The South: A Corner Turned

In long, patient hours at the polls, Alabama's Negroes grasped for themselves last week the full citizenship to which federal civil rights legislation had served only as a passport. Their courage and persistence proved an optimistic augury, not only for the Old Confederacy's five million Negroes of voting age but also for the nation as a whole. For the promise held out by Alabama's primary is that the politics of the South will become more mature and more meaningful as more and more Negroes freely participate in elections, the free society's fundamental process and privilege.

In its first ballot-box test, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 worked as effectively as its most idealistic framers could have dreamed. More than 80% of Alabama's 235,000-plus registered Negroes turned out for the Democratic primary. Half of them had never been registered until the past year. Despite advance talk of Negro "apathy," after nearly a century of disfranchisement the act of voting was, for most, a compelling duty and an unforgettable experience. Said Willie Bolden, 81, the grandson of a slave, who had never cast a ballot until last week: "It made me think I was sort of Somebody."

Unexpected Sympathy. Thousands of new Somebodies had to overcome the barrier of illiteracy. Many learned to identify the names of the candidates they favored by staring for hours at crayon-lettered flash cards prepared by civil rights workers. Despite an election regulation that allowed just five minutes in the voting booth, some Negro novices puzzled and pondered over the mysteries of the ballot for as long as half an hour. Encouragingly—if unexpectedly—sympathetic white officials usually gave them all the time they needed, even helped confused illiterates by reading aloud the candidates' names and marking ballots when voters recognized those they supported.

Though Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach had sent in 350 federal observers to guard against last-ditch attempts by white men to keep Negroes from voting, no serious incidents had been reported at week's end. "People voted freely and comfortably," said Katzenbach. "This reflects great credit on all the people involved."

The election results shed considerably less credit on the white voters of Alabama, who overwhelmingly endorsed Lurleen Wallace as her segregationist husband's puppet candidate in a cynical attempt to evade the state's constitutional provision that prohibits a Governor from succeeding himself (see following story). Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King denounced Lurleen's victory as "a protest vote against the tide of inevitable progress."