Brown v South Carolina Electric Gas Company Appellants Brief

Public Court Documents
January 1, 1954

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Brown v South Carolina Electric Gas Company Appellants Brief preview

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Press Releases, Volume 1. Legal Defense Fund Asks Supreme Court to Reverse Conviction of Alabama Negro, 1964. ed504e36-b592-ee11-be37-00224827e97b. LDF Archives, Thurgood Marshall Institute. https://ldfrecollection.org/archives/archives-search/archives-item/21d83168-f57a-4acb-9186-8d33c9894f24/legal-defense-fund-asks-supreme-court-to-reverse-conviction-of-alabama-negro. Accessed August 19, 2025.

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10 Columbus Circle

New York, N.Y. 10019
JUdson 6-8397

NAACP

Legal Defense and Educational Fund
PRESS RELE/
President

Dr. Allan Knight Chaimers

FOR RELEASE MONDAY
August 24> 1964

25,

LEGAL DEFENSE FUND ASKS SUPREME COURT
TO REVERSE CONVICTION OF ALABAMA NEGRO

Washington, D.C.--NAACP Legal Defense Fund attorneys asked the
U.S. Supreme Court today to upset the 1962 conviction of Robert
Swain on the grounds that Negroes are and have keen systematically
excluded from juries in his native Talladega County, Ala.

Fund lawyers based their appeal for Swain, who was sentenced
to death for the alleged rape of a white woman, on the fact that
while a few Negroes are inciuded on the jury rolls, they have
been consistently struck by prosecutors.

Thus the Defense Fund is attacking a practice by which num-
erous Southern counties circumvent the constitutional proh ion
against jury discriminaticn. The Supreme Court first declared
such discrimination illegal in 1880,

This appeal is one of five cases brought to the nation's
highest court by the Fund within the space of one week. Others
include two sit-in convictions, and a case involving the 1961
Freedom Riders from Yale University.

In the Swain case, Fund lawyers pointed out that despite
the token inclusion of Negroes on the jury rolls, no Negro has
ever served on a trial jury in Talladega County, in both civil
and criminal cases,

Further, Fund attorneys asserted, the prosecutor who con-
sistently strikes Negroes from the jury lists is a state official,
According to a 1951 Report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
this is standard practice in many parts of the deep South.

Appearing on the brief for the Legal Defense Fund are Jack
Greenberg, director-counsel; Constance Baker Motley, associate
counsel; and James M. Nabrit III, all of the Fund's New York
City headquarters; and Orzell Billingsley Jr. and Peter A. Hall
of Birmingham.

Also participating in the case were NAACP Legal Defense
Fund staff lawyers Michael Meltsner and Frank H. Heffron of New
York City, as well as volunteer attorney Henry M. diSuvero.

=), 30=

Jesse DeVore, Jr., Director of Public Information—Night Number 212 Riverside 9-8487 IH SB

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Brown v South Carolina Electric Gas Company Appellants Brief

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