Interpretation, Anyone?

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Although the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was set up in 1957 to investigate civil rights abuses, not until this month did it get around to hearings in Mississippi. For several years, Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General, argued successfully that the commission should stay out of the state; it would, he said, only stir up more trouble where there was already plenty.

"False Image." But last week, after a few sessions behind closed doors, the commission finally held public hearings in Mississippi's capital at Jackson. Witnesses included Governor Paul Johnson, who argued that "the unfavorable and false image of Mississippi that has been created by the few in our state who have committed unpardonable criminal acts has been exploited by unfriendly national news media." They also included 41 Mississippi Negroes, telling of the civil rights abuses they have suffered in their native state. But the plight of Negroes in Mississippi was perhaps most strikingly illustrated by a white segregationist: G. H. Hood, voting registrar of Humphreys County in the western part of Mississippi.

That county's 12,600 Negroes comprise two-thirds of its population, but not a single one is registered to vote. Since Hood, a balding man with a dark scowl, became registrar in 1960, only 16 Negroes have even bothered to try. As elsewhere in Mississippi, the most effective block to Negro registration is a state law requiring that any prospective voter read and interpret to the satisfaction of registrars one of the 286 sections of the state constitution. It is the registrar, of course, who picks the section for the test.

Section 8 of the constitution, for example, provides simply that "all persons, resident in this state, citizens of the United States, are hereby declared citizens of the state of Mississippi." It is highly favored by registrars in testing white applicants.

But a prospective Negro voter is far more likely to be asked for an interpretation of Section 182, which provides: "The power to tax corporations and their property shall never be surrendered or abridged by any contract or grant to which the state or any political subdivision thereof may be a party, except that the legislature may grant exemption from taxation in the encouragement of manufacturers and other new enterprises of public utility extending for a period of not exceeding five years, but when the legislature grants such exemptions for a period of five years or less, it shall be done by general laws, which shall distinctly enumerate the classes of manufactures and other new enterprises of public utility entitled to such exemptions, and shall prescribe the mode and manner in which the right to such exemptions shall be determined."

Taking the Cue. As Registrar Hood appeared last week, Harvard Law School Dean Erwin Griswold, a member of the commission, leaned toward him and said: "I hand you a copy of Section 182 of the Mississippi state constitution. For the benefit of the commission, would you give us a reasonable interpretation of it?" Hood read silently, then said, "Well, it means that the power to tax corporations and their property . . ." Interrupted Griswold: "I didn't ask you to read it—I asked you to interpret it."