- Person
- Jack Greenberg
- Lived
- 1924–2016
- Field
- Civil rights law
- From
- American
The story
Jack Greenberg was a prolific writer as well as an advocate. His first book, Race Relations and American Law, appeared in 1959, while he was still an assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. He went on to write Litigation for Social Change (1973) and to publish teaching materials, Cases and Materials on Judicial Process and Social Change (1976), drawing on two decades of courtroom experience.
His best-known work is Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution, published in 1994, with a revised edition in 2004. The Legal Defense Fund calls it a memoir and the definitive biography of the Fund's history. In it Greenberg outlines the legal strategies behind its landmark victories and offers a vivid portrait of his predecessor and mentor Thurgood Marshall. He reflects on what he called his own moderate iconoclasm as a Jewish New Yorker fighting for civil rights, and describes the role Jews played in the movement.
The story he told was one he had lived. The Fund, founded by Marshall in 1940 and fully independent of the NAACP from 1957, fought segregation case by case, from schools and universities to buses, parks and hospitals. Greenberg had worked inside the Black world of the movement, sleeping in segregated hotels and eating in segregated restaurants alongside fellow advocates, and his book gives an insider's account of how its lawyers turned the Constitution into a tool for change.
He also wrote Brown v. Board of Education: Witness to a Landmark Decision (2004), published in the 50th anniversary year of the ruling and drawing on his experience as the last surviving lawyer who had argued Brown before the Supreme Court. He wrote many articles on civil rights and capital punishment as well.
His curiosity ranged widely. He co-edited Franz Kafka: The Office Writings, published by Princeton University Press in 2008, and co-wrote a cookbook, Dean Cuisine, with the Harvard Law School dean James Vorenberg. But it is Crusaders in the Courts that remains his lasting record of the legal civil rights revolution.
Why it matters
Greenberg's books preserved, from the inside, the story of how lawyers helped dismantle legal segregation in America.
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 argued 40 civil rights cases in top courtAt 27, Jack Greenberg was the youngest lawyer on the team that won Brown v. Board of Education; he went on to argue 40 civil rights cases before the Supreme Court.
- 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
- LDF Remembers Civil Rights Icon Jack Greenberg NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
- Jack Greenberg (lawyer) Wikipedia
- NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.