On Wednesday, Jack Greenberg, a civil rights icon who effectively fought for civil rights before the United States Supreme Court, died at the age of 91.
His wife, Deborah Cole Greenberg, confirmed that he had passed on after fighting Parkinson’s disease for decades.
Greenberg was known for his legal prowess, and for 23 years he led the the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc. Prior to his passing, he was also the last survivor of a legal team assembled by Thurgood Marshall and was involved in more than 40 civil rights cases before the Supreme Court.
He was just 24 years old when Marshall hired him in 1949 as an assistant counsel. He was the son of Jewish immigrants and had developed a strong sense of justice after having witnessed so much injustice in his life already, including during his time in the Navy.
While Greenberg was not the first, nor the last, white man or Jewish man to be involved in civil rights, he was one of the most prominent and successful, and that occasionally led to clashes with both the black and Jewish community. Some decried his appointment to run the defense fund because he was white, while some in the Jewish community criticized him for his support of affirmative action, which they thought was a step too far.
But Greenberg had always worked for harmony, saying, “Civil rights is not a Negro cause; it is a human cause.”