U.S. Supreme Court to Decide Case Challenging Macon Park Segregation

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NAACP 

Legal Defense and Educational Fu a 
PRESS RELEASE 
President 

Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers FOR RELEASE 
Director-Counsel Noon, Wednesday 

Jack Greenberg September 15, 1965 

U. S. SUPREME COURT TO DECIDE CASE 
CHALLENGING MACON PARK SEGREGATION 

WASHINGTON, D. C.--The United States Supreme Court this fall will 

consider a challenge to a segregation policy at a Macon, Ga., park. 

Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund 

today filed a brief on behalf of five Macon Negroes who are seeking 

to overturn lower court rulings that use of the facility may be 

limited to whites. 

The park, known as Baconsfield, was established in 1911 by the 

will of the late Georgia senator, Augustus Octavius Bacon. 

Sen. Bacon left the land to the City of Macon and established 

a trust fund to pay costs of administering the park. The will stipu- 

lated that the park be used only by whites. 

A board of managers appointed by the Macon mayor and council 

administered the park according to the will's racial restrictions 

until the spring of 1963 when Negroes began using the facility. 

After members of the park board of managers filed suit seeking 

enforcement of the racial restrictions, the city of Macon, claiming 

it had no authority to enforce segregation, was allowed by the 

Georgia Superior Court to resign as trustees of the park. 

The court appointed three private citizens as trustees in place 

of the city, and held that it was proper for the trustees to bar 

Negroes from the park in accordance with the terms of the will. 

The Legal Defense Fund brief maintains that substitution of 

private individuals as park trustees instead of the city was done 

"for the invidious purpose of assuring continued segregation." 

(more ) 



U. S. Supreme Court to Decide Case -2- September 15, 1965 
Challenging Macon Park Segregation 

"The courts of Georgia enforced the will provision directing 

exclusion of Negroes in preference to a conflicting provision 

directing perpetual ownership by the city," the brief states. 

The civil rights lawyers also contend that the park is "in all 

respects a public facility and part of the public life of the com- 

munity," and as a charitable trust is subject to continuous state 

supervision and has certain privileges such as tex exemption. 

They argue, therefore, that despite terms of the will, segre= 

gating the park is a violation of the equal protection clause of 

the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Another contention is that state laws encouraged the senator 

to include the segregation clause in his will. 

Legal Defense Fund attorneys participating in the case are 

Jack Greenberg, Fund Director-Counsel; James M. Nabrit, III; 

Michael Meltsner; C. Stephen Ralston and Frank H. Heffron, all of 

the New York headquarters, and Donald L. Hollowell, William H. 

Alexander and Howard Moore, Jr., all of Atlanta. 

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