SOUTHERN NEGROES & THE VOTE: Tke Blot Is Shrinking, But It Is Still Ugly

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The basic issue behind the Senate civil rights debate is the denial of Southern Negroes' right to vote.

How widespread is this denial? How does it operate?

Last week the authoritative Southern Regional Council prepared a preliminary finding based upon a survey of the 1956 election campaigns. A summary:

DENIAL of voting rights to Negroes, though a blot on the South, is by no means as widespread as many Northern civil rights advocates believe. Through Texas, Arkansas and the Border States, Negroes not only register and vote but make such an impact at local-election levels that both parties bid for their support. In North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Florida, urban Negroes generally register and vote, while rural Negroes do not. The greatest concentration of civil rights violations at the polls lies in four states of the Deep South, and the statistics readily prove the point:

MISSISSIPPI: Only 20,000 Negroes registered for the 1956 elections out of a total of 497,350 eligible; in 13 counties of more than 50% Negro population, a total of 14 Negro votes was cast in the 1954 elections, while in five counties not a single Negro was allowed to vote.

ALABAMA: 53,336 Negroes registered out of 516,245 eligible; nine rural counties have no Negro registrants; even industrial and partly unionized Jefferson County (Birmingham) registered only 7,000 Negroes out of 121,510 eligible.

LOUISIANA: 161,410 Negroes registered out of 510,090 eligible, a high-for-the-South state percentage; yet in four Louisiana parishes (counties) not one single Negro voted.

GEORGIA: 163,380 Negroes registered out of 633,390 eligible: five rural counties permitted only dribbles of Negroes to register; several more kept out Negro voters altogether, dragged down Atlanta's generally high Negro returns.

Taking the Tests

The violent denial of Negroes' right to vote that marked Reconstruction days has long since given place to more subtle methods. The white primary is no more. The poll tax, though still in force in five Southern states, has lost most of its economic bite, but is sometimes used (notably in Virginia), as a device for confusing Negroes and poor whites out of their chance to register.

Most of today's barriers begin in harmless-looking state laws, not unlike many Northern state laws, which require would-be voters to pass tests in literacy and constitutional understanding. In the Deep South and in many other Southern rural areas, the decisions on passing or flunking rest in the hands of white registrars (in Alabama, three-man county boards) who use the power of office in devious ways to prevent qualified Negroes (and sometimes qualified poor whites) from registering. In Allendale County, S.C. in 1956, when Negroes tried to register they were told that the registration books were someplace else. In Monroe County, Ala. Negro applicants were repeatedly turned away because the registrars said they had "misplaced the application forms."