Acclaimed civil rights attorney to speak at KU School of Law

LAWRENCE — A civil rights attorney who helped Thurgood Marshall argue Brown v. Board of Education before the U.S. Supreme Court will speak next week at the University of Kansas School of Law.

Jack Greenberg, the Alphonse Fletcher Jr. Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, will deliver a Living History Lecture at 4 p.m. Thursday, July 28 in 107 Green Hall. The event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

Greenberg joined Thurgood Marshall in 1949 as a member of the NAACP legal team and from 1961 to 1984 served as director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. He argued 40 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court dealing with all aspects of civil rights, including Brown v. Board (1954), which declared “separate but equal” unconstitutional.

Greenberg counseled key leaders, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1965, he argued and won a court order allowing King and thousands of protesters to make the seminal voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. He is a founding member of Human Rights Watch and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

His publications include “Crusaders in the Courts: Legal Battles of the Civil Rights Movement” (2004); “Brown v. Board of Education: Witness to a Landmark Decision” (2004); “Litigation for Social Change” (1996); “Crusaders in the Courts: How a Dedicated Band of Lawyers Fought for the Civil Rights Revolution” (1994); and articles on civil rights, capital punishment and other subjects.

Greenberg was awarded the American Bar Association Thurgood Marshall Award in 1996 and the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001.

Greenberg’s lecture is sponsored by The Brown Foundation, Hall Center for the Humanities and the University of Kansas School of Law.