Counsel to NAACP Says Shortage of Negro Lawyers Hampers Rights Progress in South

Jack Greenberg, general counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, yesterday called the extremely small number of Negro lawyers in the South one of the "most shocking" aspects of the whole civil rights problem.

Speaking in Ames Court Room, Greenberg noted that there were only two fulltime Negro lawyers in Mississippi and none at all in Tallahassee, the capital of Florida. The shortage of lawyers has caused a void in civil rights activities over large sections of the South, Greenberg contended.

White Southern lawyers, he continued, have been extremely unwilling to handle civil rights cases despite their obligation under legal ethics to provide adequate counsel to all. Community pressures against arguing these cases are so strong. Greenberg asserted, that a white lawyer who does so often takes his professional life in his hands.

Many good Southern lawyers including leaders of bar associations have used the law to delay integration rather than resolve conflicts justly, Greenberg charged. In many cases, he said, Southern prosecutors have harrassed civil rights advocates even when they knew their own legal positions were weak.

When white lawyers do handle civil rights cases, Greenberg said, they often fall to investigate all constitutional defenses for their clients.