New Approach Contained in Sit-In Brief Filed in U.S. Supreme Court

    PRESS RELEASE 

NAACP LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATIONAL FUND 
TOCOLUMBUS CIRCLE «+ NEW YORK19,N.Y. © 

DR. ALLAN KNIGHT CHALMERS JACK GREENBERG 
President 

JUdson 6-8397 

CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY 
Director-Counsel Associate Counsel 

FOR: RELEASE TUESDAY, August 27, 1963 oe 

PER: Jesse DeVore, Jr. 
Director of Public Information 

Office - JUdson 6-8397 
Home - SC 4-0697 

NEW APPROACH CONTAINED IN SIT-IN 
BRIEF FILED IN U.S.SUPREME COURT 

Noted Scholar on Property Rights Backs Sit-Inners 

WASHINGTON---Attorneys of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational 

Fund today filed a public accommodations brief in the U.S. Supreme 

Court which, if successful, would vindicate thousands of sit-in 

demonstrators. 

In a unique legal move, a battery of 18 attorneys seeks 

to make southern states take an affirmative obligation to 

protect Negroes protesting laws and customs brought about by 

state action. 

The brief points out the improbability of punishment for 

sit-in type conduct in any of the Western European democracies 

or in England or any of the British Commonwealth nations. 

This brief is a combination of three cases involving student 

sit-in demonstrations, two in South Carolina, the other in 

Maryland. 

Legal Defense Fund attorneys further point out that the 

states have affirmative responsibility to protect equal rights 

of citizens and argue that the southern states have not met this 

responsibility when they allow lunch counter segregation, 

The brief also urges that constitutional prohibitions against 

racial discrimination must be applied to the public life of the 

community, but need not apply to the private and personal lives 

of citizens. 

Three patterns, by which southern states (South Carolina 

and Maryland in this instance) deny Negroes equal justice, are 

summarized: 

* State courts and public officials "are employed to enforce 

a scheme of racial discrimination originating in a nominally 

tprivate’ choice." 



* "Where a nominally 'privatet act or scheme of racial 

discrimination is performed...because of the influence of 

custom, and where such custom has been, in turn, in significant 

part, created or maintained by formal law." 

* Where laws are maintained that place "a higher value on 

a narrow property claim" than it does on the claim of Negroes 

"to move about free from inconvenience and humiliation of 

racial discrimination." 

The latter is one of the new pointsof law that hopefully 

will be decided by the court. 

The Legal Defense Fund is urging that southern states 

have improperly decided to back store owners who cite local 

custom and state laws calling for jim crow treatment of Negroes. 

The attorneys said "maintaining a 'narrow' property right, 

which consists of nothing but the exclusion of Negroes" should 

not be allowed "to justify a state in knowing support of public 

discrimination." 

The brief further stated that "it is scandalous that states 

impose the burdens of state citizenship on Negroes,and benefiting 

from the imposition on them of the duties of federal citizenship, 

not only should fail to protect them in their right to be treated 

equally in fully public places, but should instead place the 

weight of law behind their humiliation." 

It was stressed in the brief that "the records in these 

cases affirmatively establish that no private or personal 

associational interest is at stake." 

"This is obvious on the face of it: the relation involved 

is that of a restaurant-keeper to a casual customer." 

The attorneys continued saying that "the events and the 

issues in these cases are in the fully public rather than in 

private life, 

"A restaurant is a public place, contrasting totally with 

the home and other traditional citadels of privacy." 



sae 

Moving to the charge that the sit-ins students provoked 

breach of the peace, the brief said "there was no showing of 

any act of violence and there was no showing of any act 'likely 

to produce violence." 

The Legal Defense Fund lawyers took exception to the theory 

that the "possibility that the mere presence of Negroes in a 

place customarily frequented only by white persons is punishable 

as a threat to peace," 

They quickly added that such could not be so, due to the 

equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, 

Joining the NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys were four 

internationally noted legal scholars: Professor-Emeritus 

Richard R, Powell, Columbia University Law School, and author 

of the widely acclaimed and used treatise "Real Property". 

He was also reported on property for the American Law 

Institute's "Restatement of Property." Long recognized as a 

leading expert in this legal speciality, Dr. Powell now teaches 

at Hastings College of Law, San Francisco, California. 

Also assisting was Professor Hans Smit of Columbia University, 

a Member of the Bar, Supreme Court of the Netherlands; Professor 

Charles L, Black, the Henry R. Luce Professor of Jurisprudence, 

Yale University; and Louis L. Pollak, Professor of Law, Yale 

University. 

NAACP Legal Defense lawyers included Jack Greenberg, Constance 

Baker Motley, James M. Nabrit, TII, Derrick A, Bell, Leroy D. Cler* 

Michael Meltsner and Inez V. Smith, all of New York. 

Also Juanita Jackson Mitchell, and Tucker R. Dearing, Maryland 

Joseph L, Rauh and John Silard, Washington,D.C;William T, Coleman, Jr., 

Pennsylvania; Matthew J. Perry and Lincoln C, Jenkins, South 

Carolina,