Georgia Negroes Ask to Control Their Local Schools
Press Release
December 13, 1968

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Press Releases, Volume 5. Georgia Negroes Ask to Control Their Local Schools, 1968. 85608f2e-b992-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/df021333-94a4-4c33-b653-d72261dcd6c0/georgia-negroes-ask-to-control-their-local-schools. Accessed July 01, 2025.
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156 Pe ¥, Q | 1:02 ; President |= 4 ie Hon. Francis E. Rivers PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel egal efense hand FOR IMMEDIATE PREgS HEEMAGE NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. DECEMBER 13, 19¢Bjccse DeVore, Jr. es : | 10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 seeacler | NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 GEORGIA NEGROES ASK TO | CONTROL THEIR LOCAL SCHOOLS LDF Attorneys Go To Supreme Court AUGUSTA, GEORGIA--The LDF today, in an unprecedented move, asked | the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a Georgia school board selection system and pave the way for Negroes to play an effective role in shaping policies and practices affecting the education | of their children. Attorneys for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, | Inc. (LDF) charge that the school board selection system in | Taliaferro County, Georgia, near Augusta, has for 50 years denied Negroes representation on the county school board. Under the system, an elected circuit judge appoints a jury g commission which in turn selects grand jurors. These grand jurors select the school board members. That school board members must be “upright and intelligent" voters in the county and own property is the only state criteria for their selection. In the jurisdictional statement filed in the Supreme Court today, LDF attorneys labeled the selection procedure arbitrary and said that until a suit was filed, members of the board have been selected only if they were white. A 72 year-old Negro man with a third grade education recently became the first Negro to serve on the grand jury, despite the fact that Negro business and professional people reside in the county, LDF attorneys pointed out. The attorneys contend that Negroes, who make up the majority of the population and whose children are the only ones attending the secondary and elementary schools in the county, have been denied their desire to organize a parent-teacher association or the right to express their grievances to the school board. White children from the county either attend private schools or segregated public schools outside the area. Whites began to send their children to other counties when The Department of Health Education and Welfare ordered desegregation of the county in 1964. While LDF attorneys say the case is without direct precedent, they hoJé@ that the Georgia school selection system violates the rights of Negroes guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th Amend- ments of the Constitution. Key attorneys in the case are First Assistant-Counsel Michael Meltsner of LDF's New york office and cooperating attorney Howard Moore of Atlanta. -30- NOTE; Though the LDF was once a part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) it now isa separate organization, even though the initials are re- AES tained in its title.