'Crisis in Justice' Draws Over 2500 to LDF Institute - Earl Warren, Honored, Sees Nation in Worst Crisis in Living Memory

    President 
Hon, Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEA Director: Counsel 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

Director, Public Relations 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
May 23, 1970 

‘CRISIS IN JUSTICE' DRAWS 
OVER 2500 TO LDF INSTITUTE 

Earl Warren, Honored, Sees Nation 
In Worst Crisis In Living Memory 

Program To Double Nation's Black Lawyers Announced 

NEW YORK, N.Y.---On the 16th anniversary of the Supreme Court's historic 
school desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education, more than 
2500 persons gathered here to honor former Chief Justice Earl Warren and 
explore "The Crisis in American Justice." 

The May 15 institute, sponsored by the NAACP Legal Defense and 
Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF), which brought the Brown case to the high 
court, featured such distinguished participants as Richmond, Va. City 
Councilman Henry L. Marsh III, Leon Panetta, David Hilliard, Marian 
Wright Edelman, Clifford Alexander, Senator George McGovern, Arthur A. 
Fletcher and many others in a day of speeches and roundtable discussions. 

LDF Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg took the occasion to announce 
the launching of a program which will result in doubling the number of 
black lawyers in the nation through scholarship grants, summer jobs 
for law students, internship in LDF offices for the post-graduate year, 
and a three-year subsidy to help the lawyer begin practice in an area 
where he is most needed. 

In support of this and other programs, the LDF will endeavor to 
raise $16,250,000 over the next three years. 

A capacity audience at the institute luncheon gave Mr. Warren 
standing ovations both before and after his talk, which focused on 
"a divisiveness in our society" that has contributed to the most serious 
crisis "within the memory of living Americans." 

The basic causes of this crisis, he maintained, are our neglect in 
achieving the ideal of equality embodied in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and our failure to adequately enforce the Fourteenth Amendment 
guarantees of due process and equal protection of the laws. 

Richmond City Councilman Henry L. Marsh III, who also spoke at the 
luncheon, told the gathering that America will live up to its principles 
“only if large numbers of Americans want this to happen. 

"The major group to be won is the middle Americans--those who live 
in suburbia--and who work for the master exploiters. 

"Only when this group shifts," he continued, “will the master 
exploiters be forced to permit the radical changes in the system 
necessary for full equality." 

The panel discussions dealt with the school crises--north and south, 
crime and race, equal employment, freedom of the press, the economic 
squeeze on black families, and the ordering of national priorities. 

Co-convenors of the institute were Senator Edward W. Brooke and 
former U.S, Attorney General Ramsey Clark. 

=30- 

SB 25 

115 | 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Charles J. Hayes