Essay: BREACHING THE WHITE WALL OF SOUTHERN JUSTICE

IN almost every area of life—in schooling, public accommodations, and above all voting—the Southern Negro has lately made enormous strides toward gaining the equality guaranteed him by the Constitution and reaffirmed in the recent massive wave of civil rights legislation. Ironically, it is in the field of law and administration of justice that he is most frequently foiled. All too often white segregationists go on killing civil rights workers without fear of conviction, and white police terrorize Negroes and arrest the victims as suspects. To the Southern Negro, it still seems that the whole system of law winks at nearly every lawless scheme to cow him and keep him from his rights.

The Supreme Court two weeks ago dealt with two notorious 1964 cases—the murder of three civil rights workers near Philadelphia, Miss., and the slaying of Negro Educator Lemuel Penn in Georgia—in both of which Southern courts had sidetracked attempts to bring the accused to justice. Basing itself on a 19th century anticonspiracy law, the Supreme Court not only ordered these cases tried but hinted that new federal legislation is needed. The Government is ready to oblige. In his State of the Union message President Johnson called for increased authority for federal courts to try "those who murder, attack or intimidate either civil rights workers or others exercising their constitutional rights." In the new civil rights bill, which the President will send to Congress this month, he is asking 1) stiffer penalties for threats of violence interfering with a series of broad civil rights; 2) more stringent criteria for the selection of Southern juries.

Federal pressure and Southern conscience are certainly having their effect. The great white wall of segregated Southern justice is finally being breached, as illustrated by some scattered but significant recent events: the nearly unprecedented life sentence for a white youth who raped a Negro girl in Mississippi; eleven Negroes serving on a jury trying the Negro killers of a white policeman in Georgia. Yet the South has a long way to go before Negroes will have gained "equal justice under law."

Rule of the Sheriff

From bottom to top, Southern justice is white. This fact shadows the Negro's every activity from driving a car to engaging in sexual intercourse; from borrowing money to suing for personal injury; from seeking police protection to defending against criminal charges. To Southern Negroes, the courthouse is not a citadel of justice. Instead, says Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles, who recently completed a six-year study of Southern racial attitudes, the courthouse is "the symbol of where the policemen, the sheriffs, the judges, the juries, the voting registrar, the registrar of deeds and the whole structure of society is weighted against Negroes. They are afraid of this building." Segregated justice, adds a Southern Regional Council report, "provokes desperation among Negroes and shakes their faith in democracy."