Greenberg Statement on Appointment of Reuben Anderson and Legal Intern Program

    35 ance President 

7 10% » Cc <=) Hon, Francis E. Rivers 

ei ) } od PRESS RELEASE Director Counsel 

= legal E : Yefense f__aund Jack Crees bare 
Director, Public Relations 

se DeVore, Jr. 
GUT NUMBER 212-749-8487 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 

10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 

Statement by Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel, 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., 

Americana Hotel, May 17, 1968, 11:00 a.m. 

We are today announcing appointment of Reuben Anderson as director 

of our legal program in the state of Mississippi. Mr. Anderson, first 

Negro graduate of the University of Mississippi Law School (1967), 

succeeds Marian Wright, who is now in Washington, p.c. on a Field 

Foundation Fellowship. : 

Attorney Anderson supervises a full-time staff of three additional 

lawyers plus five cooperating attorneys. This team (which will acquire 

two more members next month) is responsible for more than 100 pending 

cases which include 23 school, 30 criminal, 8 employment, 3 welfare 

and sundry others. 

He and his staff serve as counsel for four anti-poverty programs. 

We are also announcing that, thanks to the LDF-sponsored Herbert 

Lehman Education Fund, 10 Negro students are now in scholarship at the 

University of Mississippi Law School. An additional three are paying 

their own way. 

We estimate, in Light of student requests for assistance, that 

there will be 25 Negro teers functioning in Mississippi within the 

next five years. There were only four as recently as 1965. 

The civil rights movement has long faced an acute shortage of 

attorneys, particularly in the Deep South. A mere 700 of the nation's 

65,000 law students are Negro. In the South, these are virtually the 

only lawyers who will handle civil rights cases. 

Mr. Anderson, like his predecessor, is a product of the LDF's 

legal intern program. 
: 

The intern program, initiated and maintained primarily through 

grants of the Field Foundation, is d t the supply of 

civil rights attorneys in those southern states where the need is 

greatest. 

Promising law graduates work for up to a year under LDF tutelage 

either in New York or in the office of an LDF attorney in the South. 



Statement by Jack Greenberg Ze 

They assist in research, writing, Litigation and overall preparation 

of briefs. They also participate in staff conferences and are exposed 

to the day-to-day routines and disciplines necessary for meeting the 

meticulous demands of these specialized areas of the legal profession. 

They are then aided in establishing their practices in southern 

cities where they devote considerable effort to civil rights cases. 

In the first four years of the program, twelve outstanding attorneys 

began practice--five in Mississippi, two in Florida, one each in 

Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, and North Carolina. 

In the fall of 1967, the LDF started four new interns. They 

are destined for practice, two in Georgia, one each in Mississippi 

and North Carolina. 

Today we announce members of our class of 1967-68: 

Mary Moss - ranked second in last year's graduating class at 

Howard University Law School. She is a native of Fitzgerald, Georgia, 

and works in the office of attorney C. B. King in Albany, Georgia, who 

is the only experienced civil rights lawyer in southwest Georgia. 

James E. Ferguson, II - native of Asheville, North Carolina, made 

an excellent record at the Columbia University School of Law from 

which he was graduated in’ June. Mr. Ferguson is practicing in North 

Carolina. 

Peter Rindskopf - a member of this year's graduating class at 

Yale University Law School. Mr. Rindskopf spent the last two summers 

as law cleats to Howard Moore, Jr. in Atlanta, Georgia. He now works 

with Mr. Moore. 

Mr. Anderson is the fourth member of cnet class. 

Their 12 predecessors have already proven to be unvisually able. 

They have all carried a share of our caseload even during their training 

period. 

We started the intern program in 1963 with Julius LeVonne Chambers 

and Miss Wright. 



Statement by Jack Greenberg ae 

Mr. Chambers, the first Negro named editor of North Carolina 

University's Law Review, entered private practice in Charlotte in 

September of 1964. We now have 30 school desegregation cases in the 

state, some involving teachers. Most of these cases have been ini- 

tiated by Chambers, and he bears responsibility for all of them. 

He has also handled cases,challenging discrimination in health 

facilities and a variety of other suits. Meanwhile, he has found 

time to engage in’private practice, has gained an excellent reputation 

across the state, and is the acknowledged leader of the civil rights 

bar in North Carolina. (That may be one reason that he has been on 

two occasions the object of bombing attacks.) 

During the summer following Miss Wright's entry into the Mississippi 

legal scene, she played a crucial role in coordinating the defense of 

hundreds of Negro Mississippians and civil rights workers during the 

Freedom Summer of 1964. 

Miss Wright's accomplishments have been set forth in MADEMOISELLE 

(one of its four Outstanding Women of the Year), EBONY, and COSMOPOLITAN 

magazines, and through the syndicated column of Ralph McGill. 

=30= 

NOTE: A complete list of our graduate interns is attached. 



PARTICIPANTS IN FIRST FOUR CLAS 

OF THE LEGAL INTERN PROGE 

OF THE LEGAL DEFED FUND 

Law School Destination* 

of 1963 JULIUS LeVONNE CHAMBE 

43 a MARIAN E.. WRIGHT 

of 1964 EDWARD TUCKER 

ve mt JOHN WALKER 

of 1965 JAMES ABRAM 

a = ALFRED FEINBERG New 

g ns GERALD SMITH 

of 1966 PAUL BREST 

IRIS BREST 

FRANKIE FIELDS 

ROBERT HILL 

REESE MARSHALL 

*The State in which the intern is to practice, 
the first year of the training period. 

Univ. of 
North Carolina 

Yale 

Howard 

Yale 

North Carolina 

Mississippi 

Mississippi 

Arkansas 

Mississippi 

York Univ. Florida 

Howard Maryland 

Harvard Mississippi 

Harvard Mississippi 

Howard Alabama 

Howard Georgia 

Howard Florida 

following