- Person
- Jack Greenberg
- Lived
- 1924–2016
- Field
- Civil rights law
- From
- American
The story
Jack Greenberg was born into a Jewish family in New York City in 1924. After serving in the US Navy in the Second World War, he graduated from Columbia College and, in 1948, from Columbia Law School. In 1949, aged 24, he joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, answering Thurgood Marshall's search for an assistant to help challenge the Jim Crow laws. He was then the only white lawyer on its legal staff. He later said that his first visits to the Supreme Court felt almost religious, as if he were in a synagogue and ought to be wearing a yarmulke.
A few years later, at 27, Greenberg was the youngest member of the legal team in Brown v. Board of Education, which combined five cases from Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C. Working alongside Marshall, he found psychologists and sociologists who could testify to the harm forced segregation did to children, and the Court cited such studies in its opinion. On 17 May 1954 the justices ruled unanimously that state laws establishing separate public schools for Black and white students were unconstitutional.
Greenberg served as an assistant counsel under Marshall until 1961, when Marshall became a federal judge and Greenberg succeeded him as Director-Counsel. He led the Fund for 23 years, until 1984, the longest tenure in its history. He represented Martin Luther King Jr. and the Selma voting rights marchers in 1965, and after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 he set out to shape employment law by filing a thousand cases within a year; the Fund filed 850.
In all he argued 40 civil rights cases before the Supreme Court and won almost all of them, among them Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, Griggs v. Duke Power Company and Furman v. Georgia. He was also a founding member of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and of Human Rights Watch. In 2001 President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Citizens Medal, calling him a crusader for freedom and equality for more than half a century.
Greenberg died in October 2016, aged 91, the last living attorney who had argued Brown. Sherrilyn Ifill, a later leader of the Fund, called him a key architect of modern civil rights law.
Why it matters
Greenberg's legal work helped dismantle segregation and secured equal rights at school and at work for millions of Americans.
About Jack Greenberg
Youngest lawyer on the Brown v. Board of Education team, Thurgood Marshall’s successor at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and advocate in forty Supreme Court cases.
More about Jack Greenberg
- Jack Greenberg won the order to desegregate schools at onceIn Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education (1969), Jack Greenberg won a Supreme Court order that segregated school systems must end at once.
- Jack Greenberg chronicled the civil rights legal revolutionJack Greenberg's book Crusaders in the Courts tells how a dedicated band of lawyers fought the civil rights revolution, and is regarded as the definitive history of the Legal Defense Fund.
- Jack Greenberg won Furman v. Georgia in 1972Jack Greenberg argued Furman v. Georgia (1972), in which the Supreme Court held that the death penalty as then applied was cruel and unusual punishment.
- Jack Greenberg won Griggs v. Duke Power on fair hiringIn Griggs v. Duke Power Company (1971), Jack Greenberg's Legal Defense Fund won a ruling barring employers from relying on tests with a discriminatory impact.
- Martin Luther King Jr. called on Jack Greenberg's lawyersIn 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. asked Jack Greenberg and the Legal Defense Fund to handle all demonstration cases involving the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
- Jack Greenberg's case opened Ole Miss to James MeredithJack Greenberg argued Meredith v. Fair, the case that led to James Meredith's admission to the University of Mississippi, a first step in integrating the university.
- Navy officer Jack Greenberg stood up for a Black sailorServing in the US Navy in World War II, Jack Greenberg risked a court-martial by shouting at a superior officer in defense of a Black crewman he felt was mistreated.
- Jack Greenberg took civil rights law to the worldJack Greenberg helped shape new legal defense funds for Asian American and Puerto Rican communities and joined human rights missions from South Africa to the Soviet Union.
Sources
- Jack Greenberg Wikipedia
- LDF Remembers Civil Rights Icon Jack Greenberg NAACP Legal Defense Fund
- Brown v. Board of Education Wikipedia
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