"A Firm Foundation"

While the Southerners kept the Senate stalled on civil rights, the Supreme Court last week pressed forward the cause of Negro voting rights in the South. Unanimously overturning the ruling of a U.S. district court in Georgia, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the key section of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which empowers the Justice Department to file civil suit on behalf of Negroes denied the right to vote by local officials.

The first use of the act—and its first legal test—came in southern Georgia's Terrell County, where in 1956 only 48 of 5,036 voting-age Negroes were registered. (In contrast, 2,679 of 3,233 voting-age whites were qualified.) Among Negroes denied the ballot because of "illiteracy" were four teachers with college degrees.

Faced with the Justice Department's complaint and request for an injunction against Terrell County's registrars, Georgia-born District Judge T. Hoyt Davis reasoned that the Constitution does not forbid racial discrimination by private citizens, and that the Civil Rights Act might permit suits against private citizens as well as state officials. Therefore, ruled he, the act is unconstitutional.

In the Supreme Court's contrary opinion. Justice William J. Brennan Jr. sternly lectured Judge Davis. "The delicate power of pronouncing an Act of Congress unconstitutional," said he, "is not to be exercised with reference to hypothetical cases." The act was clearly constitutional in its application to Terrell County, ruled Brennan, and Judge Davis must now try the Justice Department's complaint on its merits. U.S. Attorney General William P. Rogers, who had himself argued the crucial Georgia case before the Supreme Court, jubilantly said the court's decision proved that the Civil Rights Act "is a firm foundation for further congressional action." Relying on its Georgia decision in another voting case, the court unanimously affirmed the order of Louisiana U.S. District Judge J. Skelly Wright that the names of 1,377 Negroes be restored to the voting rolls of Washington Parish. Names of 85% of the parish's Negro voters, Louisiana-born Judge Wright found, had been "purged" by Citizens Council records ferrets for a variety of niggling reasons, but white voting records were virtually untouched. At the Justice Department's request, the court swiftly upheld Judge Wright's order, so that the Negroes might go back on the voting rolls before Louisiana's April 19 general election.