Georgia Negroes Ask to Control Their Local Schools

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President 

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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 
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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 
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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. 

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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.