Law School to Initiate Negro Summer Program

Forty Negro students from southern colleges will attend a special eight-week program being held at the Law School this summer in conjunction with the Summer School, it was announced yesterday. In $87,500 grant from the Rockefeller foundation will finance the program.

The primary aim of the program is to aquaint Negro students with the legal profession. Louis A. Toepfer, director of admissions at the Law School and director of the program, said last night.

Today, "there is a real need and opportunity for Negro lawyers to help in working out accommodations between the races. But there are only 250 Negroes studying law today out of a total of 57,000 law students in the country," he noted.

In the first four weeks of the program, the visiting students will receive a general introduction to law and begin a study of torts. For the second half or the program they will be introduced to constitutional and criminal law and will work in contracts.

Special Project

In addition, students will spend one afternoon a week on a special project which will follow the evolution of a hypothetical legal case. Students will play the roles of the various participants in the case and will follow its development from "the first meeting of lawyer and client through the actual trial," Toepfer said.

The Law school courses, which are not for credit, will be given in the afternoon, in the morning, each student will attend a summer school corse of his choice, for which he will receive credit.

The Law School group will share the living, dining, and extracurricular activities of the summer school.

The 40 participants in the program will be selected from a group of students nominated by 25 predominately Negro Colleges in the South. The Law School is most interested in students just finishing their junior year, Toepfer said. "They would thus return to their colleges as missionaries of a sort," he added.

Each student will receive sufficient financial aid to pay his tuition, room, and board, Toepfer said. Transportation and book costs will also be paid, and in some cases part of the student's tuition for next year will be paid to make up for lost summer earnings.