Senator ERVIN. For example, in my State we have 1,761,330 white persons who are eligible to vote, or at least are 21 years and upwards in age, and yet in normal times only 30 or 40 percent of these people vote in an off year.

Would not a person who desired to draw such inferences draw the inference from that fact that in North Carolina we denied white people the right to vote?

Senator NEUBERGER. No, I don't think so. I think in the first place there is no comparison between that and the percentage of the Negroes who vote in certain parts of the South. I do not think there is any comparison at all in those percentages.

Senator ERVIN. We do not classify people as white and colored on our registration and poll books. Consequently, it is difficult to get exact figures on this matter.

If we should accept as correct the figures of the executive secretary of the NAACP to the effect that 155,000 colored citizens of my State vote, we would have to come to the conclusion that there is not such a great discrepancy there between the percentage of white and colored persons who vote.

Senator NEUBERGER. I think you have noted in my remarks since I came before your committee, I have not referred specifically to any State nor do I intend to do so other than to say I was glad that the distinguished Governor of Mississippi was here with you today.

I realize that in North Carolina a great deal of progress has been made. North Carolina is to be commended for this. But from the figures which I have examined in certain States of the South, it is quite obvious that few of the colored citizens of those States, and certainly of certain counties and areas of those States, are using their right of franchise, which is guaranteed to them under our Constitution. Senator ERVIN. Do you not concede that one of the great advantages of our system of government under the Constitution lies in the fact that we have a diversity of government and that by reason of this diversity, division of governmental powers between the Federal and State Governments, that State governments can be used in a sense for experiments which would be dangerous if tried on a national scale.

Senator NEUBERGER. Justice Brandeis made that point in a dissenting opinion that he wrote once with Justice Holmes, that the States were laboratories for new governmental experiments.

My State, for example, was a very useful laboratory. It was the first State to experiment with the initiative and referendum and with direct election of Senators, and since that time a good many of those innovations, particularly direct election of Senators, spread to every State, so I would agree with you on that.

Senator ERVIN. I might state I am glad you mentioned Justice Brandeis because he was one of my favorite jurists.

Are you familiar with the case of Gompers against the United States which is reported in the 233d United States Supreme Court Reports at page 604?

Senator NEUBERGER. I migh be familiar with it by subject, but I am not by name.

Senator ERVIN. Are you familiar with the long fight of labor to secure the right to trial by jury for persons allegedly violating injunc tions issued in labor controversies?

Senator NEUBERGER. I am familiar with the struggle of labor with respect to injunctive process.

Senator ERVIN. The case of Gompers against United States to my mind is one of the illustrations of the danger of government by injunction which the Attorney General's bill would authorize.

The great labor leader Gompers was attached for contempt of court on account of matters growing out of a strike against Bucks Stove & Range Co. He was actually tried by a judge without a jury and sentenced to jail because he violated an injunction which prohibited him, among other things, from saying that the law did not compel persons to purchase stoves manufactured by this particular company. If it had not been for the fact that the Supreme Court held that his contempt proceeding was barred by the statute of limitations, Gompers would have had to go to jail for making statements of that

character.

Senator NEUBERGER. Now that you call the case to my attention by topic, I am somewhat familiar with it, although of course not as much so as you, Mr. Chairman. However, I recognize with you labor's long struggle in the injunctive process. However, you have mentioned Mr. Lincoln today.

Mr. Lincoln's favorite poem was The Present Crisis by James Russell Lowell. One of the couplets in that poem runs something like this: New occasions teach new duties,

Time makes ancient good uncouth.

I just feel, Mr. Chairman, that this is a unique, extraordinary and very troublesome situation in the history of our country with respect to the civil rights of colored people in certain States of the South, and I think that the Attorney General of the United States, any attorney general, Republican, Democrat, Independent, what have you, would not propose an alternative method of legal process to trial by jury unless he and his advisers felt that it was impossible under certain situations to secure a fair and untrammeled trial by jury.

You and I might not agree on that, but I think that is the situation. Senator ERVIN. I am of the opinion that if we had to make a choice between some Americans suffering some injustices at the hands of some election officials and destroying for all Americans the basic rights to indictment by grand jury and trial by petit jury, it would be better for the injustices to be done than to strike down those ancient landmarks established by our forefathers to protect all our people against tyranny. Happily, however, we do not have to make any such choice. Despite intimidations to the contrary, in most areas of most all Southern States as well as throughout this Nation, people can get their civil rights vindicated in either State or Federal courts under existing procedures.

Senator, I want to thank you for appearing before our committee and giving us the benefit of your views on this subject.

Senator NEUBERGER. I want to thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I want to say it is a great privilege, although I might say a somewhat risky one, for somebody as inexperienced as myself to engage in colloquy with a distinguished former jurist and a very experienced governmental official like you; I have learned a great deal and I appreciate your courtesy.

Senator HRUSKA. Senator Neuberger, I appreciate you are not a lawyer. Not all people can be lawyers, but you are an elected representative of a Western State in the National Legislature and have studied a good deal of American history in school, college, and ever

since then.

Don't you agree that under our system of government there has to be a final place of last resort, a court of last resort where many of these fundamental questions of constitutionality must necessarily be decided and the rest of the country has to sort of go along with that decision in spite of a lot of opposition or difference of opinion on it! Senator NEUBERGER. I would think so, Senator Hruska.

Without that, I don't know how we would function. I would think that ultimately there had to be some one place under our political and judicial system where a decision is finally rendered on these matters, and that that, at least on earth, has to be final for the time being.

Senator HRUSKA. Again I appreciate you are not a lawyer, but we have had as one of the constitutional processes here in America for many years, and in fact it originated under the laws and under the decisions of England, a process whereby punishment for disobeying the order of a court is not something which is subject to trial by jury.

Civil contempt is not tried, it is not an offense which is triable by jury. To the extent that it also is a constitutional principle, would not you agree that it would fall within the purview of those things which should be upheld within the Constitution just as fully as the necessity of trial by jury in criminal cases?

Senator NEUBERGER. I would. I just want to point this out to you: It seems to me that in this whole matter of the Court's ruling and what has happened in the South, all we have to do is consider what would happen with other rulings of the Supreme Court if similar situations would develop, as has developed in the South in the legis latures, in the Governors' offices, in the offices of education, in school boards with respect to the school-segregation decision.

I think virtually our entire judicial system would collapse. I cited earlier I think before you came what would happen if the State of Oregon had set its will against the Pelton decision, which was highly unpopular in Oregon, and I am sure that you remember the Supreme Court's decision in the very complicated water case between Arizona and California over the Colorado River.

At least the State which was ruled against obeyed the ruling of the Supreme Court with respect to the divisions of the Colorado's waters, and I believe very fundamentally that when the Supreme Court makes a ruling, as long as that ruling is in effect, that it has to be obeyed, whether it is by a State of by individuals.

Senator HRUSKA. That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ERVIN. I am at a loss to know now what ruling of the Supreme Court has been disobeyed by Southern States.

Mr. CLARENCE MITCHELL. Mr. Chairman, may I ask the Chair & question-identify myself for the record and ask a question? Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Mr. MITCHELL. My name is Clarence Mitchell, director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association of Colored People.

We have submitted certain evidence concerning discrimination in some of the States to the committee. There has been a considerable amount of disagreement on whether it is true or untrue. I think there is one thing on which there could be no disagreement if the Chair would ask this question. We have submitted an exhibit from the Jackson Daily newspaper of Mississippi in which it is stated that the State of Mississippi appropriated $250,000 for the purpose of having a commission which would, as this article says, make inquiries on clandestine meetings of Negroes interested in getting integration.

The Governor of Mississippi is here and he made that statement. I think that if the Chair asks the question whether it is true and what =are the purposes of that Commission, certainly there could be no die pute about that invasion of civil rights.

Senator NEUBERGER. Mr. Chairman, are you through with my part of the questioning?

Senator ERVIN. Yes.

Senator NEUBERGER. I want to say this: I have not brought up specific matters in Southern States, as I think you realize because I have tried to do it against the background of my own State and the situation there; I did not want to presume to come to you on matters of something on which you have far more knowledge than I have; and that is why my testimony has been confined to my own impressions of my

own area.

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ERVIN. Frankly, Senator, my own opinion is, for whatever it may be worth, that there are in the South, just as there are in other areas of the country, places where some very unfortunate conditions have existed with respect to colored people, and I might add with respect to white people, but I think the conditions have been multiplied and magnified out of all proportion to the actual facts.

For example, it was blazoned all over this country that in one of the precincts in my State a colored man had been denied his right to register because he was lefthanded. Yet when I inquired into the matter I found that he not only was not denied the right to register because he was lefthanded, but that on the contrary, he was actually registered.

Thank you.

Senator NEUBERGER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ERVIN. I would like to offer in the record a telegram addressed to Governor J. P. Coleman by W. E. Cresswell, executive assistant to the Governor, dated March 4, 1957, reading as follows:

Official records Mississippi State Tax Commission reveal that G. T. Courts, of Belzoni, Miss., has never paid State income tax in any year. For the years 1947 through 1952 he filed no State income-tax returns at all. In 1953, he claimed a net income of $299.88, and in 1954, he claimed a net income of $357.51. He filed no return for 1955. His 1955 sales tax returns showed a volume of $5,592.70 for the first 11 months of the year. Under the statute this information can be released only upon order of the Governor and is done pursuant to your orders since this question was put in controversy before the Senate committee.

I will illustrate the magnification of alleged matters. This man, the Reverend Gus Courts, appeared before this committee and testified under oath that he was forced to flee from Mississippi leaving behind him a $15,000 a year business.

I would like to read into the record this statement, or maybe I can cut it short by asking this of Mr. Mitchell.

Mr. Mitchell, you appeared before the hearings of the Senate Judiciary Committee on S. 1 and S. 535, bills to establish commissions on civil rights in 1954, did you not?

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE MITCHELL, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON BUREAU OF NAACP-Resumed

Mr. MITCHELL. Yes, sir, I did, Mr. Chairman.

Senator ERVIN. And you opposed the bills to establish those commissions on civil rights?

Mr. MITCHELL. Our position-I would certainly want to refresh my memory by reading the testimony before giving a final reply. Our position was this: At that time there was a discussion on whether a commission, which I believe Senator Dirksen's bill established, was something which would be acceptable in place of a Fair Employment Practice Commission with enforcement powers. Our position was that we did not consider a commission, which had no enforcement powers and no legislative base for operating on some of these basic problems, would be an acceptable alternative.

I do not believe it is entirely comparable to this Commission which is before the committee. This Commission is a purely temporary one set up to present information to the committee.

I would just like to say while I am here, Mr. Chairman, that I asked the Governor of Mississippi whether he would be willing to answer that question. He said he would be willing to answer the question. Senator ERVIN. I looked and did not see Governor Coleman in the room when you made your statement.

Just one more question. I realize before you answer that you should see the statement. The record of the hearings purport to show that you made this statement among others:

The chief concern of organization about S. 1 which would establish the Federal Commission on Civil Rights and S. 535 which has a similar objective, is that neither of these bills will effectively remedy the basic problems in the field of civil rights.

They emphasize the study aspect of the problems in human relations rather than in actual program. In fairness to the members of this subcommittee I must tell you that the colored people of the United States are tired of being studied. Do you want to look at that?

Mr. MITCHELL. I think that this is a very accurate reflection of our views, Mr. Chairman. We are tired of being studied. There is a more serious aspect that I want to submit to you and lay upon your heart. First however, I want to say in this open hearing while I certainly vigorously disagree with many, many things you have said, I think basically you have tried to give all sides a chance to be heard, and that is a wonderful demonstration of vitality of our Government. In further answer to your question, I would say this: For years in the South, one of the safety valves has been that our organization could say to people who were wronged, "If you do not get a remedy in the State courts, you have a remedy in the Federal courts and under the Federal system."

Again and again, we are discovering that because of the inadequacies of present laws, that remedies do not exist and the people do not get redress.