Youth-Lawyer Partnership Hailed for Rights Triumphs
Press Release
June 26, 1964

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Press Releases, Loose Pages. Youth-Lawyer Partnership Hailed for Rights Triumphs, 1964. c531f77f-bd92-ee11-be37-6045bddb811f. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/a8eb6ed4-5d54-48dd-97df-9793ec0651a9/youth-lawyer-partnership-hailed-for-rights-triumphs. Accessed October 10, 2025.
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10 Columbus Circle New York, N.Y. 10019 JUdson 6-8397 NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund PRESS RELEASE t“ rr. Allan Knight Chalmers L Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg June 26, 1964 ounsel dsipctate Constance Baker Motley YOUTH - LAWYER PARTNERSHIP HAILED FOR RIGHTS TRIUMPHS Defense Fund Announces Summer Attack on Lawlessness WASHINGTON, D.C.--The unusual partnership of young people and lawyers "will push the country over the top on civil rights faster than anyone ever would guess it could be done," NAACP Legal Defense Fund Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg told the Youth Ban- quet of the national NAACP Convention here this week. At the same time, Mr. Greenberg revealed Legal Defense Fund plans to combat the growing wave of lawlessness on the part of Southern officials and citizens' groups. For the summer, the Defense Fund will have the services of W. Robert Ming and his Chicago law firm and of Charles P, Morgan Jr. of Washington. "Both are superb professionals in this struggle," Mr. Greenberg said. Attorney Ming is "one of the foremost civil rights lawyers and scholars in the country," Mr, Greenberg noted. Mr. Morgan was "the only white lawyer in Birmingham, Ala. with courage to speak up against the outrages of that city, and as a reward was driven from it," Mr. Greenberg further announced an increase in the Defense Fund staff to 17 full-time lawyers. He added that top law professors are conducting a series of seminars under Fund auspices "to sharpen the training of our 120 cooperating lawyers throughout the South, without whom there would be no such thing as civil rights in their communities. "Our goal is that when there is a job to be done, there should be a lawyer available to do it," Mr. Greenberg stated. (more) Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 Youth - Lawyer Partnership -2- June 26, 1964 Hailed for Rights Triumphs In his talk to the assembled young paople, Mr. Greenberg traced the pace-setting role of the law that led to the historic precedent of Brown yv. Board of Education in 1954, Lashing out at tokenism, Mr. Greenberg warmly praised the youths who, in seeing through the "hypocrisy of our community leaders," initiated the sit-ins and peaceful demonstrations in the '60's, "It is no accident that the sit-ins began in Greensboro, N.C, and rapidly spread through Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte and else- where in that state because those are the communities where token- ism was practiced as a fine art," he continued. Mr. Greenberg said that attorneys are now at work to secure enforcement of the precedents Legal Defense Fund suits have created over the years. He stressed the efforts to integrate schools and hospitals, and to defend demonstrators. Citing the recent U.S, Supreme Court reversal of 77 sit-in convictions, Mr, Greenberg emphasized that the law has repeatedly sanctioned peaceful demonstrating, and that "violence almost always has come from white supremacists. "The hallmark of a demonstration is what NAACP youth and the youth of other organizations were doing when they quietly sat at the lunch counters all over the South, or paraded on the state house grounds and made solemn witness against the greatest moral crime that exists in this country. "We will triumph if we keep it that way, as I am sure we will," Mr. Greenberg told the banquet meeting. canes