From Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader (Clayborne Carson)

Awakenings (1954-1956) Introduction by Vincent Harding

“Another man done gone” was the painfully ambiguous, often bitter cry that was so familiar to the black community of the United States in the 1950s. Thus, many person would not have been surprised if the inhuman, atavistic (but terribly recognizable) murder of a young Chicago-based teenager in Mississippi, and the predictable legal exoneration of his murderers, had led to nothing more than tears, burning, bottled-up rage, and a great outpouring of indignant words from the relatively safe North

But 1955 was a new time, and more than tears and words were needed. Now, even though the newness of the time was only dimly perceived in that brutally familiar summer, some things were known. Just about everyone who was black and alive at the time realized that the long, hard struggles, led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), its often brilliant and courageous lawyers, and its lengthening line or risk-taking black plaintiffs, had forced the Supreme Court to take a major stand on the side of justice in the Brown v Board of Education of Topeka decision. A young black man who had been in the Marine Corps at the time of the Court’s decision spoke for many black people when he later remembered how he felt when he heard about the 1954 decision:

My inner emotions must have been approximate to the Negro slaves’ when they first heard about the Emancipation Proclamation. Elation took hold of me so strongly that If found it very difficult to refrain from yielding to an urge of jubilation . . . On this momentous night of May 17, 1954, I felt that at last the government was willing to assert itself on behalf of first-class citizenship, even for Negroes. I experience a sense of loyalty that I had never felt before. I was sure that this was the beginning of a new era of American Democracy.

Robert Williams, who shared those memories, in Negroes with Guns (Marzani Munssall, 1962), soon after became a fugitive from America’s justice.

Yes, it seemed clear that 1955 was different. By then a rising tide of the nonwhite peoples of the globe had gathered at Bandung, Indonesia, to demand that the Western world hear their determined pronouncements that the old white-dominated colonial order was a dying way of life. And many Afro-Americans understood that they were somehow part of this reemerging contingent of the world’s most ancient peoples. They felt a fundamental agreement with Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the audacious preacher-politician from Harlem who came back from Bandung to announce that the revolutions of the nonwhite world had brought us all to a new point in history with new responsibilities for justice and freedom. Of course, a similarity existed between Powell’s sentiments and those of the thousands of black veterans of World War II who had returned home determined to carry on the struggle for democracy. It was they, too, who helped to make it a different time.

In 1955 the nation was deeply involved in what it chose to call a “cold war” with a Russian-led, anti-capitalist network of nations. The United States was proclaiming itself “the leader of the free world,” and many of its white leaders especially wanted to demonstrate to the raw materials-rich nations of the nonwhite world that the U.S.A. did not deserve their acerbic taunts concerning the apparently unfree condition of this nation’s own major nonwhite community. In a variety of ways, the new international situation put the black community in the United States in its best bargaining

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 1 of 10 position since the end of the Civil War.

Finally, if anyone had any doubts that 1955 was a new time, they needed only to pay close attention to what was developing in Montgomery, Alabama, by the end of the year. There, in the old capital of the Confederacy, inspired by one woman’s courage; mobilized and organized by scores of grassroots leaders in churches, community organizations, and political clubs; called to new visions of their best possibilities by a young black preacher named Martin Luther King, Jr., a people was reawakening to its destiny.

By the end of the following year, after a long, hard, and dangerous struggle, it was clear that the events that transpired in Montgomery, Alabama, marked a unique, mass-based new beginning in a struggle that had been going on in this land since the first slave ships denied the colonists’ claims to be democratic, since the first enslaved Africans demanded through their words and their deeds that this new nation be faithful to its own best vision. Montgomery was the newest manifestation of the embattled black dream, the latest coming of the vision-based people determined to create a new reality for themselves and all Americans, beginning with a chance to sit in peace and dignity on a Montgomery city bus.

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From Chicago Defender editorial October 1, 1955 Eyes on the Prize Reader (ed. Carson et al)

For the Mose Wrights are born with low ceilings over their heads. They’re denied an education, they’re denied a fair return for their labor; they’re denied the right to participate in their government; they’re denied a chance to walk in the sun and frequently denied the right to live until they’re sixty- five, as Milam reminded Mose Wright. In the midst of this frustration, it appears that the Negro in the South as well as the North, has but one way to go. That is to the ballot box. . . . And the federal government, starting with the White House that been so negligent in the past in these matters, must be prodded into making it possible for the Negro to exercise this one right—the right to vote. Yes, the Till trial is over, but the Till case cannot be closed until Negroes are voting in Tallahatchie and Leflore counties and throughout the South. ------From Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (Juan Williams)

Organizing before the Boycott: An Interview with

The Women’s Political Council [WPA] was an organization begun in 1946 after dozens of black people had been arrested on the buses. We witnessed the arrests and humiliations and the court trials and the fines paid by people who just sat down on empty seats. We knew something had to be done. We organized the Women’s Council and within a month’s time we had over a hundred members. We organized a second chapter and a third . . . . .Wherever there were more than ten blacks employed, we had a member there. We were organized to the point that we knew that in a matter of hours we could corral the whole city. The evening that was arrested, Fred Gray called me and told me that her case would be [heard] on Monday. As president to the main body of the WPA, I got on the phone and called all the officers of the three chapters. I told them that Rosa Parks had been arrested and she would be tried. They said, “You have the plans, put them into operation.” I didn’t go to bed that night. I cut those stencils and took them to [the] college . . . I ran off

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 2 of 10 35,000 copies. . . After we had circulated those 35,000 circulars, we went by the church. That was about 3:30 in the afternoon. We took them to the minister. . . The [ministers] agreed to meet that night to decide what should be done about the boycott after the first day. You see, the WPA planned it only for Monday, and it was left up to the men to take over after we had forced them really to decide whether or not it had been successful enough to continue, and how long it was to be continued. They had agreed at the Friday night meeting that they would call this meeting at Holt Street Church and they would let the audience determine whether or not they would continue the bus boycott or end it in one day. Monday night, the ministers held their meeting. The church itself holds four or five thousand people. But there were thousands of people outside of the church that night. They had to put up loudspeakers so they would know what was happening. When they got through reporting that very few people had ridden the bus, that the boycott was really a success. .. .they voted unanimously to continue the boycott...... I think people were fed up . . . that they had to do it or die. And that’s what kept it going. It was the sheer spirit for freedom, for the feeling of being a man or a woman. Now when you ask why the courts had to come in, they had to come in. You get 52,000 people in the streets and nobody’s showing any fear, something had to give. So the Supreme Court had to rule that segregation was not the way of life . . . We [ met] after the news came through. All of these people who had fought got together to communicate and to rejoice and to share that built-up emotion and all the other feelings they had lived with during the past thirteen months. And we just rejoiced together.

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King Papers Project http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/index

Jo Ann Robinson (1912-1992)

As president of the Women’s Political Council (WPC) and a board member of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA), Jo Ann Robinson was instrumental in creating and sustaining the , the nonviolent protest that brought national attention to Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights struggle. In addition to being an active participant in MIA strategy sessions, Robinson edited the organization’s newsletter and volunteered as a carpool driver throughout the boycott. “Apparently indefatigable,” King wrote of Robinson, “she, perhaps more than any other person, was active on every level of the protest.”

Born in 1912 near Culloden, Georgia, Robinson was the youngest of twelve children. After graduating as valedictorian of her high school class in Macon, she went to Fort Valley State College and was the first in her family to graduate from college. Robinson then earned a master’s degree in English from Atlanta University; and following a year of study at Columbia University, she became chairman of the English department at Mary Allen College in Crockett, Texas. In 1949, Robinson moved to Montgomery to become an English professor at Alabama State College.

In Montgomery, Robinson joined Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where she was a member of the Social and Political Action Committee. She also joined the Women’s Political Council (WPC) , an organization for African American professional women. It was at the end of her first term at Alabama State when Robinson suffered a humiliating experience on a city bus. Sitting in the fifth row on an almost empty bus, she was accosted by an angry driver and ordered onto the street. Robinson soon learned that similar abuses were a common experience among the black citizens of Montgomery; and when she became president of the WPC in early 1950s, she decided to make the city’s segregated bus

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 3 of 10 seating one of the council’s top priorities. Repeatedly, she and other WPC delegates brought complaints about seating practices and the conduct of drivers before the Montgomery City Commission, which maintained that the city’s rules for buses could not be amended under Alabama segregation laws.

In 1954, four days after the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education invalidated the doctrine of “separate but equal,” Robinson sent a letter to Mayor W. A. Gayle threatening a boycott of the Montgomery City Lines if the commission did not act to improve bus service for black citizens. But by late 1955, negotiations with city and bus company officials had yielded little success. When Rosa Parks was arrested on 1 December 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger, Robinson seized the opportunity to put the long-considered protest into motion. Late that evening, Robinson composed a notice calling for a boycott of city buses on 5 December, the day of Parks’s trial. She and two students mimeographed tens of thousands of flyers for distribution by WPC members the following morning.

Black civic and religious leaders joined in the call. After the success of the one-day boycott, the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was established to continue the campaign and Martin Luther King, Jr. was chosen as its president. Robinson, whose position as a state employee precluded a more visible leadership role, served on the MIA executive board and actively worked behind the scenes to sustain the boycott.

Following student sit-ins in 1960, Robinson and other civil rights activists were forced to leave their faculty positions at Alabama State. After teaching for a year at Grambling College in Louisiana, Robinson moved to Los Angeles and was a public school teacher until her retirement in 1976. Her memoir, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It, was published in 1987. Robinson died in 1992.

Women’s Political Council (WPC) http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/womens_political_council/

The Women’s Political Council (WPC) was founded by Mary Fair Burks in 1946 as a civic organization for African American professional women in the city of Montgomery, Alabama. The WPC sought to increase the political leverage of the black community by promoting civic involvement, increasing voter registration, and lobbying city officials to address racist policies. The group’s work expanded to include public protest in 1955 when it initiated the Montgomery bus boycott, the event that brought Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights struggle into the national spotlight.

Centered in the middle-class neighborhood surrounding all-black Alabama State College, the original WPC chapter was made up of educators who taught at the college or in the city’s public schools. Burks, who was head of Alabama State's English department, served as WPC president until 1950 when she was succeeded by Jo Ann Robinson. By 1955, the WPC counted over 200 members in three neighborhood chapters.

From the beginning, the desire to see the black community represented within Montgomery's police force, fire department, school board, and other civic offices topped the WPC agenda. The organization also sought physical improvements to streets and playgrounds in black neighborhoods and explored avenues of protest against police brutality and discriminatory seating on the city’s buses. To further its agenda, the WPC worked to increase the civic involvement among Montgomery's black population.

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 4 of 10 Many of the WPC’s achievements, and much of its reputation, were garnered through lobbying efforts. The organization developed an amicable working relationship with Mayor W. A. Gayle, and its delegates regularly attended meetings of the Montgomery City Commission. They successfully lobbied for the city’s first black police officers, as well as funding for parks and playgrounds in black communities.

The WPC, however, made little headway in convincing city officials to address abuses on Montgomery's segregated buses. (The mayor and commission argued that under Alabama segregation laws, the city’s rules for buses could not be amended.) In a May 1954 letter to Mayor Gayle, Robinson described growing support among black organizations for a bus boycott. Following the March 1955 arrest of Claudette Colvin, a high school student who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger, the WPC began to formulate plans to boycott Montgomery buses. The idea was shelved when black leaders learned that Colvin was pregnant, but reemerged with the arrest of Rosa Parks in December.

Late in the evening after Parks's arrest, Robinson drafted a boycott notice: “Another Negro woman has been arrested and thrown in jail because she refused to get up out of her seat on the bus. . . . This has to be stopped. Negroes have rights, too, for if Negroes did not ride the buses, they could not operate. Three-fourths of the riders are Negroes, yet we are arrested, or have to stand over empty seats. If we do not do something to stop these arrests, they will continue. The next time it may be you, or your daughter, or mother.”

The notice called on all blacks to stay off the buses on Monday, 5 December, the day of Parks’s trial. Robinson contacted John Cannon, a colleague at Alabama State with access to the college’s mimeograph equipment. Cannon, Robinson, and two of her students worked through the night, copying tens of thousands of leaflets. On Friday morning, the flyers were distributed across the city with the help of a ready network of WPC members. Civic and religious leaders, meeting at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church on Friday evening, worked out the details of Monday’s boycott and produced a second flyer.

Following the success of the one-day boycott, a mass meeting was held at Holt Street Baptist Church . After deciding to continue the boycott, attendees formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) and elected Martin Luther King, Jr. as its president. Though ministers and male civic leaders became the MIA’s spokesmen, WPC members played a significant role in both organizational strategy and the day-to-day operation of the boycott. Robinson, as well as Irene West, Euretta Adair, and Erna Dungee, served on the MIA board and its major committees.

Because many of the its initiatives were absorbed by the MIA during and after the boycott, WPC members continued to work within the MIA on issues such as voter registration and the integration of schools and parks. Consequently, WPC chapters shifted their focus and began concentrating on the development of activism among younger African American women.

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Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 5 of 10 By the Associated Press | Published Date: 3/3/1956 As printed in the Montgomery Advertiser NEGRO DEMO WANTS CIVIL RIGHTS DETROIT (AP) - Rep. Diggs (D-Mich) says he will quit the party if he doesn't get "straight talk from the next Democratic presidential candidate about his civil rights views." The Negro Detroit congressman said last night he will demand "the right to vote for Southern Negroes, an end to the intimidation of Negro citizens and the creation of a special civil rights division in the Justice Department." Diggs spoke at a church rally called in support in Montgomery, Ala., Negro leaders under indictment in an alleged bus-boycott conspiracy. The Rev. Ralph D. Abernathy, one of those indicted, also spoke. He denied the movement against using city buses was a boycott and described it as a "protest against indecency and mistreatment." "When we go on trial, Montgomery will be on trial, too," he said.

------Civil Rights Act of 1957 (August) From Veterans of the Website http://crmvet.org/tim/timhis57.htm#1957cra57 The Civil Rights Act of 1957 is debated and passed in the context of an awakening freedom movement. The bus boycotts in Montgomery, Talahassee, and other cities, the Brown and "Brown II" decisions, the Massive Resistance campaign, and the looming desegregation crises in Little Rock, along with many other events, are beginning to focus public attention on issues of race, rights, and justice that Congress has avoided since the end of Reconstruction in 1876.

Politically, it has been more than 80 years since any civil rights legislation has been enacted into law. After Reconstruction, the "Jim Crow" system of anti-Black segregation, voter disenfranchisement, and denial of fundamental human rights are imposed across the South and other regions. All efforts to pass Federal, race-related civil rights legislation that would limit Jim Crowism (such as anti-lynching and poll-tax repeal laws) are blocked in the Senate by Southern "filibusters."

In 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) is preparing his run for the Presidency in 1960. In his 20 years in office, Johnson has never voted for a civil rights bill or amendment. But with the fledgling Freedom Movement beginning to stir, he knows that he cannot win the Democratic nomination if he is seen in the North and West as opposing civil rights for Blacks. Yet to win the nomination he also needs the support of the "solid South" — the segregationists.

In March of 1957, Eisenhower's Attorney General proposes a civil rights bill that strengthens the Federal government's ability to protect civil rights, permits moving civil rights cases from state to Federal court, authorizes the Justice Department to file lawsuits to protect civil rights, prevents interference with the right to vote, and applies Federal election law to primaries and special elections. The draft bill has broad bipartisan support from Republicans and Northern & Western Democrats.

Using his power as "Master of the Senate," LBJ maneuvers to gut the bill of all significant provisions. He then convinces the Southern bloc that it is better to allow a sham bill to pass without a filibuster rather than risk the outside chance that growing public support for civil rights might be strong enough to break the filibuster and pass a real bill that might actually provide some protection for Blacks. This strategy allows him to pose as a civil rights supporter in the North and West as he seeks the 1960 nomination, while still retaining the support of the Southern segregationists.

At the end of August, the Civil Rights Act 1957 is passed by Congress and signed into law. Civil rights

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 6 of 10 supporters call it "a crumb" and "worse than nothing." Though touted by Johnson as a "voting rights bill," the reality is that fewer Blacks vote in the 1960 election than had voted in 1956.

Seven years later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is passed. It contains many of the provisions gutted out of the 1957 Act. But during the seven years between 1957 and 1964, many are killed for demanding the right to vote, hundreds are beaten, thousands jailed, and tens of thousands suffer economic retaliation in the struggle for basic human dignity. The Federal government says it does not have the legal authority to stop civil rights abuses. Movement lawyers dispute their claim that they lack legal means to protect American citizens — and most Movement veterans believe that the cause of Federal inaction is political rather than lack of adequate laws — but there is no doubt that had the Civil Rights Act of 1957 been passed in its original form, much of the loss and suffering endured by those who fought for freedom might have been prevented. For more information: Book: Part V of Master of the Senate, by Robert Caro. Vintage, 2002 ------Report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights submitted to the President of the U.S. on Sept 9, 1959 (Excerpts from Part Two, Chapter IX are below table of contents)

From the Introduction In 1957, the Congress of the United States was disturbed by allegations that some American citizens were being denied the right to vote, or otherwise deprived of the equal protection of the laws, because of their race, color, creed, or national origin. In Congressional committee hearings and later in floor debate, there were wide differences of opinion about the truth of these reports. From these differences arose strong bipartisan agreement that an objective, bipartisan commission should be created to conduct a comprehensive investigation. In presenting President Eisenhower's request for a "full scale public study," Attorney General Herbert Brownell, Jr. declared that it should be objective and free from partisanship, broad and at the same time thorough. The Attorney General further testified that such a study, fairly conducted, "will tend to unite responsible people . . . in common effort to solve these problems." He continued: Investigation and hearings will bring into sharper focus the area of responsibility of the Federal Government and of the States under our constitutional system. Through greater public understanding, therefore, the Commission may chart a course of progress to guide us in the years ahead. The House Judiciary Committee reported that the need for a commission was "to be found in the very nature of the problem involved; the complexity of the subject matter demands greater knowledge and understanding of every facet of the problem." In the Senate, Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson observed that the proposed commission "can be a useful instrument. It can gather facts instead of charges; it can sift out the truth from the fancies; and it can return with recommendations which will be of assistance to reasonable men." On September 9, 1957, in the first civil rights bill since 1875, Congress provided for the establishment of such a commission as an independent agency within the executive branch.

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 7 of 10 Part one. The constitutional background of civil rights Chapter I. The Spirit of Our Laws 1 II. The Requirements of the Constitution 10 Part two. Voting Chapter I. The American Right to Vote: A History 19 II. Voting in the South After 1865. 27 III. A Statistical View of Negro Voting 40 IV. Denials of the Right to Vote 55 V. The Alabama Hearing 69 VI. Louisiana Roadblock 98 VII. Federal Powers to Protect the Franchise 107 VIII. Enforcement: the Civil Rights Division 128 IX. Findings and Recommendations 134 Dissent by Commissioner Battle 142 Proposal for a Constitutional Amendment to Establish Universal Suffrage. By Chairman Hannah and Commissioners Hesburgh and Johnson 143 Separate Statement on the Proposed XXIII Amendment. By Vice Chairman Storey and Commissioner Carlton 145 Part three. Public education Chapter I. The Problem in Historical Perspective _ 147 II. Segregation and Opinion, May 1954 158 III. A Measure of the Task 166 IV. Five Years of Progress, 1954-59 173 V. Legal Developments of Resistance in the Southern States. 233 VI. Segregation and Desegregation in the North and West 245 VII. The Minority Teacher 265 VIII. The Problems of Schools in Transition. _. 271 IX. An Evaluation of the Past and Appraisal of the Future 295 X. Federal Funds for Education 314 XI. Findings and Recommendations 324 Supplementary Statement on Education. By Vice Chairman Storey and Commissioners Battle and Carlton 328 Proposal to Require Equal Opportunity as a Condition of Federal Grants to Higher Education. By Chairman Hannah and Commissioners Hesburgh and Johnson 328 Separate Statement on Conditional Federal Grants to Higher Education. By Vice Chairman Storey and Commissioners Battle and Carlton 329 Part four. Housing A. America's Needs and Problems Chapter I. The General Crisis in Housing— _ 336 II. Special Housing Needs and Problems of Minorities 343 1. Quality and Quantity of Housing Occupied by or Available to Minorities, Compared With That Available Generally. 343 2. Residential Patterns of Minorities 354 3. Causes of Housing Inequalities of Minorities 374 4. Effects of the Housing Inequalities of Minorities 386 B. What is Being Done to Meet These Needs and Problems 397

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 8 of 10 III. State and Local Laws, Policies, and Housing Programs: 1. Cities and States With Laws, Policies, and Programs Against Discrimination in Housing 399 Supplement 410 2. Cities and States With Policies and Programs for Separate but Equal Housing 419 3. Cities and States With no Effective Laws, Policies, or Programs Relating to Discrimination in Housing 429 IV. Federal Laws, Policies, and Housing Programs: 1. The Constitution, Statutes, and Judicial Decisions 451 2. Programs and Policies of Federal Agencies 457 V. Business and Private Programs and Policies 506 VI. Findings and Recommendations 534 Supplementary Statement on Housing. By Vice Chairman Storey and Commissioners Battle and Carlton _ _ 540 Supplementary Statement on Housing. By Commissioners Hesburgh and Johnson — 541

Background In the course of conducting voting hearings in Montgomery, Ala., in December 1958, the Commission was impressed with the fact that its purposes were not fully realized because of the divided authority for compelling the production of registration records. The Commission can subpena such records but the initiative rests with the Attorney General to petition the court to order a contumacious witness to comply with a Commission subpena. Such divided responsibility is unusual. These situations require rapid, coordinated action and communication. Both are difficult to achieve when there is dual responsibility and operation.

The Commission has investigated sworn complaints of denials of the right to vote by reason of color or race in eight States. In two States where it determined to hold formal hearings, Alabama and Louisiana, its efforts to secure all relevant facts were met with open resistance by State officials. Nevertheless, on the basis of the testimony of witnesses and the examination of the registration records that were made available in Alabama, and through field investigation in other States, the Commission found that a substantial number of Negroes are being denied their right to vote. The infringement of this right is usually accomplished through discriminatory application and administration of State registration laws. But discriminatory registration is not the only problem. The Commission also found instances in which there was no registration board in existence, or none capable of functioning lawfully. In all such cases, the majority of the electorate already registered were white persons.

For one example, the members of the Macon County (Ala.) Board of Registrars resigned after this Commission's Alabama hearing. At the hearing, 25 Macon County Negroes had testified that the board had unlawfully refused to register them. Invited to answer these charges, the Macon County registrars had refused to testify. But an injunction suit against the board to compel registration of 17 of the hearing witnesses and other apparently qualified Negroes, brought by the

Supplemental Readings July 18, 2009 www.sffreedomschool.org p. 9 of 10 U.S. Attorney General under the new provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1957, was dismissed for lack of anyone to sue. Subsequently, new appointees to the Macon County board were named in July 1959. They refused to serve. Their reason, according to a United Press International report, was "the pressure for Negro registration" and "fear of being 'hounded' by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission."

The two other suits brought by the Attorney General under the same act had not at this writing resulted in a single registration. The suit in Georgia had been dismissed and was on appeal; the one in Louisiana was pending. In short, no one had yet been registered through the civil remedies of the 1957 act. Class suits on behalf of a number of Negroes to obtain registration have rarely been successful. The courts have inclined to the view that these suits are of an individual nature, with the result that a vast number of suits may be necessary. The delays inherent in litigation, and the real possibility that in the end litigation will prove fruitless because the registrars have resigned, make necessary further remedial action by Congress if many qualified citizens are not to be denied their constitutional right to vote in the 1960 elections.

DISSENT BY COMMISSIONER BATTLE I concur in the proposition that all properly qualified American citizens should have the right to vote but I believe the present laws are sufficient to protect that right and I disagree with the proposal for the appointment of a Federal Registrar which would place in the hands of the Federal Government a vital part of the election process so jealously guarded and carefully reserved to the States by the Founding Fathers.

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