"It Makes People Mad"

Since last fall, more than 100 complaints against Mississippi have been sent to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission in Washington. They tell of hard-boiled local politicians who coldly ignore Negroes asking to vote, midnight terrorists flinging everything from Molotov cocktails to bags of garbage in efforts to intimidate integrationist forces, welfare officials denying Government-supplied food to needy Negro children.

By law, the Civil Rights Commission can only listen, watch and "submit reports" to the President. But last week the group went the limit with a "special report" that caused quite a stir.

Mississippi's civil rights record is so bad, wrote the commission, that President Kennedy should look for a way to choke off the flow of federal funds into the state. Like most Southern states, Mississippi preaches states' rights but rides first-class on the Government gravy train. Mississippi sources paid only $270 million in fiscal 1962 federal taxes, said the report. But the U.S. still poured more than $650 million into the state. It is, wrote the commission, high time for the President and Congress to recognize that "the lawless conduct and defiance of the Constitution by certain elements in one state are being subsidized by the other states."

Predictably, Mississippi's Democratic Senator James 0. Eastland said that the report reeked of "rankest falsehood." But even less Pavlovian officials thought the commission went overboard. The President himself pointed out that he has no general authority to hold back federal funds, since by law only Congress can say what strings are attached to what money. Broader presidential powers "would probably be unwise," he said.

The Administration, painfully conscious of the 81 electoral votes that Southern states contributed to John Kennedy's narrow win in 1960, surprised no one with its lack of enthusiasm for the commission's ideas. As early as last October, during the Oxford, Miss., riots, Bobby Kennedy had spoken up about stopping federal funds to Mississippi: "It has been given no consideration by me. Nor have I ever suggested it or recommended it." Last week an Administration official made it clear that things probably haven't changed. Said he: "I wouldn't have issued that report. It doesn't do any good. It just makes people mad."