LDF Asks Halt of Evictions for Illegitimate Pregnancy by Alabama Housing Authorities

Press Release
February 11, 1967

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- Press Releases
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- LDF
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- c2dd6f93-b792-ee11-be37-00224827e97b

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Press Releases, Volume 4. LDF Asks Halt of Evictions for Illegitimate Pregnancy by Alabama Housing Authorities, 1967. c2dd6f93-b792-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/ea19bfc1-80c2-4cfb-89c2-33fd711e4d9d/ldf-asks-halt-of-evictions-for-illegitimate-pregnancy-by-alabama-housing-authorities. Accessed January 08, 2026.

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    ww 

President 
Hon. Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Director-Counsel 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

Director, Public ions 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. jane 
10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUd: 6-8397 see ae ‘olumbus Circle, New York, N.Y. ison 6- FOR RELEASE po SIGHTJNUMBER 212-749-8487 

SATURDAY 
February 11, 1967 

LDF ASKS HALT OF EVICTIONS 
FOR ILLEGITIMATE PREGNANCY 
BY ALA.HOUSING AUTHORITIES 

BIRMINGHAM-~-The U.S. District Court here was asked yesterday to halt 
eviction of two Negro women and their families from public housing in 
Talladega, Alabama because of the pending birth of illegitimate childrer. 

Mrs, Everline Lewis and her children were ordered out of the Knox- 
ville Homes because Mrs. Lewis' daughter, who does not reside with her, 
is expecting an illegitimate child. 

Another tenant of the same public housing development, Mrs,Margaze 
Truss, has been ordered evicted because she is expecting an illegitmate 
child. 

Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 
(LDF) filed motion for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary 
injunction o' grounds that both women, and the class they represent, 
were denied: 

* proper and sufficient notice 
* adequate and reasonable grounds 
* a fair hearing on the charges. 

LDF lawyers argue that eviction of the families would violate the 
"basic purpose of all publicly supported low-income housing as set 
forth in the policy provisions of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937," 

That act, the attorneys assert, seeks to "remedy the unsafe and 
unsanitary housing conditions and the acute shortage of decent, safe 
and sanitary dwellings for low-income" families. 

LDF attorneys added that "the Talladega policy does not help 
eliminate the problems attendant to slum dwellings: it creates them, 

"It deprives low-income people of desperately needed housing by 
its exclusionist policy. 

"Depriving children of a decent home to live in neither serves to 
curb the rate of illegitimacy nor to benefit other tenants in the 
project," the attorneys said. 

In conclusion, the Court was told that "due process requires that 
plaintiffs be given some opportunity to be heard. 

"Hearings are an important protection from arbitrariness. 

“Tenants should have the right to have decisions on such issues 
based on evidence and not on rumor or fancy. 

"For the indigent, eviction is a serious penalty," the lawyers sail 

-30-

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LDF Asks Halt of Evictions for Illegitimate Pregnancy by Alabama Housing Authorities

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