tutional principles readopted in lieu of psychological principles of Myrdal and other similar Swedish investigators.

That is the purpose.

Senator ERVIN. May I interrupt at this point? I have been astounded by a spirit which seems to be abroad in certain sections that you and I and other Americans do not have the right to question the soundness of a Supreme Court decision. I would just like to ask the people who now preach that had practiced the same doctrine, the case of Gong Lum v. Rice, which was handed down by a unanimous court headed by William Howard Taft in 1927 and which holds exactly the opposite of the decisions of May 1954, would still be the law of the land, would it not?

Mr. BLOCH. Yes, sir; of course it would.

Senator ERVIN. And also I would like to make this observation: I thank the good Lord that Americans have the right to think and express their honest thoughts concerning everything under the sun, including the decisions of Supreme Court majorities. It has been said that we ought to be silent because if we speak our honest thoughts they might detract from the dignity and prestige of the Supreme Court of the United States.

But I have this conviction: That no public official is entitled to any respect other than that which he merits, and that this observation is true of all public officials whether they be presidents, senators, congressman, governors, judges, or dog catchers. Whenever the day comes that people cannot express their honest thoughts about decisions of courts as well as other matters, the death knell of liberty in America. is sounded. I have a good precedent for this view also in the same Abraham Lincoln. I think it would be well if the American people would read his great debates with Judge Stephen A. Douglas in the Senate race of 1858.

Abraham Lincoln made some very strong remarks concerning the Supreme Court decision in the Dred Scott case. This is what he said in substance: The decision of the Supreme Court is erroneous. It is contrary to such precedents as we have upon the subject. It is founded in part upon factual assumptions which are not really true.

He said, in substance, that he refused to accept it as a rule of political conduct for the people or the agencies of government, and that he would do everything within his power to secure its reversal.

Then he said another thing that is very significant. He said in substance, that if he were a member of Congress and a measure should come before that body providing for the exclusion of slavery from the territories, he would vote for that measure notwithstanding the fact that the Supreme Court of the United States had said in the Dred Scott decision that Congress did not have the constitutional power to exclude slavery from the territories.

I would suggest to the folks who would curtail our right to freedom of speech, that before they attempt to do so, they go and read what Abraham Lincoln said in the debates with Judge Douglas.

We are delighted to have present the Junior Senator from Georgia. Senator TALMADGE. Thank you.

May I make a very brief statement, Mr. Chairman?

Senator ERVIN. Yes, we will be glad to hear you.

STATEMENT OF HON. HERMAN TALMADGE, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF GEORGIA

Senator TALMADGE. I had hoped to accompany my distinguished constituent, Mr. Charles J. Bloch, to this committee this morning to present him to the committee, but due to a meeting of the Agriculure Committee of which I am a member I did not have that privilege.

I would like the Chair and the members of the committee to know that Mr. Bloch is one of the most outstanding constitutional lawyers in America. He has been president of the Bar Association of the State of Georgia. He has held very important positions in the American Bar Association. He has been chairman of the judicial council of Georgia since its creation some 12 years ago.

He is a member of the State Board of Regents of my State. He is chairman of the educational committee of the State board of regents. I wanted the committee to know something of Mr. Bloch's background so his testimony could be given its true perspective which it richly deserves.

Also, the distinguished attorney general of my State, the Honorable Eugene Cook, was supposed to appear before this committee this morning, but his office informed me yesterday that he was ill and could not be present. He asked me to have his statement inserted in the record, which I believe Mr. Bloch has already requested and perhaps you have done.

Senator ERVIN. That has been done.

Senator TALMADGE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ERVIN. Senator, we are delighted to have you make this statement to the subcommittee. I stated at the opening that I had had the privilege of knowing Mr. Bloch for approximately 10 years, and had also known him by reputation for many years, and that I considered him one of the country's ablest lawyers and finest citizens. Senator TALMADGE. Thank you.

Georgia has no more distinguished citizen.

STATEMENT OF CHARLES J. BLOCH-Resumed

Mr. BLOCH. Following up the Chair's suggestion just prior to Senator Talmadge's statement, it is right interesting to show the application of that to Plessy v. Ferguson, decided in 1896. It held that the separation of the races on a train of cars did not violate the 14th amendment. That was the law of the land.

Now we are told that because we do not supinely bow to the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, and thus destroy our public school systems in Georgia, we are told that we are, almost it is said, that we are traitors.

But as I stated recently, from 1896 to 1956, 60 years, Plessy v. Ferguson was the law of the land as applied to transportation facilities, and the first person who in violation of an ordinance of the city of Montgomery stepped on a bus violated the law of the land.

Yet he is a hero. But we who are trying to keep our public school systems intact are not heroes, to say the least of it.

That Plessy v. Ferguson doctrine was announced by a court composed of Justices Brown, Field, Gray, Shiras, White, Peckham, and

Fuller, not one of them except Justice White from the South, the Chief Justice being from Illinois.

In 1899, Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (175 U. S. 529), was decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. That opinion, sir, is particularly interesting, because it was written by Justice Harlan.

I think there is a misprint there in my statement. It has "Hobson." It is Harlan, the grandfather of the present Justice Harlan. It held that the right and power of the State to regulate the method of providing for he education of its youth at public expense is clear. The gist of the complaint in the trial court was that the board of education had used funds to assist in maintaining a high school for white children without providing a similar school for colored children. The substantial relief prayed was an injunction. The trial court in Richmond County, Ga., had granted the injunction.

The chancellor of the State court judge elected by the people-no, he was not elected by the people then; he was chosen by the legislature at that time-granted that injunction. The Supreme Court of Georgia reversed it.

After the judgment of the Supreme Court of Georgia was made the judgment of the lower court, it was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which was then composed of Chief Justice Fuller, and Justices Harlan, Gray, Brewer, Brown, Shiras, White, Peckham, and McKenna, only one southerner.

Speaking through Justice Harlan, the court said at page 544:

The substantial relief asked is an injunction that would either impair the efficiency of the high school provided for white children, or compel the board to close it. But if that were done, the result would only be to take from white children educational privileges enjoyed by them, without giving to colored children additional opportunities for the education furnished in high schools. The colored schoolchildren of the country would not be advanced in the matter of their education by a decree compelling the defendant board to cease giving support to a high school for white children.

And, at page 545, the Court said:

The State court did not deem the action of the Board of Education in suspending temporarily and for economic reasons the high school for colored children, a sufficient reason why the defendant should be restrained by injunction from maintaining an existing high school for white children.

An then the Court said-and this is so pertinent, so cogent:

We may add that while all admit that the benefit and burdens of public taxation must be shared by citizens without discrimination against any class on account of their race, the education of the people in schools maintained by State taxation is a matter belonging to respective States, and any interference on the part of the Federal authority with the management of such schools cannot be justified except in a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights secured by the law of the land.

This decision is the more to be considered because it was written by Justice Harlan, who had dissented 3 years before in Plessy v. Ferguson.

I interpolate, Mr. Chairman. Just look at the importance of that in the present day. We have in Georgia, as I have said once or twice here this morning, we have a constitutional provision that the education of our young, the education of our youth, is one of the fundamental duties of the State, and that it must be carried on by taxation. But that separate schools must be maintained for the white and the colored children.

So that under the Georgia constitution, which can only be changed by a vote of the people of Georgia, the kind of public schools, the nature of the public school system which we must have, if we have any, is a segregated system.

Now suppose perchance a colored person should become dissatisfied with the education that he is receiving, say in Fulton County, Ga., and should bring an injunction in the proper court having jurisdiction over Fulton County, or if this legislation before your committee is adopted so that the Attorney General of the United States should bring such an injunction, and it should be held by a proper tribunal, to wit, the district court, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, that the members of that school board in Fulton County could no longer maintain separate schools for the white and colored children, as our laws provide that they must if they maintain any, what happens?

That does not mean, as your distinguished judge, Judge Parker, so aptly pointed out in a decision in a South Carolina case in the fourth circuit, that does not mean that the school system there in Atlanta must be integrated.

No court can say that. No court can ever say it to the school authorities, or rather under repeated precedents no court can ever say it, that the public school authorities must maintain an integrated school system in Fulton County, Ga. All that they can say is that you can't maintain a segregated system. Well, what happens? We have none until the people of the State of Georgia see fit to change their constitutional provision, which I think will be a long, long time off.

So you can see the aptness of Justice Harlan's opinion written for the unanimous court back there in 1899.

Where would it help the colored children to close up all the schools in any county in Georgia? Where would it help them to just cut off all education? And that is why we are trying so hard to maintain our public school system.

Plessy v. Ferguson was repeatedly followed in later cases

Senator ERVIN. Some people entertain what I deem to be peculiar notions on the subject as to whether the Federal Government should aid the States in the construction of public schools. As everybody knows, school policies are established by adults-not by schoolchil dren. Whenever a bill is proposed to grant Federal aid to States for school construction purposes, some Congressmen say: "The children need education. The school systems are inadequate. But we won't let Southern States have aid unless they integrate their schools." Since the little children of the Southern States cannot prescribe how the schools are to be conducted, it seems to me that those Congressmen are certainly visiting the supposed sins of the fathers upon the children with a vengeance.

In other words, the children are being denied adequate education because some people don't like what their fathers do about things.

Mr. BLOCH. And I have often wondered, Senator, as a corollary to that it may be somewhat departing from the text here, but I have often wondered-and I know you have, and I know you are going to

discuss it some day, I hope you will, under what power of Congress does the Congress of the United States appropriate money for the erection and maintenance of public schools in the States?

Well, we are supposed to be a Government of delegated powers. The Congress has only such powers as the States have delegated to it. Under what power of Congress are those bills being considered? But to go back to Plessy v. Ferguson, it was repeatedly followed in later cases, namely, Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company v. Kentucky (179 U. S. 388 (1900)); Chiles v. Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Company (218 U. S. 71 (1910)); McCabe v. A. T. & S. F. Railway Company (235 U. S. 151 (1914)), and in them the doctrine was confirmed by Justices McKenna, Holmes, Day, Moody, Lurton, Hughes, Joseph R. Lamar, and McReynolds.

And, in 1927, Gong Lum v. Rice (275 U. S. 78), was decided by Chief Justice William Howard Taft with these Justices concurring: Oliver Wendell Holmes, of Massachusetts; Van Devanter, of Wyoming; Brandeis, of Massachusetts; Butler, of Minnesota; Sanford, of Tennessee; Stone, of New York; McReynolds, of Tennessee; and Sutherland, of Utah.

The Chief Justice cited approvingly Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, supra, and also, among others, these cases:

People v. Cisco (161 New York 598), in which the court of last resort of New York reiterated the principle of the Gallagher case. I have here, sir, a complete copy of the opinion in the Cisco case which I ask be made a part of the record. That case was decided by a court of which Judge Alton B. Parker was chief judge, afterwards a distinguished candidate for the Presidency of the United States, either in 1904 or 1908.

Senator ERVIN. 1904.

Mr. BLOCH. This was in 1900. Here is what the New York court said:

Thus, the same statutory authority for the maintenance of such separate schools now exists as existed when King v. Gallagher was decided.

Note this sentence:

Therefore, as this question has already been decided, it is not an open one in this court.

The New York court held to the principle, the great principle, of stare decisis. And it has this pungent, cogent sentence in it:

It was the facilities for and the advantages of an education that the State was required to furnish to all the children, and not that it should provide for them any particular class of associates while such education was being obtained.

That is not a North Carolina judge, sir. That is not a Georgia judge talking. That is a group of New York judges talking in 1900 about the very same Constitution that the Supreme Court of the United States considered in 1954.

New York agreed with our theory, that a Constitution is not a chameleon, a lizard remarkable for the changes of color of the skin according to the mood of the animal or surrounding conditions. Senator ERVIN. That will be included in the record.