Memo on Projections for 1967

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MEMORANDUM 

FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, January 3, 1967 

TO: THE NEW YORK TIMES 

FROM: Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel 

NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) 

LDF PROJECTIONS FOR 1967 

THE OVERVIEW 

Legal Defense Fund lawyers in 1967 will engage in 

three types of efforts: 

(1) Enforcement of settled law, for example, the right 

to attend school or to be admitted to a hospital without regard 

to race. 

(2) Establishing new civil rights precedents in the 

courts. For example, we have cases seeking a court ruling that 

real estate boards are in interstate commerce under the anti- 

trust laws (Bratcher v. Akron Board of Realtors), which would 

put beyond question the constitutional basis for passage of a 

national fair housing bill; seeking enforcement of provisions of 

the urban renewal laws (Pulaski County, Tennessee petition, see 

N.Y. Times, Dec. _23, 1966), which will prevent them from being 

enforced, as too often they have, as "Negro removal" programs; 

continuing a campaign which seeks to persuade the courts to outlaw 

capital punishment for rape in the southern states where the 

penalty is applied with unequal incidence upon Negroes (Maxwell v. 

Bishop now pending in the Supreme Court); pushing through the 

courts law suits enforcing Title VII (the Eq Employment 

Opportunity provision) of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to clarify | 



(a\ 

it by judicial interpretation so that it can be used effective- 

ly. 

(3) Launching a new legal campaign to make precedents 

in the courts on issues of poverty law, such as welfare, slum 

housing, public housing, consumer frauds, migrant labor, and 

the rights of the indigent in criminal prosecutions. 

1. Enforcement of existing rights 

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 

on December 29 handed down a decision in seven key lawsuits 

seven months after argument, which establishes the foundation 

for next year's school desegregation litigation. School cases 

in the Fifth Circuit have been at a virtual standstill while 

lawyers waited for its pronouncement in these lawsuits. The 

Court held that court ordered desegregation plans must measure 

up to standards prescribed in the desegregation guidelines of 

the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. 

Every major city in the South is. under a court order and 

Many small towns and rural areas are under court orders as well. 

These orders generally require less than HEW has prescribed. 

the 

a court order 

We now will reopen most of our 175 schoo 



While the school, hospital, and employment issues re 

the subject of the largest number of lawsuits, we will try to 

process as many of these kinds of cases as possible through 

administrative agencies, i.e., HEW and EEOC. Wholesale adminis-— 

trative implementation is the only way to do the total job 

effectively. Unfortunately, inadequacy of appropriations for 

federal enforcement throws too heavy a burden on the private 

civil rights lawyer, which for practical purposes means the 

Legal Defense Fund. 

2S The Fund is trying to make precedents in the courts on 

a number of civil rights issues and poverty law issues which 

often overlap. 

(a) The principal stated opposition to the Fair Housing 

Bill of 1966 was Senator Dirksen's claim 

fed
 

fe)
 

to be unconstitutional. While it is generally recognized that 

in substance the opposition was based upon what many believed 

to be the unpopularity of the substantive proposal, many public 

officials find it unrespectable to take thet position. A good 

deal of the opposition was translated into constitutional jargon. 

Before the Fair Housing Bill issue arose, the Fund filed an 

anti-trust suit a 

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ly dispose of any constitutional pretext as a ground for opposing 

federal Fair Housing legislation. 

(b) The new year will see formal litigation, for the 

first time, against local public housing authorities which prac- 

tice discrimination in the relocation of Negroes in connection 

with urban renewal projects. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 

has already received a complaint from us, calling for the halt of 

urban renewal funds for Pulaski, Tennessee. That complaint is 

the last administrative’ step before litigation. 

This will be a national drive. The suits will fall 

along two general lines: those which seek to halt entire urban 

renewal projects, and those which seek to enforce non-discriminatory 

relocation of former residents. 

(c) The case of William L. Maxwell, a 26 year old Arkansas 

Negro sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman provides our 

first opportunity to utilize before the Supreme Court results of 

a mammoth survey on capital punishment for Negroes in 225 counties 

in eleven southern states. 

or will 

whether 

in violation of the 



is entered, the judge has full control over the sentence and may 

give anything from probation to death. The first decision as 

to life or death comes from the jury or judge- It is, in any event, 

apparent that southern states have greatly reduced the risk of 

death for the white defendant-whereas the Negro defendant still 

runs a high risk of hearing the death penalty pronounced against 

him. 

(a) Employment cases constitute a major enforcement problem. 

The Fund now has 30 pending, virtually all such cases now in the 

courts. The campaign cannot really move éffectively, however, until 

numerous ambiguities in the statute are resolwed in the courts. 

We now have cases pending on such questions as: What constitutes 

exhaustion of all administrative remedies before the EEOC? What 

is the proper time, following a finding of rea sonable cause by the 

Commission, within which a case must be filed in court? What is 

a proper class action under Title VII? What is the obligation of 

a federal court to appoint a lawyer for a person who complains of 

employment bias? The defendants in such cases are major steel, 

textile, tobacco, and other manufacturing and retail corporations. 

The principal substantive issue which the courts have not yet grappled 



3. The National Office for the Rights of the Indigent 

The Ford Foundation has made a grant of $1,000,000 to the 

Legal Defense Fund to establish a National Office for the Rights 

of the Indigent, whose principal task will be to make precedents 

in the courts dealing with poverty law. We will work in conjunctior 

with private practitioners, neighborhood law offices, and law 

schools throughout the country on this program. The Fund already 

has cases pending, some of which are now in the Supreme Court of 

the United States dealing with such questions. In Thorpe v. 

Housing Authority of the City of Durham, which the Supreme Court 

already has agreed to hear, the issue is whether a public housing 

authority may evict a tenant without giving any reason or a 

hearing on the cause of eviction. It probably will be argued 

in March. The issue is important because the type tenure of 

tenants in public housing adds elements of uncertainty to their 

poverty ridden lives that makes them even more difficult. 

We have also pending on petition for writ of certiorari 

before the Supreme Court a case that presents the question of 

whether in order to contest an eviction proceeding in the State 

exists in other states), a tenant must 

week rent was not permitted 



is cut off if the mother has a steady relationship with a man); 

the employable mother rule (Aid to Dependent Children is cut 

off if the mother can obtain employment ) ; and other issues in 

the administration of welfare laws which we believe contribute 

to the deterioration of impoverished fam 

We are also planning litigation dealing with excessive 

consumer credit rates, consumer frauds, the protection of migrant 

workers, and the rights of indigents to treatment in criminal 

proceedings that well to do defendants can afford, e.g., release 

on bail. Attention will be given to issues affecting Spanish 

speaking Americans and American Indians. 

4. Lawyes Training Institutes 

The number of civil rights lawyers in the South is extremely 

limited. The normal post-graduate means of professional develop- 

ment, taken for granted for white attorneys in the South, are 

denied Negroes and in any event do not involve instruction in 

civil rights. In 1966 the LDF worked with 200 cooperatin « 

oO ns < be
 

° oO o nationwide conference on legal s 

the University of Chicago Law School 

Pa) school 



senses is comparable to the civil rights law of the mid-1930's. 

Legal problems of the poor which are widespread or national 

in scope require a national strategy. Recognizing that legal 

problems will be similar throughout the country, whether because 

of considerations of federal law or because of similar social 

conditions, we must make plans and furnish legal weapons to 

solve problems through the courts. The Enstitutes will be an 

important vehicle of this program. 

The LDF, which has brought more civil rights cases to 

the nation's highest court than any other private agency, 

anticipates action during 1967 on the following cases which 

are pending certiorari and/or argument: 

Name of Case 

McLaurin v. City of Greenville, Mississippi. Pending 

on application for certiorari. 

Question Presented 

Can the state prosecute a citizen for making a speech on 

the grounds that the group listening to it might become 

disorderly? 

Name of Case 



Question Presented 

Can the state deny the defendant in an eviction proceeding, 

the right to make a defense because he does not have the 

money to post bond? 

Name of Case 

Walker v. Birmingham. Certiorari granted. To be argued 

in February. 

Question Presented 

Do the contempt convictions of Revs. King and Walker and 

other Negro petitioners for alleged disobedience of an 

injunction violate the First Amendment and due process and 

equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment? 

Name of Case 

Thorpe v. Housing.Authority of the City of Durham. Certiorari 

granted. To be argued probably in March. 

uestion Presented 

project without a hearing and without reason? 

Name of Case 

Maxwell v. Bishop. Awaiting action on petition of certiorari. 



F Today 

successor to Thurgood Marshall, now 

he United States. He heads a staff of 20 

lawyers and 400 cooperating attorneys working in every part of the 

nation. Thi 

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 » segregated schools--the same poor- 

mic outcasts of their 

southern Negro teachers 

ig partial school desegregation. 

nessee, and Virginia. 

tory practices against a Negro patients or