Tke Blot Is Shrinking, But It Is Still Ugly

The basic issue behind the Senate civil rights debate is the denial of Southern Negroes' right to vote.

How widespread is this denial? How does it operate?

Last week the authoritative Southern Regional Council prepared a preliminary finding based upon a survey of the 1956 election campaigns. A summary:

DENIAL of voting rights to Negroes, though a blot on the South, is by no means as widespread as many Northern civil rights advocates believe. Through Texas, Arkansas and the Border States, Negroes not only register and vote but make such an impact at local-election levels that both parties bid for their support. In North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Florida, urban Negroes generally register and vote, while rural Negroes do not. The greatest concentration of civil rights violations at the polls lies in four states of the Deep South, and the statistics readily prove the point:

MISSISSIPPI: Only 20,000 Negroes registered for the 1956 elections out of a total of 497,350 eligible; in 13 counties of more than 50% Negro population, a total of 14 Negro votes was cast in the 1954 elections, while in five counties not a single Negro was allowed to vote.

ALABAMA: 53,336 Negroes registered out of 516,245 eligible; nine rural counties have no Negro registrants; even industrial and partly unionized Jefferson County (Birmingham) registered only 7,000 Negroes out of 121,510 eligible.

LOUISIANA: 161,410 Negroes registered out of 510,090 eligible, a high-for-the-South state percentage; yet in four Louisiana parishes (counties) not one single Negro voted.

GEORGIA: 163,380 Negroes registered out of 633,390 eligible: five rural counties permitted only dribbles of Negroes to register; several more kept out Negro voters altogether, dragged down Atlanta's generally high Negro returns.

Taking the Tests

The violent denial of Negroes' right to vote that marked Reconstruction days has long since given place to more subtle methods. The white primary is no more. The poll tax, though still in force in five Southern states, has lost most of its economic bite, but is sometimes used (notably in Virginia), as a device for confusing Negroes and poor whites out of their chance to register.

Most of today's barriers begin in harmless-looking state laws, not unlike many Northern state laws, which require would-be voters to pass tests in literacy and constitutional understanding. In the Deep South and in many other Southern rural areas, the decisions on passing or flunking rest in the hands of white registrars (in Alabama, three-man county boards) who use the power of office in devious ways to prevent qualified Negroes (and sometimes qualified poor whites) from registering. In Allendale County, S.C. in 1956, when Negroes tried to register they were told that the registration books were someplace else. In Monroe County, Ala. Negro applicants were repeatedly turned away because the registrars said they had "misplaced the application forms."

In one rural county in eastern North Carolina, Negroes complained that it took a white man only a few minutes to. get registered, while Negroes often had to wait an hour; thus only a small percentage of Negroes was registered. In Green County, Ala. Negro registrants had to be accompanied and vouched for by "a good white man." In Caldwell Parish, La. the registrar refused to accept whites as witnesses for Negroes because they were of a different race.

Beyond such subterfuges lie the opportunities of the literacy and constitutional tests themselves. In many Alabama counties in 1956, Negroes were told to give their age in years, months and days, were deprived of the right to vote if they were one day off; in Jefferson County, Ala. the Negroes were asked constitutional questions, such as on what date did the Tenth Amendment become effective, or on what date did Oklahoma become a state. Even in moderate North Carolina, a Negro woman in Northampton County was put to reading the state constitution and was disqualified when she "mispronounced several words."

Nor is registration a guarantee that the Negro will get to vote. In Ouachita Parish, La. a nonprofit Citizens' Council was formed last year "to protect and preserve by all legal means our historical Southern social institutions." The parish (county) registrar let council members into her office when it was closed to the general public (nights, holidays, etc.), let them examine voting lists and draw up their own lists of some 3,500 Negro registrants. When the council members followed up by challenging the 3,500, the registrar ordered the Negroes to appear within ten days to prove their identity. So many Negroes did turn up that the registrar had to fall back upon yet another stratagem: her office was so .busy, she said, that only 50 challenged Negroes could be heard every day; the rest were struck off the rolls.

Braving trie Tnreats

In more remote regions of the South, the Negroes who make their registrations stick often face even tighter pressures of economic reprisals. Last year Negroes who registered in one county in the plantation area of Florida were told by whites lounging around the courthouse: "Go ahead --if you can take what comes afterwards." In McCormick County, S.C., what came afterward for several Negro sharecroppers was that they could not find white buyers for their produce; in Humphreys County. Miss. Negro businessman registrants found that they could not get credit. In Calhoun County, S.C. any Negro who tries to get a registration certificate is called a "smart" Negro, and Calhoun County encourages smart Negroes to migrate.

The specific threat of physical violence looms in relatively few areas (and relatively few white Southerners will stand for it). But where it looms, it is terribly effective. In Liberty County. Fla. last year, all but one of the first ten Negro registrants in the county's history took their names off the voting list after a set of cross-burnings, bomb-throwings and shots fired into their homes.

In Belzoni, Miss, in 1954, a Negro minister who refused to remove his name from the voting list was shot down--a fact that did not prevent the coroner's inquest from returning a verdict of "accidental death." And in Tensas Parish, La., where not one of 4,500 Negro inhabitants is registered, the only Negro who tried it recently was taken by the registrar to see a law officer, who asked him: "Aren't you happy here? Is something wrong with the way things operate around here? If you aren't happy, perhaps we can arrange for you to leave." The Negro promptly replied that he was happy, that his attempt to register had been a mistake. The Negro stayed on in his community, but his wife lost her job.

The other side of the South-wide picture is the headway through Border States, and the fact that Negro registration, however small, has been climbing steadily and rapidly during the past ten years. There is hope for a faster rise as Negro economic and educational opportunities expand. Ever since Reconstruction, however, it has only been by the pressure of public opinion and the specific spreading of the processes of justice, e.g., FBI "routine checks" on election procedures, that the Deep South has moved forward at all.

The heart of the Administration's civil rights bill, designed simply and solely to rid the U.S. of "mass disfranchisement," is thus dedicated to the proposition that as evils exist, it will take not only law but prosecution to correct them. "The right of citizens to vote," says the 15th Amendment, "shall not be denied or abridged by the U.S. or any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The date of the 15th Amendment: 1870.

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