Commission Report

Established by Congress in 1957, a six-man Civil Rights Commission*has been in and out of the headlines since it conducted hard-hitting investigations in both North and South of violations of U.S. constitutional rights. This week, as Congress debated extending its life, the commission submitted a report that made it as hot an issue as civil rights itself. Chief finding: the nation is still a long way from doing right by its minorities.

On the right to vote, still denied to many Negroes ("a betrayal of the ideal set forth in the Declaration of Independence"), the commission recommended strong new federal action. Items: P: A federal law requiring states to preserve registration records for five years, during which they would be subject to public inspection; states have a right to determine voting qualifications, the report said, but the right "is not unlimited."P: An amendment to the Civil Rights Act forbidding any election official to discriminate by failure to carry out a public duty, e.g., resigning from office to avoid accepting registrations, and a recommendation that would empower the commission to apply directly to federal courts for aid in enforcing subpoenas, rather than going through the Attorney General. P: Appointment of temporary federal registrars, empowered, on petition, to register voters for federal elections when voting rights have been denied by local officials.

Three commissioners, going further, suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing specifically the right of vote for Negroes and other minorities.

In housing, the report called for the establishment of biracial committees in cities with large nonwhite populations: "A large proportion of colored Americans are living in overcrowded slums." It urged the President to direct federal agencies to shape their policies to ensure equal opportunity, and recommended that builders using federal loans be required to abide by antidiscrimination laws. In the field of education, the commission suggested that it serve as a clearing house for information about procedures used in school desegregation, and called for an annual school census "by race" and a federal advisory service to help local school officials plan transition periods from segregated to integrated systems.

To many of the recommendations, there were bitter dissents by Southern members and by angry Southern Senators and Congressmen who were tipped in advance about the report. Commission Member John Battle disagreed with the "nature and tenor" of the report, said that in large part it was "an argument in advocacy of preconceived ideas in the field of race relations." In answer, Chairman Hannah reminded that racial discrimination was a problem "that is native to neither North nor South. It is, rather, a dilemma that concerns all Americans."

*Headed by Michigan State University's President John A. Hannah, its members (three each from the North and South) include ex-Governors John S. Battle of Virginia and Doyle E. Carlton of Florida, Notre Dame University's President Theodore M. Hesburgh, Dean Robert G. Storey of the Southern Methodist Law School, and former Dean of Howard University Law School George M. Johnson.

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