Correspondence from Dellinger to Chachkin

    a 
President 

Hon, Francis E. Rivers 

PRESS RELEASE Diceelar Connie 
egal efense und Jack Greenberg 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. Disector, Public Natasa 
Jesse DeVore, Jr. 
NIGHT NUMBER 212-749-8487 10 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019 * JUdson 6-8397 

WEDNESDAY 
November 23,1966 

LDF LAUNCHES NATIONAL PROGRAM 
SEEKING EQUAL TREATMENT FOR 
ALL INDIGENT CITIZENS 

CHICAGO=--A major drive to attack legal problems of the poor, 
residing in cities north and south, as well as in rural areas, 
was formally launched here last week by the NAACP Legal Defense 
and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF). 

Two hundred attorneys from across the country attended a three 
day conference at the University of Chicago Law School upon 
invitation of LDF Director-Counsel Jack Greenherg. 

“Those of us," said Mr. Greenberg, “who years ago were concerned 
solely with what I might call orthodox issues of civil rights, 
have little by little and for a time not fully realizing it, 
been dealing more and with poverty and issues that affect all 
Americans." 

Lectures and seminars were held on the law of public welfare, 
slum housing, consumer credit and consumer frauds, migrant and 
farm labor, and legal doctrines affecting the rights of Spanish 
speaking Americans and American Indians. 

“The emphasis was on new theories and ideas susceptible to 
development in litigation,” Mr. Greenberg explained. 

The attorneys who attended the LDF “Conference on Law and 
Poverty" came from law offices funded by the Office of Economic 
Opportunity, Legal Aid Societies, individual practitioners who 
have represented the indigent, and lawyers associated with 
various university and research units. 

“As we now move into an era of poverty law," continued Mr. 
Greenberg, “which today is in some sense comparable to civil 
rights law of the mid-thirties, we ought profit by those 
experiences." 

“Some of the issues deal with national law, such as those 
arising from state enforcement of federal welfare regulations," 
he added. 

“Some are of constitutional dimension, such as the question of 
whether a public housing authority may evict a tenant without 
notice and hearing contrary to due process clause of the 
Fourteenth Amendment," he said. 

Mr. Greenberg called on the attorneys to communicate with one 
another to see what effect one case or one approach, or one 
theory, may have on another and perhaps the country as a whole, 

“The purpose of our conference was to select some of the more 
important issues that concern lawyers who work with the poor, 
and deal with them creatively," Mr. Greenberg concluded. 

= 30 = 

25