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Then the applicant is required to copy the shortest thing in the North Carolina constitution:

All elections ought to be free.

Well, it shows the registrar passed this man, and I would like to have this reproduced in the record in photostatic copy to see what poor writing you can do and still pass the literacy test in North Carolina.

(The document referred to follows:)

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6. Copy in your own handwriting the following underlined portion of the North
Carolina Constitution in the space provided below:

"All elections ought to be free.""

(North Carolina Constitution, Art. I, Section 10)

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te: 10-10.44

7. Date:

Signature

I hereby certify that I have this day examined the above literacy test and I further
certify that the applicant has

Passed

this test.

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NOTE: ANY PERSON WHO FAILS TO PASS THIS TEST WILL BE GIVEN A COPY
OF HIS OR HER TEST PAPER UPON REQUEST IN WRITING TO THE
NEW HANOVER COUNTY BOARD OF ELECTIONS.

Senator ERVIN. Now, as I pointed out, the North Carolina State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is

composed of men and women of both races residing in all areas of North Carolina. I have pointed out that since 1960, they have only received 19 complaints of denials of voting rights on the basis of race. or color. I have also pointed out that there is nothing to indicate that these denials actually existed. They are not proved except in the Basemore case.

Now, these people who know North Carolina, white in some cases and nonwhite in others, and who are numbered among the leading citizens of North Carolina, made a report which the U.S. Civil Rights Commission accepted and printed. It is in the book, "The Fifty States Report." That was printed in 1961. Here is what they say on page 43:

We believe that in respect to voting, the people of North Carolina are in agreement that no citizen of our State should be denied the right to register, vote, and have that vote counted on account of his race, religion, or national origin. Where registrars have artifically imposed more difficult literacy tests on Negro applicants than on the white, wherever there has been discrimination against Negroes, in respect to their right to register and to vote, such denial of the basic right of citizenship does not have the approval, either open or tacit, of the vast majority of officials and citizens of our State. We believe that where such discrimination has been practiced, it has already disappeared or will soon disappear.

I wish to read into the record a statement made by the North Carolina advisory committee and accepted and printed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in the book entitled "Equal Protection of the Laws in North Carolina," which covers a period down through 1962:

There were no voting complaints filed by this committee after the May registration prior to the general election in November 1960. This fact, plus the fact that there have been no complaints from 95 out of the 100 counties, may mean that the disproportionately low registration and low voting of Negroes in North Carolina is due more to apathy or, as the registrars in Bertie and Green Counties suggested, to poor schooling and poor school attendance than to election officials' arbitrary denial of the right to register on account of race.

I mentioned the fact that one of the members of the North Carolina State advisory committee is Paul R. Ervin, an attorney at law of Charlotte, who so far as I know can be justly acquitted of being any relation of mine, notwithstanding the fact that we both spell our surnames in the same way-I have already mentioned the fact that I do not know a human being who has a greater capacity for viewing problems objectively and who has a higher degree of intellectual integrity than Paul Ervin. He wrote an article which is published in the North Carolina Law Review for December 1963, and which was part of an issue on civil rights in the South. This was a symposium, and to which such persons as Berle I. Bernhard, whose was the Executive Director of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and Marion A. Wright another member of the North Carolina commission and other persons contributed.

Paul Ervin, assisted in conducting investigations of this subjet throughout North Carolina under the authority delegated to the Nort Carolina State Advisory Committee on Civil Rights by the U.S. Com mission on Civil Rights under the 1957 act. This is what he said in this issue of the North Carolina Law Review, page 35:

As of today

it may fairly be said that if our nonwhite citizens do not exercise their civil right to vote, they have no one to blame but themselves.

I think that the proposal that 34 North Carolina counties be included in this bill on an artificial basis has no justification in fact or in simple. fairness. I think that I am a typical North Carolinian in this respect. The overwhelming majority of North Carolinians believe that every citizen who possesses the qualifications to vote as prescribed by State law, is entitled to register and to vote, and that the denial of this right on any grounds should not be tolerated.

I favor the enforcement of the 15th amendment and I would support appropriate legislation to enforce it. I do not believe, however, that I can be true to my oath as a Senator of the United States to support the Constitution and still support a bill based on the theory that in order to enforce the 15th amendment, Congress must nullify at least four other provisions of the Constitution. Section 2 of article I and the 17th amendment, provide in express language that electors or Senators and Representatives in Congress must possess the qualifications of electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislature and by their own terms, confer upon the States the power to prescribe the qualifications for voters for Senators and Representatives in Congress.

I also feel that this bill would nullify amendments 9 and 10, which reserve to the States the undoubted power to prescribe the qualifications for voting in State and local elections. The Supreme Court of the United States has held in every case that has come before it that any State has a right to prescribe a literacy test. I think that this bill is unconstitutional and certainly unfair in that it would select out of all the 50 States of this Union 6 States and 34 counties in another State, and deprive them of the right to exercise constitutional powers conferred upon them by the Constitution of the United States, while permitting all of the other States to freely exercise such constitutional

powers.

I do not believe that the Constitution of the United States permits Congress to degrade one State or six or seven States to such an extent that they are not on an equality with the other States of the Union. Furthermore, I think that all courthouses should be open, and I think it would make a mockery of the judicial process for Congress to pass a law saying that one side to a controversy, namely, the Government of the United States, should have access to every Federal court in this land and that the States and the political subdivisions of States that ought to be covered by this unequal and unjust bill should not have access to any court except the District Court of the District of Columbia.

When our forefathers drew the Declaration of Independence they gave as one of their reasons why the Thirteen Colonies should sever their bands with the mother country, England, the fact that Americans had been transported beyond the seas for trial. It is merely a question of degree between transporting people beyond the seas in order to try them and compelling them to journey anywhere from 250 to 1,000 miles in order to get access to a court. This bill would create an assumption which has no reasonable relationship to the fact on which the assumption is based.

And they would then deny the States and political subdivisions covered by it of the legal power to rebut that presumption and disprove its truth. I find it impossible to reconcile this bill with the Constitution. I find it impossible to reconcile this bill with the most fundamental principles of fair play.

The Department of Justice now has at least four separate laws at its disposal. It permits two of them to accumulate dust. It comes here and conplains of what it states are outrageous deprivations of the right to vote in certain areas and although it has the right to have the men that commit those alleged offenses arrested and brought to trial, it refuses to do so.

Instead of using the laws it already has, it wants more laws. In my modest judgment, the Department of Justice now has at its disposal sufficient laws to secure the registration of every qualified citizen race in any area in the United States.

of

any

I am sorry that none of my brethren on the committee are here to cross-examine me.

I mentioned in the course of my statement the comparatively low voter turnout in New York County, which embraces part of New York City, as I understand it, which is commonly called Harlem. I also stated that the North Carolina Advisory Committee on Civil Rights had stated that the disparity between the registration and voting of Negroes and whites in North Carolina was due in large measure to apathy. It would seem to me that you might infer from these figures about Harlem that apathy prevails there because certainly there are no sinful southerners to impede their way to the polls. They are certainly free to vote in New York.

Unless there is somebody here who wants to cross-examine me, we will now take a recess until 10:30 a.m. Monday.

(Whereupon, at 4:04 p.m. the committee recessed to reconvene at 10:30a.m., Monday, April 5, 1965.)

VOTING RIGHTS

MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1965

U.S. SENATE,

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to recess, at 10:35 o'clock a.m., in room 2228, New Senate Office Building, Senator Sam J. Ervin presiding.

Present: Senators Ervin, Hart, Dirksen, and Fong.

Also present: Palmer Lipscomb, Robert B. Young, Thomas B. Collins, professional staff members of the full committee.

Senator ERVIN. Let the record show that the chairman has asked me

to preside in his absence. The meeting is called to order.

The first witness scheduled for today is Senator Williams of Delaware, who is presenting an amendment to the bill S. 1564. (The amendment to S. 1564 follows:)

[S. 1564, 89th Cong., 1st sess.]

AMENDMENT Intended to be proposed by Mr. WILLIAMS of Delaware to S. 1564, a bill to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the constitution, viz: At the appropriate place add a new section as follows:

Whoever gives false information as to his name, address, or period of residence in the voting district for the purpose of establishing his eligibility to register or vote, or conspires with another individual for the purpose of encouraging his false registration or illegal voting, or pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration or for voting shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

[S. 1564, 89th Cong., 1st sess.]

AMENDMENT Intended to be proposed by Mr. WILLIAMS of Delaware to S. 1564, a bill to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, viz: At the end of the bill add the following new section:

SEC. . It is the sense of the Congress that each of the several States should take immediate action to consider and enact appropriate legislation to provide that any citizen of the United States who has been a resident of such State, or any political subdivision thereof, for a lesser period than that required under the laws of such State for resgistering for or voting in an election for electors of President and Vice President or for Senator or Representative in Congress, and who is otherwise qualified to register for an vote in such election, shall nevertheless be entitled to vote in such election if he was either eligible to so vote in another political subdivision of the same State, or in another State, immediately prior to his change of residence or if he would have been eligible to so vote if he had continued to reside in such place until such election.

STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN J. WILLIAMS, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF DELAWARE

Senator WILLIAMS. Thank you.

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