- 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; his brother, Daniel S. Greenberg, became a well-known science journalist. Raised in a family committed to fairness and justice, he was a student at Columbia College when the Second World War interrupted his studies.
He served in the US Navy and fought at Okinawa and Iwo Jima in the Pacific. Near the end of the war he commanded a landing craft in the invasion of Iheya Jima, one of the final campaigns.
Greenberg was disturbed by the racial prejudice he saw in the Navy. When he felt a Black crewman was being mistreated, he shouted at a superior officer in the sailor's defense, and he was threatened with a court-martial for it. It was an early sign of the convictions that would guide his career.
After the war he finished his degree at Columbia College and graduated from Columbia Law School in 1948. The next year, aged 24, he joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as an assistant to Thurgood Marshall in the fight against Jim Crow laws, at the time the only white lawyer on its legal staff. Within a few years he was the youngest member of the team that won Brown v. Board of Education, and in 1961 he succeeded Marshall as the Fund's leader.
His wartime experience stayed with him. In the early 1980s, when he was asked to co-teach a course on race and the law at Harvard Law School, some students protested that the university had not appointed a Black professor. Asked whether he was frightened to walk past the protesters on his way to class, he replied that he had been on the beach at Iwo Jima. Over his career he argued forty civil rights cases before the Supreme Court, and in 2001 he received the Presidential Citizens Medal.
Why it matters
Greenberg's wartime stand foreshadowed a lifetime of fighting racial injustice in America's courts.
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.
- 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.
- 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 (lawyer) Wikipedia
- LDF Remembers Civil Rights Icon Jack Greenberg NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
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