National Black Network-(NBN)- Interviews Jack Greenberg on "Black Issues and the Black Press"

    9 2 d NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC 
efense fund = 10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * (212) 586-8397 

' For Immediate Release 

CONTACT: St Clair Clement 

Director, 
Public Affairs/ Public Relations e 

(212) 586-8397 Ext. 465 

NATIONAL BLACK NETWORK-(NBN)- INTERVIEWS 

JACK GREENBERG 
DIRECTOR-COUNSEL 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 

ON 

“BLACK ISSUES AND THE BLACK PRESS” 

A 30 Minute Recorded Radio Broadcast 

(Aired 7/18-19/81 on 96 affiliated NBN 
station across the United States.) 

On duly 17th, Jack Greenberg - Director / Counsel of 
the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. was 
interviewed by NBN news reporters Pat Prescott and 
Chris Moore. Joe Brown d the discussion 
Questions asked of Mr. Greenberg covered the spectmm 
of civil rights issues as they currently affect black 
Americans, with reference to a detailed analysis of 
President Reagan's civil rights policies. 

- more - 

Contributions are deductible Jor U.S. income tax purposes 
The NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE & EDUCATIONAL FUND is not part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People although it 
was founded by it and shares its commitment to equal rights. LOF has had for over 20 years @ separate Board, program, staff, office and budget. 



NAACP LDF 

The following excerpts from Mr. Greenberg's appearance on "BLACK 
ISSUES & THE BLACK PRESS" have been edited and prepared from the 
interview. 

VOTING RIGHTS 

€ 

Question: Early in 1981 the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 

sent out a release that sort of painted a 

picture of gloom and doom for black Americans 

under the Reagan administration. Are things 

going according to the way the Legal Defense 

Fund saw Mr. Reagan's administration? 

Mr. Greenberg: Well, I'll tell you what's been happening. 

There has been a slowdown in civil rights 

enforcement. There has been a public 

commitment to dismantle, or at least severely 

reduce, enforcement of the Federal Contract 

Compliance provisions. There has been a cut- 

back in bringing civil rights cases. I think 

part of the danger of the situation we are in 

now relates to the Voting Rights Act. It could 

be the most important thing we are dealing with 

now, and so we all are struggling to preserve 

it. Therefore, very little attention is being 

given to employment and housing and education, 

because we don't have that many people, and 

they can't be everywhere at once. In the meantime, 



NAACP LDF 

those important areas are slowly slipping 

into conditions of non-enforcement. 

Question: Why is the question of expanding the enforce- 

ment provision of the Voting Rights Act such 

a controversial issue? On the Surface it 

would seem that to expand enforcement to include 

all 50 states would simply expand the area that 

would be protected by the provision. 

Well it really wouldn't. The fact is, there is 

only a relatively small number of states - that 

is, the deep southern states - where blacks were 

not permitted to vote at all; and a few other 

parts of the country where there has been a 

history of discrimination in voting, where it's 

important to have the Act apply. If it were to 

apply to all 50 states, then the enforcement 

would become so cumbersome and so expensive that 

you really couldn't focus on the parts of the 

country that really matter. 

Question: To what extent do you feel that this is a symbolic 

issue? 

Mr. G I think it is a very important symbolic issue 

to both sides. I think blacks and other Americans 

who care a lot about equality in voting view it 

as the most important civil rights issue there is 



Question: 

Mr. Greenberg: 

NAACP LDF 

at the moment. Don't forget, until 1965 blacks 

hardly voted at all, and as a consequence of that 

there were all the other deprivations; housing, 

employment, public facilities, access to public 

office, and so forth. So it's ‘very symbolic to 

black people and right-thinking whites. On the 

other hand, it's very symbolic to racists. The one 

thing they would like to do is to get blacks out 

of the business of voting. 

Can you offer any sort of scenario as to what 

failure: to extend the Act would mean to black 

Americans? 

First of all it would mean that from the highest 

level of government - from the Congress and from 

the administration - there is an open avowal that 

equality has gone too far, that this country 

doesn't care about it and all the related aspects 

of it-- that is, how people live, and how they 

raise their children, and how they function in 

society. After all, voting is the hallmark of 

citizenship; and the essence of racial segregation 

is the denial that blacks are citizens. Now, if 

this country were to say that on the one issue 

that involves an affirmation or denial of citizen- 

ship, it denies it-- that would essentially be 



Question: 

Mr. Greenberg: 

NAACP LDF 

telling blacks and whites and the rest of the 

world that the country has really gone back 20 

years! 

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION 

Mr. Greenberg, as far as the issue of affirmative 

action is concerned, have you been able to decipher 

in what direction the Reagan administration is 

going? 

Oh I think they've said they are opposed to affirm- 

ative action. They are quite clear about it. A 

number of their public officials have said so. 

Certainly all their official philosophers and 

idealogues who write and speak about the subject 

have said so. On the other hand, they may be 

limited as to what they can do about it. Some of 

the affirmative action is embodied in court 

decisions. A great deal of affirmative action is 

voluntary on the part of corporations and 

universities. There are indeed people within the 

administration who have been relatively quiet about 

it, who do not share the professed view of 

opposing affirmative action, who are not even 

against it, or who favor it or are quietly working 

for it. So I think that, while affirmative action 

is in for a tough fight, we'll hold on to most of it. 



Question: 

Mr. Greenberg: 

Question: 

NAACP LDF 

I believe I saw some place that the Legal Defense 

Fund recommended to the Reagan administration that 

they leave the affirmative action programs alone, 

because this is the one situation in the country 

that seems to be working. Is that correct? 

That's right. If one looks at the overall situation 

of minorities in America,there is a very discouraging 

outlook for a very large part of the black 

population. The black median income is 60% of the 

white median income. Black unemployment is double 

white unemployment; and there are many other 

economic indicators of the same sort. But at the 

same time, one finds that in businesses and in 

universities and in the professions, the number of 

blacks and other minorities has increased in recent 

years. In large part that's because of affirmative 

action programs, which are slowly beginning to give 

black Americans a foothold in’the middle class-- or 

perhaps I should say a toehold. If one were to 

abolish these programs, or restrict them severely, 

then the main thing black Americans have going for 

them would be very seriously impaired. 

THE CURRENT STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS 

Given the attitudes attributed to the Reagan 

administration, and also the conservative attitudes, 

is your job now more one of preserving civil rights 



Mr. Greenbe 

Question: 

laws? Are we beyond the day now where you could 

actually go out and look for new legislation? 

Are we more or less on hold? 

I think a very large part of our job is preserving 

what we have -- preserving a friamework from which 

we can build in the future. But we're not just 

sitting on our hands. We are going to try to 

establish some principles and forge ahead, and I 

think we will be able to. Don't forget, we've 

been at this business for forty years. In the time 

I've been at the Legal Defense Fund, we've been 

through the Eisenhower and Kennedy, Nixon, Johnson, 

and Carter administrations, and now we're into the 

Reagan administration. In all of these we made 

progress, and there is no reason to believe that 

we will not make progress now. But it's going to 

be hard, and it's going to be limited. 

When you talk about fighting now, it seems that your 

job appeared to be easier, say, during the sixties. 

At least you had some help from other civil rights 

organizations, and there seemed to be a more broad- 

based coalition of liberal groups. Is your job 

more difficult now? Do you find that you have 

friends in carrying out the fight? 

ta Payee Shee Us i 2 Ae we 



Mr. Greenberg: ESE SS LL ASL SE 

Question: 

NAACP LDF 

Oh yes, we have a great many friends in carrying 

out this fight. Whatever the view of the country 

was in the election, public opinion polls show 

that many of the issues we stand for are supported 

by a majority of the American ease And we now hav 

more financial support than we had, let's say, ten 

years ago. When I started working for the Legal 

Defense Fund, we were the only ones in the country 

doing what we are doing. And then we went through 

periods in which there were many others, and there 

are still many others working with us -- other 

public interest organizations, private law firms, 

private groups, individual supporters who send small 

contributions in the mail, many friends. 

It's been noted that since Mr. Reagan took office, 

the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department 

has filed five civil rights law suits on discrimin- 

ation issues. That compares with 17 suits filed 

in the first six months of the Carter administration, 

and even 24 in the first six months of the Nixon 

administration during his first term. Do you see 

this as a reluctance to litigate on the part of the 

Justice Department -- a reluctance inspired perhaps 

by the President? 



Question: 

Mr fr. Greenberg: 

NAACP LDF 

I don't think the numbers alone tell anything. 

For example, I don't think Nixon's filing 24 

cases indicated a vigorous commitment to civil 

rights. Yet it was more cases than were filed 
« 

in the Carter administration, where there was 

indeed such a commitment. However, numbers 

coupled with public statements about what an 

administration's policies are do tell you some- 

thing. And I think the small number of cases 

under the Reagan administration coupled with 

negative views on interfering with the free hand 

business has in dealing with its employees, and 

being against busing, being against inter-district 

integration, being against the movement toward 

integrating higher education -- I think that tells 

you something. 

LITIGATION FOR THE: FUTURE 

The Supreme Court recently handed down a number 

of decisions. Were there any among them to which 

the Legal Defense Fund is paying closest attention? 

We had three cases up in the Court this year, and 

I'm happy to say we've won them all by astonishing 

9-0 votes in each case. Three shutouts -- that's 

pretty good, even for us! We won one case which 



NAACP LDF 

put an end to a practice in Texas of having 

psychiatrists interview defendants in capital 

cases about whether they were competent to stand 

trial. Then, when the case was over and if the 

defendant were going to be sentenced, the same 

psychiatrist would come in and testify that "I 

interviewed that fellow, and I can tell you he's 

an unremitting sociopath and will kill and kill 

again, and he should be put to death." Well, 

Texas had done that in about 30 cases and because 

one of them was invalidated, the rest will fall 

by the wayside as a result. We had another case 

in which a judge would not enter an affirmative 

action decree, because it was agreed upon by the 

parties. He said he didn't believe in that sort 

of thing! The Court said, in effect, that he couldn' 

refuse to enter the decree; he's going to have 

to enter it. The other case involved a rule 

adopted by many courts which forbids lawyers 

trying a class action to talk to members of the 

class, on the theory that they're stirring up 

litigation -- sort of ambulance chasing. 

Well, that just made it impossible for us to try 

those cases effectively. If we were bringing a 

case on behalf of black workers in a plant, for 

example, and we couldn't talk to them, we couldn't 

prepare our case. We won that one 9-0, also. 



Question: 

Question: 

Green| erg: 

a a a St 

Nasty LOE 

So those three cases we have followed with care, 

and they had good outcomes. 

Referring to the current legislative filibuster 

against the anti-busing amendment that's been 

proposed by Jesse Helms and J. Bennett Johnstone -- 

should that amendment be passed, how would that 

affect legal recourses, as far as discrimination 

is concerned? 

I think that amendment would be unconstitutional 

if it were passed, and I think the courts would 

knock it out. But the tragic thing is that it 

would take several years to do it, and during that 

time we would be fighting the amendment instead of 

fighting about getting something done in the country. 

With the present climate in the country, what are 

some of the main areas that the Legal Defense 

Fund will be concentrating on? 

Well, employment discrimination has been our most 

important area for years, and we will continue to 

focus on that, with an emphasis on affirmative action 

cases. Segregation and discrimination in black 

higher education remains one of our high priorities. 

Capital punishment, which is the most inhumane as 

well as the most racist of punishments, is one 

that we will continue to attack. Prisoners' 

rights is a very important area; and housing. 

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Question: 

Greenberg: Mr. 

NAACP _ LDF PUBLIC AFFATRS 

We have more and more cases involving discrimination 

in health care now, in part because some of the 

other agencies in the country which have been 

federally funded are going out of business, and 

we are taking over their cases. 

Looking at Washington now, and the effort to dilute 

much of the strength of the federal government, 

which most black Americans have felt was a last 

recourse --have the courts now become pretty much 

the last refuge for black Americans? Are they more 

important than ever before? 

I wouldn't say they are more important than ever 

before, but they are very important -- extraordinaril 

important, because the court is one place you can go 

and, under a constitutional principle or a legal 

principle, demand your rights and get an answer. You 

could go to Congress, and they could filibuster 

forever, or bury it in the committee, or compromise 

it away. There are many things legislatures can do 

that courts can't do, and so the fact that you have 

a right to go to court doesn’t mean you have an 

opportunity to solve all of the country's problems. 

But in the courts, if you have a right, you probably 

can get it enforced -- if you are well 

represented. 

HHTREE EE