Mr. ROGERS. And assume that they do register. Now under this bill, once they are registered they are taken to the proper election officials of the State and the election is then conducted according to the State law.

Mr. CALLAWAY. But a valid part of an election is registration. Mr. ROGERS. The point that I am trying to get at is where does the Federal Government control the election machinery of the State of Georgia, as you so bitterly complain?

Mr. CALLAWAY. In complaining about the registration, Mr. Chairman, which is a part of that machinery, let me say that you are assuming we can put these Democratic men in. Every one of us knows there are pockets of strength and pockets of weakness. He can register in the area he wants to, I see nothing to stop him.

Mr. ROGERS. He makes a list of them which is available for inspection. If they are not properly registered or qualified to vote, do you not have challenging statutes in the State of Georgia? As an example, suppose I went down and registered and the registrar took me although I did not reside in the State of Georgia. My name would be published on the list?

Mr. CALLAWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. ROGERS. And if I was in your county and you were a Republican running for Congress and I was going in there to vote do you not think you could come and challenge me?

Mr. CALLAWAY. Yes, Mr. Rogers, I could. Here is my point: A part of the election procedure that all the counties go through is registration. We try to register our people, the Democrats try to register their people. As the first Republican since the Reconstruction I am afraid of Democratic control. I am afraid that under this bill we could have a federally-appointed official paid for registering their crowd and I would have to get volunteers to register my crowd. I do not think it is fair.

Mr. ROGERS. If you have qualified colored people that want to go down there and vote or register, you can take them down to the same registrars, can't you?

Mr. CALLAWAY. I can go take them down, but I do not have the people paid by the Federal Government doing it for my side.

Mr. ROGERS. It would be the same people, would it not? The registrars, the examiners that are called in this bill would be the same ones. If you take that person, he is obligated to register them.

Mr. CALLAWAY. Yes, sir; if you once take the assumption, as you did, Mr. Chairman, that he can appoint a partisan in this job, this partisan can affect the registration.

Mr. ROGERS. Even though he is paid for by the Civil Service Commission, not the Attorney General?

Mr. CALLAWAY. Mr. Chairman, I am a freshman in this Congress, and I hate to sound as if I know something I do not, but is not the Post Office under Civil Service with all kinds of tests that are not shown in this particular bill? The bill I quoted, Mr. Chairman, says "without regard to Civil Service laws." In my district they are using the Post Office as politically as they can and they are under Civil Service.

Mr. ROGERS. If there is any bipartisan commission in the Government, it is in the Civil Service.

Mr. Brooks, any questions?

Mr. BROOKS. No questions.

I think we have two other very able Members of Congress waiting to testify and I was hoping we would get to them.

Mr. McCULLOCH. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I would like to compliment our colleague for his able statement.

I should like to ask a couple or three questions about your local election procedure in Georgia.

Is your election machinery manned by an equal number of Democrats and Republicans?

Mr. CALLAWAY. Not to my knowledge. We do have a situation where both parties come down, bring people to the registrars, but that is under the State government. I am not saying that as of now there is any particular discrimination between Democrats and Republicans but there is no requirement that there shall be equal Republicans and Democrats in registration.

Mr. McCULLOCH. At the risk of being a bit pensive unintentionally, I should like to suggest not only to Georgia but to every other State in the Union, if any there be, that they man their election machinery by an equal number of persons from the two major parties in this country.

That is the system by which my State operates and that is the system which, with few exceptions, has given us an election process that is above reproach.

Furthermore, I should like to say this: Ohio was admitted to the Union in 1803 or 1804. We have never had a literacy test in Ohio and if a person who is utterly illiterate and is of voting age, under no legal restraint and meets the basic test of residence, he may vote.

Mr. CALLAWAY. If I may comment, I misunderstood your last question, Mr. McCulloch. I thought you meant the registration. The election does not call for both parties to be present. A bill which requested this was defeated by the Democratic house. We have asked our election commission to have a Republican observer present at the polls and we were denied this.

Now, many counties do allow a Republican in the sense of fair play but there is no requirement for it. I think there I am speaking with some feeling on this, that the control of one party is a dangerous thing.

Mr. McCULLOCH. I would agree with that conclusion.

There is evidence on the record that there has been discrimination solely by reason of race and color in certain States of this country, including at least one Northern State, that that discrimination was massive and so massive that in one or more States it resulted in less than 10 percent of Negroes of voting age being registered to vote.

Now, if those States have seen the light and they apply their literacy tests strictly in accordance with the letter of the law and there would be the refusal to register on that test, would that not in itself be discriminatory against these 50, 60, or 70 percent of Negroes who have been refused the right to register by reason of the application of the literacy test in the past?

Mr. CALLAWAY. It could be, Mr. McCulloch. I have heard this point before. I understand, however, that the Supreme Court has ruled literacy tests valid. You are giving one argument. There can be many valid arguments why there should be literacy tests.

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Again, I think that State should have that point clearly, the point that you have made that the State will not discriminate.

Mr. McCULLOCH. And provided a grandfather clause will not prevent equally qualified people from voting when literacy tests are justly applied.

Mr. CALLAWAY. Provided, Mr. McCulloch, there is no grandfather clause or no clause which discriminates because of race.

Mr. McCULLOCH. What I am trying to see is if 90 percent of the whites in a given registration district are registered to vote and have been registered during the time when there was a planned process and procedure of discrimination and at the same time only 5 or 10 or 3 percent of the Negro people registered and the tests are equally applied from now on, have we not in effect discriminated and will we not be continuing to discriminate against people solely by reason of race and color contrary to the 15th amendment?

Mr. CALLAWAY. From the facts you give, I would tend to agree with you. I do not think those are the facts in my State.

Mr. McCULLOCH. I did not mean to imply that; I named no State and I failed to name a State intentionally.

If those facts be correct, do you have now or will you supply us with the plan by which we can reach those people who have been discriminated against in the past?

Mr. CALLAWAY. I will be glad to look into it and see what I can come up with.

Mr. McCULLOCH. I want to say this and it will end my questioning because of other witnesses who are here.

I believe in the constitutional right of States to fix qualifications for registration and voting, and I have no desire to break down those State laws wherever they have been and are now being properly administered.

I think that is a matter for the States themselves.

Again I want to compliment you for an excellent statement.
Mr. CALLAWAY. Thank you, sir.

Mr. ROGERS. Mr. Lindsay.

Mr. LINDSAY. I thank our distinguished colleague for appearing before this committee. Thank you very much.

Mr. ROGERS. Thank you so much. We certainly appreciate your testimony, Mr. Callaway.

Mr. CALLAWAY. Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would like to submit for the record a correction. During the research on this, I found out the Civil Rights Commission had entered in testimony some misleading information which I have talked to them about and I think they would like that corrected as much as I would.

Mr. ROGERS. It will be received for the record. (Document referred to follows:)

CORRECTION FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY REPRESENTATIVE HOWARD H. CALLAWAY MARCH 29, 1965.

Mr. Chairman, during the preparation for this testimoney, I noted an error in the registration and voting statistics of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights submitted during their testimony. I have been in touch with the Commission and I am sure that they would like to have this error corrected for the record. But let me say before doing so that the result of this unfortuante error was that those who heard this testmony were left with the impression that Georgia

was not doing its job in registering voters. We in Georgia are proud of the strides that we are making in voter registration and do not like to have our records falsified.

I refer to page 17 of the Georgia section of the registration and voting statistics. Report submitted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as part of the testimony of the hearings before this committee. I show below a portion of the report from this page:

Unofficial figures. Published by Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Apr. 28, 1963, representing registration as of December 1962.

If the estimated total population as of Nov. 1, 1964 (published the U.S. Bureau of Census in news release dated Sept. 8, 1964), were used as a base, this percentage would be 49.0.

It seems that these figures are designed to show several things. First, that the percent registered in Georgia is quite low or 53.6 percent when comparing 1962 registration figures with 1960 census. But note 3 seems to show by comparing 1964 census figures with 1962 registration figures that the percent of registered voters in Georgia is decreasing, and, as a matter of fact, it has probably decreased to the point where it is below 50 percent, and thus Georgia would fall within the group of States described in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 with less than 50 percent registration.

These figures do not take into account the unbelievably large registration of both whites and nonwhites in Georgia within the last 2 years. I am told that in the last year alone more than 300,000 Georgians, over 100,000 of which were Negro, have registered. The official registration figures for the 1964 election stood at approximately 1,670,000.

These new 1964 registration figures could have been obtained by a letter or a phone call to the secretary of state of Georgia. They are official and public figures. It should obviously occur to any fairminded person that if a table would use 1964 census figures, it would also use 1964 registration figures. If this had been done by the Civil Rights Commission, the percent of registered voters would have been shown as 63.5 percent, and not the 49 percent that they showed.

Mr. McCULLOCH. Mr. Callaway, that was the error I referred to and again I wish to compliment you for your industry in digging out the accurate figures.

Mr. CALLAWAY. I believe this is an additional error, Mr. Chairman. Mr. ROGERS. Congressman Tuck, would you come forward?

STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM M. TUCK, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF VIRGINIA

Mr. TUCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ROGERS. Would you call your witnesses?

Mr. Tuck. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee: It is a privilege and pleasure for me to have this opportunity to present to the subcommittee this morning three distinguished Virginians whom you have agreed to hear and who are now prepared to offer their views and comments on the pending bill.

Mr. David J. Mays, of the law firm of Tucker, Mays, Moore, & Reed, is a noted authority on constitutional law. He is chairman of the Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government. He is an able attorney and Pulitzer Prize winner for historical biography. The Honorable Robert Y. Button is here in his official capacity as

attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is serving in that high office in the finest tradition of our State. Before he was elected attorney general, he served for a long period as State senator.

Mr. James Jackson Kilpatrick, able and brilliant editor of the Richmond News Leader, has distinguished himself in the field of journalism and is recognized nationally for his sharp and penetrating editorial comment. He has also participated in numerous nationwide public forums on important subjects.

I am sure that these gentlemen will make able and profound representations, which should warrant the serious consideration of this committee. I am confident that they, along with all who love justice, share my indignation and resentment that the Attorney General of the United States and this administration have undertaken to besmirch the fair name of Virginia and hold up to public scorn our State and its honorable citizens.

Although there has been no suggestion of voter discrimination in Virginia, and although the U.S. Civil Rights Commission on page 22 of the 1961 report absolves Virginia of discrimination against voters, and although as late as February 1965 the Southern Regional Council reported to the U.S. Civil Service Commission that in Virginia there is a variation of less than 1 percent of qualified registered Negroes and qualified registered white voters, yet the Attorney General and this administration, disregarding the facts, would require Virginia to prostrate itself before a three-judge Federal court in a foreign jurisdiction and establish its innocence of discrimination.

Even in the heat of the close of the War Between the States. U. S. Grant, in his letter to General Lee at Appomattox Courthouse April 9, 1865, was more considerate of the character and the feelings and civil rights of the paroled southern soldier than the Attorney General of the United States is of our present-day citizens when he presents these vindictive and punitive proposals on behalf of an administration seeking unheard of political power to be centered in a central government with utter disregard of the rights of the States and the people thereof, and in violation of all known established procedures.

I have no doubt that Virginia can establish its innocence in any impartial inquiry and before any honorable forum, but we still have, in our State, many people who love the Constitution and to whom such a fantastic and reprehensible proposal as is now made is repugnant in the highest degree.

This legislation seeks to demean and to denigrate and to humble the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia, whose son, Thomas Jefferson, wrote the Declaration of Independence; whose son, George Mason, penned that matchless instrumentality of freedom, the Bill of Rights, from which the first 10 amendments of the Constitution of the United States were bodily lifted; and another of whose sons, James Madison, goes down in history as the father of the Constitution of the United States. This new regime in this new hour seeks to substitute a new leadership for the great men I have mentioned.

As a representative of the people of Virginia and as one who has been honored by them, as they have honored few others, for a period extending over more than 40 years, I resent those implications and