program was carefully planned by a large group of the citizens of the State, white and Negro, and the results can be seen in new buildings in every county in the State. During this period 159 county school systems and 39 independent systems saw their school plants transplanted in many cases from rundown shacks to the most modern structures.

There is equal and comparable treatment in pupil transportation. During the 1957-58 school year, 408,701 pupils were transported to and from school in the 159 county school systems. Of this number, 282,503 were white pupils and 126,198 were Negro pupils. This ratio percentagewise is 69.1 percent white, and 30.9 percent Negro. Seventy percent of the total fleet of school buses was used to transport the white pupils and 30 percent was used to transport the Negro children. It should be pointed out that the use of these buses has been fully equalized and in proportion to the number of children transported.

The allotments of State funds for auxiliary items in the school program such as textbooks, library books, testing materials, laboratory equipment, etc., are all made on equal payments to all children regardless of race. This practice has been established for a long period of years by the school authorities of Georgia.

In Georgia, we have in the public schools, 654,592 white children and 308,819 Negro children. Teaching them, we have 23,286 white teachers and 9,943 Negro teachers.

There is equalization of facilities and equalization of teachers' salaries with equal pay for equal experience and academic qualifications.

At this point, I would like to ask consent to introduce into the record as exhibit A, a copy of the minimum State salary schedule which is used to distribute funds to local school systems for teachers' salaries. This schedule is established annually by the State board of education and all teachers are paid the minimum salaries for which they are qualified without regard to race. Negro teachers with equal qualifications and experience are paid the same salaries as white teachers. The certification of all teachers is maintained on the same basis.

If any should inquire as to why Georgia did not start earlier than 1951-52 upon this gigantic school building program, let me remind you that Georgia, along with the entire South, was impoverished and practically destroyed economically by the war years of 1861-65 and the frightful, tragic decades of reconstruction which followed. This was true to such an extent that only today— the middle of the 20th century-is Georgia-and the South-regaining its proper role as a strong and economically prosperous State and section of the Nation. In many respects, economically speaking, we are still behind certain of our sister States, but Georgia-and the South--are blessed with good people and with an abundance of natural resources of all kinds-and we are rapidly overtaking even the most industriously and economically progressive areas of the Nation.

In all candor I must admit that we might not have started our school building program in 1951-52 if we had not had as Governor a man with the vision, the leadership, the character, and the courage of Herman Talmadge.

In any event let me assure you that the question of the integration or the segregation of the races had nothing to do with either the starting or the direction of the program, because we had no problem there. Georgians had long since proved that the best and most tranquil way to educate heavy concentrations of white and Negro children was in separate facilities. The motivating factor, then, for the huge school building program in Georgia simply was to improve vastly the facilities for all of our schoolchildren. The money was spent where it was needed most without regard to race.

Both the beginning and the completion of our school building program points up conclusively, for any fairminded man to see, the real spirit underlying the relationship of our white and black citizens.

Since the administration which proposed it, the legislature which passed it, and the administration which will complete it were and are composed exclusively of white people, Georgia's gigantic school building program (the benefits of which our 33 percent Negro population received approximately 54 percent of the whole) should be evidence enough to any honest person that white Georgians sincerely are trying to promote the education and the welfare of Negro Georgians. In this respect another cognizant and salient fact should be borne in mind, and that is that even in today's relatively prosperous era, white Georgians pay more than 90 percent of our State's taxes. Prior to the recent beginning toward our complete economic recovery, the treasury of our State, at best, was always in relatively dire circumstances in relationship to the services needed by our

people. Prior to 1951-52, even our white schools were far substandard to our hopes and wishes. There simply wasn't enough money for them. But notwithstanding her pecuniary plight, Georgia has always tried to provide good schools for her Negro children.

In our segregated schools today, both our white and our Negro children are happy and they are becoming well educated. Each race prefers it to be the way it is. A few of each race, it is true, are now, and will be, willing tools subject to the pressures of outside agitators, race baiters, and troublemakers.

But why, in the name of commonsense, should so much that is so good be destroyed by professional liberals who endorse force and compulsion? Yet this is precisely what Senate bill No. 810, and others like it, propose to do. This is one of the reasons I am against this bill together with all others like it. Such bills can only do great harm and damage. Indeed, the mere agitation for their passage creates much ill will, heats passions, and causes irreparable harm.

CONSTITUTIONALITY

To the extent that these so-called civil rights bills have their genesis in the unfortunate decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (74 Sup. Ct. 686), they are, in my opinion, flagrantly unconstitutional.

Candidly, I state my conviction and my opinion to be that the case of Brown v. Board of Education is a decision rendered in violation of, and contra to, the Constitution of the United States and hence this decision is void and it is not the law of the land.

By this assertion it is not my purpose to defy the Supreme Court, but rather it is my purpose to defend the Constitution of the United States. What the Supreme Court has done in this case is an accomplished fact, which, cumulatively with other usurpations of unwarranted power by the Court under the guise of judicial interpretation, threaten consequences so devastating to our system of constitutional government that it is incumbent upon all true Americans everywhere to utilize every lawful means available to force the return of the Supreme Court to its proper place and function.

Beginning in 1937 and accelerating from that date, the Supreme Court of the United States in case after case, of which the desegregation cases are but a part, has enunciated the unique doctrine that the Constitution, in actuality, does not mean any more than they want it to mean or what they think it ought to mean. This doctrine is a vicious cancer which, if supinely accepted by the Congress and the people, will lead to the certain destruction of the American system of government and with it all of our individual rights, privileges, and freedoms.

If this judicial doctrine is allowed to stand, in a short while there will be no such thing as civil rights for our people.

Yet, it is to further the acceptance of this very doctrine that all of these socalled civil rights bills have been conceived.

What a shame it is that such a gentle name should have been applied to such foul legislation serving such a noxious purpose.

Please bear in mind that article V of the Constitution expressly states and provides how amendments may be made. In substance it provides that amendments are accomplished upon the two-thirds vote of each House of the Congress and by a three-fourths vote of the States. The amendatory provisions of article V are exclusive. There is no other lawful way for the Constitution to be amended. No mention whatsoever is made of the Supreme Court in article V; hence, the Supreme Court has no right to amend or to alter the Constitution by its decisions.

Now no one questions the power or the right of the Supreme Court of the United States to render a formal decision upon the constitutionality of a proposition based upon a specific set of facts. It is, indeed, the proper function of the Court to ascertain the intent of the framers and adopters of the Constitution as to facts properly before the Court.

But when the Supreme Court has once so ascertained the intent of the framers and adopters of the Constitution by a formal decision on a specific set of facts, the decision then, as to those specific facts, becomes an integral part of the Constitution and as much so as if it had been included therein from the adoption. Therefore, when the Supreme Court reverses such an initial ascertainment of intent, it does nothing less than to amend and to alter the Constitution.

This proposition is sound. It was respected for the first 150 years of this Nation's history. In 1937 the Supreme Court under pressure from the White

House veered away from precedent and proceeded upon the doctrine that the end justifies the means. Now for over 20 years it has by reverse interpretations on numerous occasions amended and altered the Constitution. However, the repeated rendition of unconstitutional Court decisions does not give validity to the process. That which was originally void remains void. An accumulation of zeros still leaves us with zero.

The decision of the Supreme Court which initially ascertains intent is the only decision on constitutional construction which becomes a part of the law of the land. Any later decision applying the holding is the law of the case only as to the parties to the case-no more.

In the case of Gong Lum v. Rice, the Supreme Court decided that separate but equal school facilities met the requirements of the Constitution. That ruling was correct and right historically and in every other legal way, but whether it was right or wrong it became a part of the Constitution and still is. (So also is the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 transportation decision.)

The Supreme Court, and many others who are afraid to face the issue squarely and without clouding it with charges of prejudice and intolerance, have lost sight of the fact that the Constitution is a compact between the States and the Federal Government. That compact cannot be changed without the States' consent. The Supreme Court can interpret that compact once as to a specific situation but they can't continue to change their minds about what the compact meant when written. The Court is the agent for interpretation-not the agent for amendment.

On May 17, 1954, before the Supreme Court handed down its desegregation decisions on that day, the Constitution of the United States meant one thing; it had meant that same thing when each of the Justices sitting on that day had taken their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. Yet, after handing down their decision on that day, the Constitution (so said the Court) now meant something else.

How in the name of commonsense and honesty can one be deemed to have kept one's oath when the very meaning of the thing which one swore to uphold was so dramatically changed?

It is difficult to conceive how Americans can long tolerate this sort of brazen usurpation of power, nor fail to realize the extreme danger to the national existence of a self-defying Court, which, like Napoleon, would put the crown of infallibility on its brow.

Hopeful signs are appearing that Americans are indeed awakening to the grave danger.

The American Bar Association recently cautiously spoke but a forthcoming resignation indicated that its voice had been heard.

Thirty-six chief justices of the highest courts of 36 States have called upon the Supreme Court to exercise judicial self-restraint, and, in effect, have demanded that the Supreme Court cease to exercise unlimited policymaking powers.

EXHIBIT B

At this point I would like to request that the resolution adopted unanimously by the State Democratic Convention of Georgia on October 14, 1959, and marked "Exhibit B," be placed in the record.

EXHIBIT C

Also, at this point, I would like to cite with full approval the address delivered on February 11, 1959, by the distinguished Senator from North Carolina, the Honorable Sam J. Ervin, Jr., entitled "The Role of the Supreme Court as the Interpreter of the Constitution." Because this address is so intellectually honest and forthright because it is so legally well expressed and so easy to understand; and because it documents and reinforces points I have attempted to make here, I would like to ask that it be printed here in full context and marked "Exhibit C" hereto.

:

In conclusion, gentlemen, let us examine into some of the motivating factors behind the hullabaloo of the clamorers for this so-called civil rights legislation. What is their motive?

Everyone knows that the provisions of these bills are drastic.

Everyone knows that these bills are directed primarily against the Southern States and against the southern people.

It should be equally apparent, however, that the full force and effect of the evil results of these bills, if passed, will fall not alone upon the Southern States

and upon southern people, for let it not be forgotten that all of the Southern States are partners in the Union, one Nation indivisible, and that action which insults, ridicules, maligns, slanders, wounds, and damages the Southern States, likewise insults, ridicules, maligns, slanders, wounds, and damages the Nation in its entirety.

I aver that in our segregated society in the South, Negroes are well treated, and the progress which they have made, individually and as a race, in the last 100 years, transcends any progress which they have made anywhere else during this period.

Per example, in the city of Atlanta alone it is known that there are over 597 Negro-owned and Negro-operated business establishments. I question if any other city in the United States can equal this accomplishment. According to figures released by the U.S. Department of Commerce, there are practically as many Negro-owned automobiles in the State of Georgia as there are total automobiles in the Soviet Union. (In Georgia, there are approximately 375,200 Negro-owned automobiles, while in all of Russia there are only about 400,000.)

Educationally and economically, then, the Negro in the South has made tremendous progress.

Today the Negro stands with an even greater opportunity to better himself and to dignify his race.

But also, today, because of the diatribe, and the bitter and abusive harangue directed against the South by the professional South haters and South baiters, in advancing bills such as these, the Negro citizen is in grave danger of being constrained to confuse "freedom" with "unlimited license," and wherever this occurs, the Negro, together with all society, suffers.

Personally, I am compelled to the opinion that these bitter and abusive harangues against the South, when coupled with the extolling of Negro's “rights" to a point where these "rights" are made to appear to transcend "rights" common to us all, have created in many Negroes a sense of false privilege which, when frustrated, has led to the perpetration of many heinous crimes.

To illustrate, it cannot be gainsaid that the incidence of rape in which Negro men participate is on the increase across the Nation. In Atlanta a decade ago, this sort of thing, indeed, rarely occurred. Unfortunately, today it is rather a frequent happening. It is, I believe, a direct and tragic result of the hysteria and wild emotionalism which characterizes the spurious assertions of many of those who, in sponsoring so-called civil rights legislation, would lead our citizens to believe that social and governmental acceptance and respectability can be gained by force and brutishness.

The truth is that these things can neither be gained nor prevented by force and brutishness. Why then, can't we, as intelligent, thinking human beings, leave the matter to time and evolution and not aggravate this most delicate situation either by expedient party platform planks or more unwise legislation?

There is much about the way all this business of so-called civil rights is handled which, quite naturally, we of the South resent and are compelled to resist.

What red-blooded American would not resent, for himself and his entire section, having all branded as mobsters and constant practitioners of mob law every time a few men someplace take the law into their own hands and wrongfully avenge a crime?

I will tell you that we the people of the South deplore mob law and violence. We deeply regret and deplore, as much as anyone, the reprehensible act of the taking and killing outside of the law of the Negro rapist in Poplarville, Miss. Neither, however, would we make a martyr out of the deceased rapist who ravaged a young mother before the horrified eyes of her 4-year-old daughter.

We people of the South hold that the rapist and the murderer alike are entitled to and are subject to trial by law. We. as much as any men, oppose a system of vigilante law in this country. We believe that the enforcement of the criminal laws, and the punishment for crime, is done properly only through the courts.

But it is indeed a reflection on the national intelligence and the news media that the country is conditioned to unfavorable reports from the South and prefers to shudder over horror stories from our section than to accord to us a spirit of understanding and fairness.

It is, too, a reflection on the sincerety and honesty of purpose of a U.S. Senator, when in the heat and flourish of publicity on the Poplarville incident, he enters into a civil rights frenzy. Since the American people are not fools,

we wonder if they from all sections don't join with us from the South in suspecting that the Senator is, in truth, more interested in furthering a candidacy of which he whispers, rather than in furthering either actual or fancied civil rights?

We the people of the South resent such utterances as those made recently in Tallahassee, Fla., by that Massachusetts-born, Princeton-educated author, Philip Wylie, who was quoted by the Associated Press as saying, "I hope that in a third of a century, not only will we be integrated and almost all racism will be a historic fact we read about in old books, but I hope we'll be a lot further along to all becoming tea colored."

Such an utterance is nothing less than a symbol, a part of the hysteria, which these civil rights bills serve to create and to foster.

We of the South disagree with Mr. Wylie. Rather, we respect and believe in the separate integrity of the white and black races. For ourselves, we do not take issue with God who made us white, red, yellow, or black by hoping that someday we all will become "tea colored."

To solve today's problems, we do not need extremists, racists, or demagogues. But creating the trouble today, and constantly endeavoring to compound it, are the extremists, the racists, and the demagogues, many of whom are officers and members of the NAACP, and the majority of the rest of whom these days, are found north and west of the Mason-Dixon line.

Please let me advise you as Georgia Democratic chairman, that no qualified Negro citizen in Georgia who sincerely wishes to do so is denied the right to register and vote.

At page 1205 of the recently released hearings before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives, 86th Congress, 1st session, Congressman Prince Preston, First District, Georgia, asked the following question of Mr. John A. Hannah, president of Michigan State University and chairman of the Commission on Civil Rights: "Have you found generally in the State of Georgia that the Negro population has no problem about registering and voting?"

To this question, Mr. Hannah replied: "Well, from personal investigation, certainly in Atlanta and in many other areas that were brought into our discussions there, that is true. *** It is my general impression the voting situation in Georgia is pretty good and getting much better."

May I also point out that in this same report of hearings above referred to, Civil Rights Commission Chairman Hannah made the following comments in reference to Negro housing in Georgia: "Well, sir, we concluded that there was a story in Atlanta that could well be told to the country. Of course, there is some pretty poor Negro housing in Atlanta, as there is poor housing for Negroes and white folks in other sections of the country, but the Atlanta story is a very interesting story and the progress that has been made in providing an opportunity for Negroes to acquire middle-class, and high-class, housingwhile it is true they are segregated in areas-they have some very fine communities. This has been a cooperative effort worked out voluntarily by the Negroes and the white people and the city leaders and the mayor and so on. "Frankly, I was surprised and pleased at what we found in the housing area in Atlanta, not because you (Congressman Preston) happen to be a native of Georgia, but there is a better opportunity provided for middle-class and highclass housing for at least some of these Negroes in Atlanta than in many cities in my part of the country."

A study of the report of the Civil Rights Commission, considering the amount of taxpayers' money spent and the amazingly few complaints received, further demonstrates rather conclusively that the highly publicized civil rights problem is one that is being created rather than one which actually exists. It is being created jointly by self-seeking radical politicians and by the arrogant leadership of the NAACP, both of which elements, it appears, care not so much for America and her Constitution, but rather care more for money, power, and getting the block-vote.

Undoubtedly to the Negro mind, Abraham Lincoln, more than any other human being, living or deceased, represents all that is good, kind, fair, and appreciative to the Negro race. Listen, then, to Abraham Lincoln's words:

"I will say, then, that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races; that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people, and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white

40361-59-pt. 2-43