Desegregation Suit Filed Against Orangeburg, S.C. Public Hospital

    PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
TOCOLUMBUS CIRCLE © NEW YORK19,N.Y. © JUdson 6-8397 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS JACK GREENBERG CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY 
President Director-Counsel Associate Counsel 

SB 5 

March 24, 1962 

DESEGREGATION SUIT FILED AGAINST 
ORANGEBURG, S. C. PUBLIC HOSPITAL 

NEW YORK - An Orangeburg, S. C. Negro mother and her thirteen year 

old daughter initiated an important desegregation suit against the 

city's public hospital today. 

Gloria Rackley and her daughter, Jamelle, in a complaint filed 

by NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys in Columbia, S. C., asked the 

Federal District Court for the Eastern District of South Carolina 

to enjoin the Orangeburg Regional Hospital from treating and servicing 

Negroes on a segregated basis. 

"This is the second phase of an all-out legal attack on segre- 

gated health facilities," commented Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel 

of the Legal Defense Fund. Last month Fund attorneys sued to 

desegregate two Greensboro, N. C. hospitals. 

The Orangeburg Regional Hospital is owned by the County of 

Orangeburg, is tax supported, and has recently received $300,000 in 

federal money for expansion purposes, the complaint alleges. 

The case grew out of an incident on October 26, 1961, when 

Mrs. Rackley went to the hospital with her daughter for treatment 

of a broken finger. While waiting with her daughter for transporta- 

tion in the public waiting room after treatment, Mrs. Rackley was 

asked by an employee to go to the segregated Negro waiting room. 

When she refused, the police were called and Mrs. Rackley was 

arrested for trespassing. 

The complaint asks the court to enter a preliminary and 

permanent injunction forever enjoining defendants from continuing 

a policy of segregation. "The plaintiffs have no plain, adequate, 

or complete remedy at law to redress these wrongs, and this suit 

for injunction is their only means of securing adequate relief," 

it states. 



=<95 

The Board of Trustees of the Orangeburg Regional Hospital and 

H. F. Mabry, its Director, are named as defendants. 

"We have received other requests to help in health discrimina- 

tion situations, and we are processing them as soon as possible," 

Mr. Greenberg said from the Fund offices in New York. 

The suit was filed in Columbia, S. C., by attorneys Matthew J. 

Perry and Lincoln C. Jenkins, Jr. of Columbia. Jack Greenberg, 

James M. Nabrit, III, and Michael Meltsner of New York City also 

represent the Negro plaintiffs.