CIVIL RIGHTS-1957

TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1957

UNITED STATES SENATE,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS

OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:00 o'clock a. m., in room 457, Senate Office Building, Senator Sam Ervin presiding. Present: Senators Ervin (presiding) and Hruska.

Also present: Charles H. Slayman, Jr., Chief Counsel, Constitutional Rights Subcommittee; and Robert Young, professional staff member, Judiciary Committee.

Senator ERVIN. The committee will come to order. I believe the first witness scheduled for this morning was Senator Neuberger, but I do not see him present. Therefore we will let Governor Coleman testify at this time if he is ready.

You may come up to this chair here, Governor, if you will.

The subcommittee at this time is glad to recognize Šenator Eastland of Mississippi.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES 0. EASTLAND, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Senator EASTLAND. Mr. Chairman, Governor Coleman, the Governor of Mississippi, is the witness this morning.

Governor Coleman was a very able attorney general and is making a very fine record as Governor of the State of Mississippi. He has studied these bills and their effect at great length. I know he realizes what their actual practical effect will be.

It is an attempt for government by intimidation. I am sure that Governor Coleman will have a very fine and very helpful statement, a statement that should be beneficial to the Congress in considering these far-reaching_measures.

Senator ERVIN. The subcommittee is glad to recognize Senator John C. Stennis of Mississippi.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN C. STENNIS, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Senator STENNIS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate being here. I am not going to take your time except to say this: I am certainly pleased that the Governor is able to be here this morning and that this subcommittee and the Senate are going to get the benefit of his ideas on this far-reaching legislation.

The Attorney General appeared here before the subcommittee for these bills and he referred to the problem that the bills cover. I submit that the Governor of Mississippi knows as much about this real problem and its practical aspects as any witness who has been here. With all deference he has more practical knowledge of it than many of them who have been here. He has, from years of experience in State government, a vast knowledge of the affairs and conditions in Mississippi and of the relationships between all segments and groups, of Mississippi's population. He is one of the leading authorities in this country on the racial problem as we in the South know it. I am very glad to be here with him.

Senator ERVIN. The subcommittee appreciates the appearance of the two Senators from Mississippi before the subcommittee and we are glad to welcome Governor Coleman as a witness to give the subcommittee his views on this legislation.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES P. COLEMAN, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI

Governor COLEMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am honored indeed to hear the kind and gracious remarks of our two United States Senators from the State of Mississippi, both of them most excellent in their service to Mississippi and in the esteem with which all of the people in Mississippi hold them.

It is a great honor to me to be introduced to this subcommittee by such distinguished gentlemen in such a gracious way. Also, I want to say that I am delighted to appear before a most able Chairman at present with whom I worked in Chicago for a couple of weeks last

summer.

I learned there to highly appreciate the ability and the sincerity of the gentleman who is now presiding over these hearings.

Mr. Bruce Catton, a noted author, in an introduction to a book recently said "The Civil War was brought about by a succession of érrors in which the whole country shared. The fearful price that was paid for it was exacted from the victors and the defeated alike." As I appear before this distinguished subcommittee with reference to the proposed civil rights legislation now receiving consideration, I realize that we who live today are again witnesses to the repetitions of history.

In my considered judgement, this whole unhappy problem is being complicated and greatly worsened by a succession of errors, and the entire country will eventually pay the price. If any of this legislation or a substantial part of it should ever be enacted into law, it will create mistrust, it will breed confusion worse confounded and it will lose much of the valuable ground already gained toward the settlement of these problems.

The results of this legislation if ever enacted, like the results of the Civil War, will be a monument to the errors and to those who made those errors, a monument which future generations no doubt will devotedly wish had never been erected.

It it first suggested that we should have a so-called Commission on Civil Rights. It is obvious that this Commission can do nothing which is not already being done or could be done by the United States grand juries. Then the purpose of it must be to have the inquisitors

named not by well-defined and time-tested judicial process, but by the long arm of the executive reaching out from Washington, D. Č.

It is suggested that six Commissioners be named. Obviously by this method 42 States would be wholly without representation on the Commission and would be subjected to the official actions of men who would be dealing only one-eighth of the time with people, facts, and conditions personally known to them in any State.

In other words, I may interpolate here that if this legislation is aimed at the South, and certainly it is in many respects, there are only 9 or 10 or 11 Southern States, but when this Commission is named, 42 States throughout the whole country will be without representation on its personnel.

A Commission appointed in Washington and operating from Washington at this late date reminds a southerner of those 10 years of reconstruction after the Civil War when there was no Marshall plan and no point 4 program for the South, but there were military rule and military commissions.

It reminds us of that evil day when citizens were tried by so-called commissions without the intervention of a jury and were sent to prison for however long and to whatever location best pleased the lord high repositors of that arbitrary authority.

These recollections are still vivid in the minds of our people, and the sponsors of this legislation are deluding themselves if they believe that this recollection can ever die. It is a page in history that cannot be eradicated and will not be forgotten. Indeed, some of the very wrongs which should have been avoided in the first 50 years after the Civil War were caused not by the war itself but by these acts of the United States Government immediately following the war. The eventual results of a Civil Rights Commission will be to educate the rest of the country to what we of the South have known all along. If we are really and truly interested in the welfare of the Negro race, and I concede the good faith of the legislators associated with this unhappy enterprise, we will be careful not to put the Negro behind the barrier which this legislation will automatically erect.

I ask the Congress to mark my prediction that if these proposals become law, it will not be an aid to the Negro but it will be a continuing and continuous souce of agitation, uproar, tumult, and domestic discord, and the intended beneficiary will be its first victim. Such Federal laws will be the chief fomenter and daily instigator of ill will between the races instead of doing good where good so badly needs to be done.

This will cause the employer of the Negro to dispense with that employment in an effort to avoid being called before the Civil Rights Commission or enjoined on account of real or fancied wrongs or grievances.

It will cause the whole South as a matter of prudent self-defense to have as little to do with the Negro race as possible in order to avoid the chance of being haled before this executive juggernaut conceived out of vengeance upon the South and instigated in the false premise of aid and assistance to the Negro race.

The proposal is noted that this Commission must file a report within 2 years and that it will therefore automatically then go out of existence. If the purpose of the Commission is simply to find facts, then

I respectifully put the question directly to the Congress: Why should Congress abdicate its own right, power and duty to find facts?

As a citizen, I read every day of investigations conducted by mul tiple committees and subcommittees of both branches of the Congress Multiplied thousands upon thousands of dollars are spent by congressional committees and properly so in the search of facts upon which to base appropriate legislation.

The people are told that this is necessary and I agree. When impartial history shall come to be written, what can then be said in justification of the abdication by Congress of this right, power and duty to conduct its own investigations as the duly elected and chosen representatives of the people and ascertain the facts for itself.

The answer will have to be that it was done at the loud insistence of a minority within a minority for political reasons which backfired. I would like to requote that statement. The answer will be that it was done at the loud insistence of a minority within a minority for political reasons which backfired. And then history will have to further record that those States against which it was intended were not intimidated or subjugated by the legislation. Rather ills theretofore not experienced by the unhappy and dissatisfied minority were thus brought upon themselves, and the extremely unhappy sequel of it all will be an automatic dispersion to other sections of the country which were then brought face to face with the problem they had intentionally fathered by remote control for others, and upon coming face to face with it, they will cry out for help which in previous years they had denied to others similarly situated.

Only yesterday I read a quotation from the great judge, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which he said "Have faith and do the needful." What this Nation needs today is leadership in communities, counties, States and in the National Government which will have both the courage and the vision to recognize the unalterable fact that legislation can neither add to nor subtract from the intrinsic worth of any man and that the solution to this problem is to be found at that place where the United States Government is least able to reach, to wit: The communities where the people live and which make up this great country. I make this statement about a proposed Commission on Civil Rights as the Governor of 1 of the 48 States, and I do it in the realization that my State in the past has often been chosen as a favorite whipping boy of those who try to use us for a scapegoat in order to raise a tiger.

I did not come here to indulge in a credibility match with the defamers of Mississippi. Their malice, their falsehoods and their tactics should be beneath the contempt of all true Americans and we of Mississippi spurn them for what they are.

The pity is that any State in its own Congress, in the House where it has the right to expect defense and protection, should have to be made the subject of such attacks.

I have been Governor of Mississippi since January 17, 1956, a matter of approximately 14 months. There has been no interracial violence in Mississippi in that 14 months and there have been no terror and intimidation.

I can give my solemn assurance to this subcommittee and to the Congress that such will be true during the remainder of my 4 years in office, libel and slander to the contrary notwithstanding.

Of course this objective will be the harder to achieve if this proposed civil-rights legislation should be enacted by the Congress. The responsibility for that, however, will clearly not be mine.

In 1954 in Mississippi we had 8 white people who were killed by Negroes, and only 6 Negroes who were killed by whites.

Senator ERVIN. Will you repeat that? I did not catch the figure. Governor COLEMAN. În 1954 in Mississippi we had 8 white people who were killed by Negroes and only 6 Negroes who were killed by whites. 182 Negroes killed each other.

In 1955 we had 2 whites killed by Negroes, 4 Negroes killed by whites, and 159 Negroes killed each other.

In 1954 the ratio was 30 to 1. In 1955, it was 40 to 1, that is to say this comparison between the members of the Negro race killing each other and interracial killings.

May I be allowed respectfully to entertain some wonder about this day and time when the enlightened statesmanship of this country refuses to become concerned about this latter situation. The man does not exist who can point to attacks directed by me upon the Negro race. It would appeal, however, to the logical mind to inquire why all the fuss about the 1 while the 40 are wholly ignored.

The answer is, there is some national politics in the one, only heartbreak and economic loss are involved when Negroes kill each other.

In any event, I think I am entirely justified in the belief that the white people of Mississippi do not deserve a blanket indictment just because there were 4 Negroes killed by the whites in that State in 1955, while the Negroes were busily engaged killing 159 of their own number. Blessed is the politician who can strain valiantly at a gnat and swallow a camel.

There is absolutely no necessity for a Federal Civil Rights Commission. I predict that when it is set up it will be used not only to wave the bloody shirt against the South, but it will be turned on some of its most valiant sponsors.

In that latter event we can expect some justice from the legislation, but Congress will never be able to close the Pandora's box which it thus will have opened.

And may I insist that if there is a problem which needs the corrective action of Congress, someone has become greatly muddled in his logic when he attemps to concentrate his all upon the killing of a few and ignores the 159 who killed each other.

It is now proposed, however, that the Congress place its stamp of approval upon the idea of government by injunction. Trial by jury and similar civil rights of ancient origin and great respectability well loved by the true American, are to be discarded, if involved in race relations only.

Show me the man who is so naive as to believe that the right of trial by jury can be sacrificed in one particular and thereafter be maintained inviolate in all others.

Senator ERVIN. Governor, may I interrupt you at this point?
Governor COLEMAN. Yes, sir.

Senator ERVIN. Can you think of a single reason which would justify the abolition of trial by jury in civil-rights cases which would not apply with equal force to every other case where the right to trial by jury is enjoyed?