The Supreme Court Ruling on Sit-Ins

    10 Columbus Circle 

New York, N.Y. 10019 

JUdson 6-8397 

NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational F und 
PRESS RELEASE 
President 

lan Knight Chalmers June 22, 1964 
Director-Counsel 

Jack Greenberg 
Associate Counsel 

Constance Baker Motley 

MEMORANDUM 

TO: Working Press 

FROM: Jesse DeVore 

Director, Public Information 
Dupont Plaza Hotel 
202- HU 3-6000 

SUBJECT : The Supreme Court Ruling on Sit-Ins 

Attached is the press release prepared when our sit-in cases were 

filed with the Supreme Court last August. We reissue it now in hopes 

that it will provide useful background information. 

The cases were argued by Jack Greenberg, Legal Defense Fund 

director-counsel (Maryland); Constance Baker Motley, associate-counsel 

(South Carolina) and Matthew J. Perry, cooperating attorney (South 

Carolina). 

TO: Editors (August 27, 1963) 

FROM: Jesse DeVore, Jr. 

Director of Public Information 

The attached release covers what should be an historic case 
in the whole area of public accommodations. It is filed on the eve 
of the March on Washington. 

There are several unique factors in this brief: 

(1) The pin pointing of state responsibility in the maze of 
arguments on private property rights, etc. 

(2) Assistance of four noted legal scholars in preparing 
the brief, including Richard R. Powell, 
leading authority on property, 

(3) Citing of attitudes of 14 other nations. 

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. is now 
defending 7,500 demonstrators in 124 separate actions. 

This is the third year that the Legal Defense Fund, a sep- 
arate corporation, has taken sit-in cases to the Supreme Court. 

Aah 

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 Ss 



Noted Scholar on Property Riohts Backs Sit-Inners 

WASHINGTON---Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
today filed a public accommodations brief in the U.S. Supreme Court 
which, if successful, would vindicate thousands of sit-in demonstra- 
tors, 

In a unique legal move, a battery of 18 attorneys seeks to make 
southern states take an affirmative obligation to protect Negroes 
protesting laws and customs brought about by state action. 

The brief points out the improbability of punishment for sit-in 
type conduct in any of the Western European democracies or in England 
or any of the British Commonwealth nations. 

This brief is a combination of three cases involving student 
sit-in demonstrations, two in South Carolina, the other in Maryland. 

Legal Defense Fund attorneys further point out that the states 
have affirmative responsibility to protect equal rights of citizens 
and argue that the southern states have not met this responsibility 
when they allow lunch counter segregation. 

The brief also urges that constitutional prohibitions against 
racial discrimination must be applied to the public life of the 
community, but need not apply to the private and personal lives of 
citizens. 

Three patterns, by which southern states (South Carolina and 
Maryland in this instance) deny Negroes equal justice, are summarized: 

* State courts and public officials “are employed to enforce a 
scheme of racial discrimination originating in a nominally ‘private’ 
choice,” 

* "Where a nominally 'private' act or scheme of racial discrim- 
ination is performed...because of the influence of custom, and where 
such custom has been, in turn, in significant part, created or main- 

tained by formal law," 

* Where laws are maintained that place "a higher value on a 
narrow property claim" than it does on the claim of Negroes “to move 
about free from inconvenience and humiliation of racial discrimina- 
tion.” 

The latter is one of the new points of law that hopefully will 
be decided by the court. 

The Legal Defense Fund is urging that southern states have im- 
properly decided to back store owners who cite local custom and state 
laws calling for jim crow treatment of Negroes. 

The attorneys said "maintaining a ‘narrow’ property right, which 
consists of nothing but the exclusion of Negroes" should not be allow- 
ed “to justify a state in knowing support of public discrimination." 

The brief further stated that "it is scandalous that states im- 
pose the burdens of state citizenship on Negroes, and benefiting from 
the imposition on them of the duties of federal citizenship, not only 
should fail to protect them in their right to be treated equally in 
fully public places, but should instead place the weight of law be- 
hind their himiliation." 

It was stressed in the brief that “the records in these cases 
affirmatively establish that no private or personal associational 
interest is at stake." 



Noted Scholar on Property Rights Backs Sit-Inners 

"This is obvious on the face of it: the relation involved is 
that of a restaurant-keeper to a casual customer." 

The attorneys continued saying that “the events and the issues 
in these cases are in the fully public rather than in private life. 

"A restaurant is a publ place, contrasting totally with the 
home and other traditional citadels of privacy." 

Moving to the ch e that the sit~ins students provoked breach 
of the peace, the brief id "there was no showing of any act of vio- 
lence and there was no showing of any act 'likelytto produce violence." 

The Legal Defanse Fund lawyers took exception to the theory that 
the "possibility that the mere presence of N s in a place custom- 
arily frequented only by white persons is punishable as a thzeat to 
peace," 

They quickly added that such could not be so, due to the equal 
protection clause of the 14th Amendment. 

Joining the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys were four inter- 
nationally noted legal scholars: Professor-Emeritus Richard R, Powell, 
Columbia University Law School, and author of the widely acclaimed and 
used treatise "Real Property.” 

He was also reported on property for the American Law Institute's 
"Restatement of Proverty. Long recognized as a leading expert in this 
legal speciality, Dz. Fowell now teaches at Hastings College of Law, 
San Francisco, California. 

Also assisting was Professor Hans Smit of Columbia University, 
a Member of the Bar, Su me Court of the Netherlands; Professor 
Charles L. Black, the y R,. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence, Yale 
University; and Louis L. Pollak, Professor of Law, Yale University. 

NAACP Legal Defense lawyers included Jack Greenberg, Constance 
Raker Mo y, James M. Nabrit, III, Derrick A, Bell, Leroy D. Clark, 
Michael Meltsner and Inez V, Smith, all of New York. 

Also Juanita Jackson Mitchell, and Tucker R. Dearing, Maryland 
ease L. Rauh and John Silard, Washington, D. C.; William T. Coleman, 

» Pennsylvania; Matthew J. Perry and Lincoln C, Jenkins, South 
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