previously all-white schools. 

In short, this program seeks to fill the gap between court 

edict and the reality of follow-through in the daily lives of 

citizens. 

To date, Miss Stevens has conducted campaigns in the states of 

Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Virginia and Alabama. 

The dramatic results of Miss Stevens' work document, we think, 

the willingness of Negro citizens to take advantage of desegregation 

decisions if they are properly informed how to do so and know that 

their children will not be isolated as lone Negro students in for- 

merly all-white schools. 

She signed up 80 youngsters in Albany, Ga. in a single week; 

50 in Jackson, Tenn. in two weeks; and 100 in Richmond, Va. in two 

weeks. She has also launched campaigns in Tampa, Fla., Lynchburg, 

Va. and Huntsville, Ala. 

All these children will enter their new schools this September. 

The Lehman Fund will also allow us to work on a college level, 

by providing scholarships and financial assistance to make possible 

a flow of Negro and white students into desegregated colleges and 

universities. 

This phase of our program is still in formation. 

Shortly we will have two additional southern school coordinators 
Judging by the reponse we have been getting, we see a vast need for 
thig service which will be expanded as rapidly as funds allow.