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Contact information: https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mss.contact
Catalog Record: https://lccn.loc.gov/mm81065570
Collection material in English
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the LC Catalog. They are grouped by name of person or organization, by subject or location, and by occupation and listed alphabetically.
The records of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund were deposited in the Library of Congress in 1980 and converted to a gift in 1988. Additional materials were given from 1988 to 1993.
The records of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund were arranged and described by Nan Thompson Ernst, with the assistance of Paul Colton, Patricia Craig, Lisa Madison, Margaret Martin, Sherralyn F. McCoy, Kimberly Owens, Andrew Passett, and Thelma Queen, 1993-2015.
Copyright in the unpublished writings of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in these papers and in other collections in the custody of the Library of Congress is reserved. Consult a reference librarian in the Manuscript Division for further information.
Restrictions apply governing the use, photoduplication, or publication of items in this collection. Consult a reference librarian in the Manuscript Division for information concerning these restrictions.
Researchers wishing to cite this collection should include the following information: Container number, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
The records of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund span the years 1915 1968, with the bulk of the material ranging from 1940 to 1960. Consisting of an Office File, Subject File, Legal Case File, Restricted series, and Oversize, these records document the work and procedures of the organization as it combated racial discrimination against African Americans during an era of legal segregation. The fund waged its battle against discrimination in the nation's courts, and in so doing, initiated a public interest legal practice that was unprecedented in American jurisprudence.
This collection is inextricably linked to the records of its parent organization, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and a full account of most issues will require readers to consult both collections. The relationship between the two entities is documented in the Office File of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund records. Furthermore, the Office File documents the complex organizational and administrative decisions that set the course for the NAACP's legal program during the crucial middle years of the twentieth century. During its first few decades, the NAACP's legal work was often done on an unpaid and voluntary basis. Later, guided by a board of directors and the recommendations of a 1931 report on legal strategy by Nathan Margold, the NAACP began mapping out an ambitious legal program to seek equal justice, full citizenship rights, and an end to racial segregation. It was clear that this legal program required a paid staff and solid funding. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., was formed as a membership corporation in 1939 to take advantage of tax exemptions available to nonprofit, nonpolitical charitable organizations, a tax status that had been denied to the NAACP by the Internal Revenue Service. Commonly known as the "Legal Defense Fund," the "Inc. Fund," or simply "the Fund," its purpose was to obtain income for the NAACP legal program.
In 1940 the U.S. Treasury Department granted tax-exempt nonprofit status to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Thurgood Marshall was named director of the fund and, concurrently, special counsel to the NAACP. The executive secretary of the NAACP was appointed to the board of directors for the fund. Budgets for the two operations were to remain separate. However, the interlocking boards of directors and shared office space at the NAACP headquarters in New York City meant that the separation was little more than a technicality.
By the early 1950s, the fund was outgrowing its office space and its subsidiary role. The Internal Revenue Service continually questioned the fund's tax-exempt status, since the NAACP and the fund were operated by the same people out of the same office. Reasoning that a move would placate the IRS and ease the crowding, the Legal Defense Fund moved its offices in December 1952. At the time of the move, the staff included Thurgood Marshall, five attorneys, a research assistant, a field worker, a fund-raiser and secretarial and clerical personnel. The Legal Defense Fund staff took a number of NAACP files which it had been reviewing, such as those concerning Josephine Baker's treatment at the Stork Club in New York City, and files pertaining to the Detroit riot of 1943. These records were incorporated into the fund's records and can now be located in the Subject File. Confusion as to which documents belonged where continued to plague both organizations. A courier system was established to exchange mail and other documents twice a day, a necessary expedient since many legal matters were addressed to the NAACP for years to come.
To protect itself and the legal program against charges of stirring up lawsuits, and especially to shield lawyers from disbarment who were associated with its cases, the fund established new procedures in handling litigation. After 1955 it only took cases of indigent African Americans who had been denied a civil or constitution right solely because of race or color and who personally or through their attorneys or immediate family requested the assistance of the Legal Defense Fund. No longer did the fund work at the behest of branch or national officers of the NAACP.
Unlike the NAACP, the Legal Defense Fund did not have branches, but retained services of regional lawyers in California, Virginia, Washington, D.C., Louisiana, and Texas typically to handle cases in federal courts. It also paid and supervised local attorneys who conducted litigation in state courts. Records concerning these attorneys are in the Office File.
Success in court brought intense scrutiny. After the interlocking boards of directors became an issue, the boards of the NAACP and the Legal Defense Fund agreed to separate in late 1956. Marshall became the director of the fund and relinquished his title as special counsel to the NAACP. An office of NAACP General Counsel was created to which Robert Carter was named, bringing an end to Carter's association with the fund. The legal program, in effect, was transferred from the NAACP to the Legal Defense Fund in 1956. When its lease ended in 1957, the fund moved again and opened its new offices in January 1958. This move signaled a break with the parent organization, one that did not cause too much concern so long as Marshall remained director. When he left in 1961 to become a federal judge, the question of the relationship between the two organizations was reconsidered.
Jack Greenberg succeeded Marshall as director of the fund in 1962. Thereafter, the NAACP reestablished its own legal department under the direction of Robert Carter. However, until the mid-1960s, litigation undertaken in the name of the NAACP was handled by Legal Defense Fund lawyers, and documentation of such action is located in the Legal Defense Fund records. The records in the Office File thus represent a period of transition for the NAACP and for the Legal Defense Fund.
The legal program of the NAACP is documented in the Subject File as well as the Legal Case File. Any matter not in the form of a legal proceeding is filed as a subject. Thus, "crime," "soldier troubles," and "veteran's complaints" contain many requests for aid along with nonlegal documents concerning specific cases. Similarly, broad areas of civil rights violations are documented under "armed forces," "discrimination," "housing," "labor," "schools," "transportation" and "voter registration."
The Legal Case File documents cases handled by the fund in its coordinated attack aimed at laws or practices of racial discrimination which limited or prohibited access to education, property, and the political process; or laws which excluded or imposed special restriction on racial groups in domestic relations, criminal law, public accommodations and services, and elsewhere. The strategy was to initiate or counter an interrelated set of cases which would cumulatively bring an end to racial segregation and discrimination.
Cases are filed alphabetically by title in keeping with the original order as established by the Legal Defense Fund. Material within the file is arranged to reflect the development of each case. The emphasis is on chronology and on the progression from unofficial, incomplete, and related material to the official records and the summarized presentations. Therefore,
Occasionally, the case file will include records of litigation from a lower court, counter actions, or related records in test cases. These records are designated
A parenthetical note indicates the general category for the case and the location by state of the proceedings. Cases litigated up to the mid-1960s can be grouped into the following broad categories: armed forces, civil rights protest demonstrations, criminal proceedings, domestic relations, education, elections, housing and real property, labor, public accommodations, recreational facilities, and transportation. See the index appended to the register for a description of these categories and a listing of cases by category and state.
Over 450 cases are represented in the Legal Case File and education cases comprise the largest category.
Housing and property cases in the Legal Case File series include documents from the NAACP's first case on this issue:
Restricted material, consisting of folders removed from the open portion of the collection, is identified in the Container List with an asterisk.
This collection is arranged in five series:
* Restricted folder
Administrative records, financial data, case dockets, conference agenda and reports, personnel records, staff and committee files, and reports of annual and monthly progress.
Arranged alphabetically by topic, person, or committee and department title.
Correspondence, memoranda, reports, notes, legal documents, newspaper clippings, printed matter, and miscellaneous material.
Arranged alphabetically by topic, person, geographical area, or type of material.
Records of NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund litigation, including correspondence, memoranda, notes, newspaper clippings, printed matter, briefs of cases, petitions, writs, affidavits, depositions, exhibits, legal memoranda, resolutions, orders, judgments, and trial or hearing transcripts.
Arranged alphabetically by case name. A partial card index to cases, 1956-1964, is filled at the beginning of the series. Cases with multiple folders are further organized by general record type: correspondence, background material, legal documents, printed case records, and related case material for records of a lower court, counter actions, and test cases. A parenthetical note after each case name indicates the type of case (e.g., criminal law, education, housing) and the state in which the litigation took place. For category descriptions and a list of cases by category and state, see the index.
Correspondence, memoranda, legal documents, and related material removed from the open portion of the collection.
Folders are organized and described according to the series and container from which they were removed.
Maps, charts, posters, and voting and population records.
Organized and described according to the series, box, and folder from which the item was removed.
The Truman administration adopted a policy in 1948 of "equality of treatment and opportunity" in a plan which called for racial integration of the United States armed forces by 1954. The Korean War accelerated the process so that integration was to be implemented by 1952. However, the NAACP continued to receive and investigate complaints of bias relating to assignments, promotion, discipline, or the administration of military justice. Furthermore, integration was much slower in reserve units, and few African Americans received Reserve Officer Training Corps scholarship awards. Finally, the fund challenged lingering segregation in schools, housing, and other collateral activities on military bases.
By 1960, court cases and integration efforts were sometimes accompanied by forms of social protest such as sit-ins and group marches. Demonstrators were often arrested for breach of peace or trespassing and some were defended by the fund.
The fund litigated cases in which a defendant claimed denial of due process because of racial discrimination. Usually these cases raised questions about jury selection, coerced confessions, competent legal representation, and unfair sentencing. Some cases involved lynchings; others concerned police misconduct and racial segregation in prisons.
Antimiscegenation laws were challenged, as were those which prohibited interracial cohabitation or which imposed special penalties if the offenders were of different races. Similarly, the fund challenged adoption and child custody cases which were based on racial considerations.
Discrimination in education was the fund's primary area of litigation from the 1940s to 1960s. Initial efforts were directed at gaining equal facilities and curriculum for students and equal pay for teachers in Negro schools. By the 1950s, it had been clearly demonstrated in the courts that separate schools would never be equal. Thereafter, cases aimed for integration at all levels of public education: first in professional schools, and then in elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities.
The fund took cases to gain or protect voting rights in general elections and primaries. Other cases concerned electoral district apportionment and strictures on Negro candidates and bloc voting.
The fund challenged racial zoning laws and restrictive covenants which excluded ethnic groups, and segregation or discrimination in federal housing and other public housing aid programs. Other litigation involved individuals who resorted to the courts to protect private property rights, or cases brought against individuals who obstructed integration of residential neighborhoods.
Depression era cases often concerned forced labor or peonage. Thereafter, the fund worked to define fair employment practices by challenging discrimination in government employment or by companies receiving government contracts, exclusion of African Americans from professional associations or union membership, especially when unions negotiated contracts and were otherwise consulted on labor practices.
Includes cases which do not fit into outlined categories. Of note are the cases involving the NAACP's right to do business in various states in the 1950s, particularly in Texas.
Segregation in public accommodations, recreational facilities, and transportation were daily manifestations of "Jim Crow." Racial distinctions in public accommodations were usually not imposed by state statutes; many facilities banned African Americans or were segregated by custom, or local ordinance and regulation. Cases of racial discrimination were brought against auditoriums, hospitals and health facilities, hotels, insurance companies, libraries, restaurants, cafeterias, and lunch counters, retail stores, theaters and other places of entertainment.
The fund undertook cases which specifically targeted segregated recreational facilities supported by public funds such as parks, beaches, swimming pools, golf courses, and tennis courts because these cases provided a clear and strong challenge to separate-but-equal precepts. Later, the fund brought cases of racial discrimination against privately owned and operated facilities.
The fund challenged various state laws requiring segregated travel in buses and trains. Suits contended that separate quarters were not equal and also raised jurisdictional questions. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) was eventually vested with the authority to revoke segregation when it impeded interstate commerce, and cases involving segregation on interstate trains and buses were thereafter heard by the ICC. Local transit authorities, mainly city bus and street-car systems, continued to be challenged in the courts.