Some Needed Nudges

The Supreme Court, sputtered Louisiana's Attorney General Jack Gremillion, had taken yet "another step in the total destruction of the rights of states to regulate their internal affairs." Worse, he said, that step "also will undoubtedly lead to universal suffrage."

What angered Gremillion was a ruling by the court last week that upheld the crucial provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Six Southern states--Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia--had demanded that the court declare unconstitutional the law's "triggering device," which prohibits literacy tests in blatantly discriminatory Southern states and authorizes entry of federal registrars to sign up new voters. In refusing to do so, Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled that these "stringent remedies" were "a valid means for carrying out the commands of the 15th Amendment," which empowers Congress to take "appropriate" measures to bar voting discrimination. "Hopefully," said Warren's briskly worded, 31-page opinion, "millions of nonwhite Americans will now be able to participate for the first time on an equal basis in the Government under which they live."

"Conquered Provinces." In a partial, and unexpected, dissent, the court's foremost libertarian, Hugo Black, objected to the act's requirements that offending states clear any new voting laws with the U.S. Attorney General or with the federal District Court in Washington, D.C. By forcing the states to "entreat federal authorities in faraway places for approval of local laws," protested Black, the act implied that they were "little more than conquered provinces."

Otherwise, the decision was unanimous, and civil rights spokesmen welcomed it as "a long-needed nudge" in behalf of a law that has produced results far short of their expectations--with the possible exception of Alabama (see below). Where they had hoped that 1,000,000 new Negro voters would be on the rolls in time for the 1966 elections--the bulk of them in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina--the actual number signed up in those five states since the voting act became effective last Aug. 6 is closer to 303,000. The total now registered in the five states is 982,336, only 40.9% of the 2,402,000 potential Negro voters. Even so, there are now enough Negro voters to encourage Negro candidates to stand for office in such areas as rural Alabama for the first time since Reconstruction.

Paper Compliance. The Federal Government last week decided that Southern officials also needed a little nudging to end segregation in schools and hospitals. Stung by a Civil Rights Commission report that was sharply critical of the South's feeble efforts to date (TIME, Feb. 25), the Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued tighter guidelines and threatened cutoffs of federal funds in both fields.

Noting that scarcely 180,000 of the Old South's 2,900,000 Negro pupils attend classes with whites a dozen years after the Supreme Court's desegregation ruling, Education Commissioner Harold Howe II declared that the day of "paper compliance" is over. He demanded action to correct:

. SEGREGATED FACULTIES. Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina have only token integration, while teaching staffs in Louisiana and Mississippi are completely segregated. Howe suggested that Southern school officials might assign one white teacher to every all-Negro faculty and vice versa--or risk losing federal aid.

. INADEQUATE BUILDINGS. Throughout the South, Howe noted, dilapidated one-or two-room shacks serve as all-Negro schools. These must be closed and their students transferred to other schools.

. "FREEDOM OF CHOICE" PLANS. Under such plans, Negro children are theoretically entitled to attend any white school they wish. In practice, they rarely do so. Reason: countless parents who have elected to send their children to white schools have been evicted from their homes, fired from their jobs, even shot at. Howe demanded evidence that there is genuine freedom in the desegregation plans.

As for segregation in hospitals, Surgeon General William H. Stewart announced that "a medical facilities compliance report" had been sent to the more than 10,000 hospitals throughout the U.S. Those that are found to practice segregation, he warned, will be denied federal funds. With billions of dollars of medicare benefits due to start flowing from Washington after July 1, few hospitals, public or private, are likely to dismiss his threat lightly.

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