Supreme Court Hears "Freedom Rider" Case

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New York, N.Y. 10019 
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Legal Defense and Educational Fund 
PRESS RELEASE 

President 

Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers 
Director-Counsel 

Jack Greenberg 
ieseesare 

Const 
73 

Baker Motley 

SUPREME COURT HEARS ane 
“FREEDOM RIDER" C ASE ed 

WASHINGTON---Reversal of the breach of peace and unlawful assembly % 
convictions of 1] “Freedom Riders" was asked of the Supreme Court § ° %~. 
today by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. t H 

The Legal Defense Fund maintains that the convictions of the 
seven Negroes and four whites, several of whom are prominent 
leaders in the Civil Rights Movement, violate ithe dye ~" 
process clause of the 14th Amendment, 

There is no evidence of guilt, the Fund's brief asserted. 

These “Freedom Riders" were arrested on May 25th, 1961, in 
the Mont tgomery, Ala. bus terminal when they sat at the lunch counter 
seeking service, 

Louis H. Pollak, a member of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's 
Board of Directors, as well as its executive committee, argued in 
behalf of the Fund. 

Mr. Pollak, professor of Law at Yale University Law School, 
has served on the Fund's Board of Directors since 1960. 

Fund attorneys also assert that the statutes under which the 
"Freedom Riders" were prosecuted are vague and indefinite and 
therefore give no fair warning of punishable conduct. 

Fund attorneys further aggued that the "Freedom Riders" 
arrest and conviction violated the 14th Amendment quarantee of 
equal protection of the law, since state agents enforced racial 
discrimination. 

In addition, the Fund contended, the "Freedom Riders" were 
denied freedom of assembly, which is guaranteed by the lst 
Amendment. 

Further arguments in the Defense Fund brief pointed out the 
federal ban on discrimination in interstate travel facilities. 

The Civil Rights advocates also stressed the fact that a 
lower federal court -- though refusing to stop the Alabama 
prosecutions -- specifically noted that such action was designed 
to enforce racial segregation. 

The final contention of the Defense Fund brief was that the 
arrests and convictions violated the constitutional guarantee of 
due process, since the Alabama Guardsmen permitted the "Freedom 
Riders" to sit at the lunch counter, and then signalled for their 
arrest, 

wThe “Freedom Riders" were thus “entrapped" by state officials, 
Fund attorneys stated. 

At the time, they were being escorted by the Alabama National 
Guard, which had been assigned to protect them from an angry white 
crowd assembled across the street. 

(more) 

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



pee Supreme Court Hears oo 
Zz “Freedom Rider” Case 

At their initial trial, it was asserted that the presence of 
the crowd made it likely that their sitting at the lunch counter 
would provoke violence. The Guard officials, however; did not 

Among the parties in the case a. 
Fred Shuttlesworth, and Rev. Bernard Lee, all of Rev. Martin 
Luther King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. 

Also appealing is Rev. Wyatte@l. Walker, currently on leave 
from his SCLC post to work as vice president in charge of 
marketing for the Educational Heritage Foundation, a venture in 
publishing books on Negro history. 

Another defendant is Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., 
Chaplain of Yale University. The remaining appellants are all 
ministers and teachers of theology, with the exception of George 
B, Smith, who was at that time a student at Yale Law School. 

Mr. Smith is a former assistant counsel at the Legal Defense 
Fund's New York City headquarters. 

Fund Director-Counsel Jack Greenberg and Associate Counsel 
Constance Baker Motley led a battery of ten lawyers in preparing 
the "Freedom Rider" appeal. 

Assisting them and Mr. Pollak were James M. Nabrit, III, of 
the Fund's staff, Fred D. Gray, a cooperating attorney from 

~Montgomery, and Leroy D, Clark, Charles S. Conley, Ronald R. 
avenport, Frank H. Heffron, and Solomon S. Seay, Jr. 

= 30 6 

4 Louis H. Pollak graduated from Harvatd College and Yale Law 
School and was law clerk to Justice Rutledge. He later 
served as Assistant to Ambassador Philip Jessup. 

He and Mrs. Pollak are the parents of five girls. 

i”