Box 19, Folder 18, Document 28

Box 19, Folder 18, Document 28

Tee Meachoe Guathian., Meatatster ng lane

9



THE GUARDIAN Monday July 29 1963



oe emer FE



| disarm this country as



CO Dts h Tay cates

and golf courses, its restaurant :
lunch wae theatres, public





Rights of

the Negro

—by Southerner

Senator says: ‘I am humbled’
From ALISTAIR COOKE

. New York, July 28

It begins to appear that when everyone has had his
say before the Senate Commerce Committee, which
tomorrow begins its third week of hearings on the Presi-
dent’s Civil Rights Bill, the complete transcript of the
testimony will constitute a classic State paper covering the
spectrum of American opinion in mid-century on the status
of the Negro in American life.

The task of weighing the pros and cons fell to the
Commerce Committee because the legal loophole through

which the administration hopes
to drive a Federal law is that
section of the Constitution
which gives to Congress the
Bower “to regulate commerce
. among the several States.”

‘The Administration hopes to
make it a Federal offence
to refuse to,serve or to seat or to
accommodate anyone who enters
a store, a restaurant, a theatre,
or an hotel that gets its food, its
furnishings, or any other service
through inter-State commerce.

| Hence the last-ditch resistance of

ee of the Southern witnesses

the grounds that such a law
would abolish or unconstitu-
tionally restrict the right to

Since the hearings started, the
committee has heard from such
witnesses as the Rev. Martin
Luther King, Attorney-General
Robert. Kennedy, Secretary of
State Dean Rusk, the in nt
Governor Wallace of Alabama
(“Is not the real pur e to

! private property.

munists have planned ? Ay “and
the learned Senator Sam Ervine,
of North Carolina, the famous
constitutional lawyer who calls

the Civil Rights Bill “ as Greene
to this

| and indefensible a p
has ever been submit

Congress.”

ost remarkable

Of all the witnesses so far,
however, the most remarkable,
and the most characteristic of
the South’s agonising second
thoughts, was the last one to
see tne this weekend: Mr Ivan
A jun., the nationally known

Mayor of ‘Adonis Georgia, which
Li’ in last year ‘two,
owly Le with Shick 3 Gissenaion’

schools, and hotels,
Mr Allen’s testimony needs no

loss. It was a long soe tatement
delivered without. ast, and
ul much celfanaen either,

mer ‘are some of most
il passages, detiverta dns

almost apologetic Southern

acon:
ah is true. ceeds

‘ sting
discin mina far falle ie vee

have eile I toby tas because we

ihe face a

9



accepted the Supreme Court's
decisions as ineyitable and as the
law of our land....

“Tt has been a ‘long, payee
and often Ora eae
and the end is far from being in in
sight... Step by step, sometimes
under court order, ' sometimes
voluntarily, sometimes adroitly,
and many times clumsily, we have
tried to find a solution to each
specific problem through an
agreement between the affected
white ownership and the Negro
leadership.

‘Take action’
“Gentlemen, if I had your prob-
lem, armed with the local experi-

ence I have had, I would pass a
public accommodation bill.

“Now is the time for legislative
action, We cannot dodge the issue.
We cannot look ba over our
shoulders or turn the clock hack
to the 1860s. We must take action
now to assure a greater future for
our cilizens and our country.

“A hundred years ago th
abolition of slavery won the U
the acclaim of the whole world
when it made overy American
free in Peery, Now, the elimina-
tion seen which is
SH A stepe is a challenge
io all of us to make every Ameri-
ean free in fact . and again to.
establish our nation as
champion the free world.”

es he | had atone, Senator
urmon Ou Carolina,
ixiecrat,

old D leaped in, challeng-
ing. the Mayor to deny that the
rulings of the Su
if incorporated in the Dill, we
mean oe ion.” T
replied: “It would the
same ri te be given. the
Negro citizen as the white citizen,
Yes, that’s compulsion. Any
Pr al. law exercises some
compulsion,” 2

A Democrat of M

{wanes in to ask the aoae if

e didn't bie Cae des



gation was om-
munist ata :

point of t
Senator,” or,
“there are no more | mnunists

in Atlanta than there are on the

moon."
At the end, the chairman,
ore, Democrat

Senator
seid Me a pee

of Ea Bn
perc oh th