- Person
- Jack Greenberg
- Lived
- 1924–2016
- Field
- Civil rights law
- From
- American
The story
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in employment, but the meaning of the new law would be decided in court. Jack Greenberg, Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, decided that the Fund would shape it. He aimed to file a thousand cases within a year of the law taking effect, and the Fund filed 850.
The best known began at Duke Power's Dan River Steam Station in North Carolina. In the 1950s the company had restricted Black employees to its Labor department, where the best-paid job paid less than the worst-paid job in its four other departments. In 1955 it began requiring a high school diploma for work outside Labor, and on 2 July 1965, the day the Civil Rights Act took effect, it added two aptitude tests. At the time 34 percent of white men in North Carolina had high school diplomas, compared with 18 percent of Black men, and in comparable testing 58 percent of white people passed such tests against 6 percent of Black people.
Lower courts sided with the company because it had not shown an intent to discriminate. The Supreme Court heard the case on 14 December 1970 and ruled on 8 March 1971. In an opinion by Chief Justice Warren Burger, it held that the diploma and the tests had no demonstrated link to the jobs. The law, the Court said, forbade not only open discrimination but practices that were fair in form yet discriminatory in operation; the test was business necessity. Griggs is generally considered the first case of its kind, establishing what lawyers call disparate impact.
When the Court weakened part of that rule in 1989, Congress restored it in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The Legal Defense Fund says Greenberg's strategy left an indelible mark on employment discrimination doctrine.
Greenberg had joined the Fund in 1949 as Thurgood Marshall's assistant and led it from 1961 to 1984. Sherrilyn Ifill, a later Director-Counsel, called him a key architect of modern civil rights law. In all he argued forty cases before the Supreme Court and won almost all of them.
Why it matters
Griggs opened jobs and promotions to millions of workers by outlawing hiring barriers that unfairly excluded them.
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 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.
- 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
- Griggs v. Duke Power Co. 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.