The South: Fact of Life

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In many Deep South strongholds of segregation, local registrars last week were still using the old, familiar tactics of skulduggery and intimidation. Nonetheless, three weeks after the Voting Rights Act took effect, many thousands of Negroes had qualified as voters for the first time. "Almost everybody is getting registered who applies," said John Doar, chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Federal registrars, sent into 14 counties of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana that have long records of systematic discrimination against Negro voters, have enfranchised more than 34,000 Negroes. The extent of Southern compliance was indicated by the fact that local registrars in 251 counties surveyed by the FBI have voluntarily added 32,000 more Negro voters to the rolls.

Doar said that local authorities were cooperating "almost 100%" in Georgia and Alabama, but were still resisting in some parts of Mississippi and Louisiana. But even a hint of federal intervention was often enough to make local registrars see the light. In Mississippi's Lauderdale County, where a calculated slowdown limited Negro registration to under 80 a day, a pair of Justice Department agents came by for a look in response to N.A.A.C.P. complaints. As if by magic, Lauderdale's registrars enrolled 300 Negroes in that one day, and have been accepting applicants at the higher rate ever since. "The very clear and very heartening lesson," in Lyndon Johnson's words, was that Southern compliance with the law was becoming "a fact of life."