10th Annual Institute of the LDF Invitation
Press Release
May 21, 1975

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Press Releases, Volume 6. 10th Annual Institute of the LDF Invitation, 1975. 37071f1a-bb92-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/f9d8471a-9d63-41a0-9db7-c72f56213feb/10th-annual-institute-of-the-ldf-invitation. Accessed May 15, 2025.
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Aer From: NAACP LEGAL 10 Columbus Ci New York, New 3 AND EDUCATIONAL FUND, INC. 10019 Contact: Norman Bloomfield (212) 586-8397 MEMO TO CITY DESK AND FEATURE EDITOR you are cordially invited to cover the tenth annual Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, to be held at the Americana Hotel (New York City) on Friday, May 23. Two thousand civil rights advocates from all parts of the country are expected to attend the all-day meeting, which will focus largely on affirmative employment and educational programs endangered by regressive social and economic forces. Carl T. Rowan, columnist and former director of the U. S. Informa- tion Agency, will present the keynote address at the Institute luncheon. Mrs. Ernest Hemingway and Julius LeVonne Chambers, the Fund's president, also will speak. In addition, a special award will be presented to William T. Coleman, Jr., U. S. Secretary of Transportation and a former Legal Defense Fund president. As in past years, the Institute offers feature story potentials which may be of interest to your readers. Among the panelists are: -William Waters, an articulate Chicago bricklayer and the plaintiff in one of two retroactive seniority (last hired-first fired) cases pending in the U.S. Supreme Court. ‘Mrs. Palecia Franklin Lewis, mother of seven children, teacher and a leader of the citizens' committee that is helping make school desegrega~ tion work in Denver, Colo. (more) *Dan C. Mathes, Jr., a white parent and organizer of the bi-racial committee that helped turn Central High School in Little Rock, Ark. into a model integrated school. A morning panel will consider the "last hired-first fired" employment policy that is adversely affecting thousands of minority workers as the recession deepens. In addition to Mr. Waters, the panel will include Eleanor Holmes Norton, New York City Human Rights Commissioner, and Joseph L. Rauh, Jr., a prominent labor and civil rights attorney. The concurrent morning session will be concerned with the cutback in affirmative action educational programs designed to overcome the present effects of past discrimination. Panelists will include James L. Curtis, M.D. of Cornell University Medical School; Walter J. Leonard, Harvard University; Peter James Liacouras, Temple University Law School; and Robert B. McKay, New York University Law School. Dean McKay was chairman of the New York State Special Commission on Attica in 1971-72. In the afternoon, parents, students and community leaders from Little Rock, Boston and Denver will discuss their varied experiences in tackling school desegregation in the three cities. A concurrent afternoon session will be devoted to the capital punishment issue. Among the participants will be Peggy Cooper Davis-and David E. Kendall, LDF staff members; LeRoy D. Clark, New York University Law School; and Hugo Bedau, of Tufts University. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund is a completely separate organization, even though originally established by the NAACP in 1939. Our correct designation is NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., frequently shortened to Legal Defense Fund. The organization has a national staff and headquarters in New York City, and works with 400 cooperating attorneys throughout the country.