Mississippi's Best

To succeed in Mississippi politics since Reconstruction has meant being a segregationist, and James P. Coleman succeeded. "Those who propose to mix the races in our public schools might as well try to dip the Atlantic dry with a teaspoon," he said as Governor in 1956, two years after the Supreme Court school integration ruling. And, as he had promised he would, he signed laws aimed at thwarting that decision.

But Coleman was never a militant racist. He stayed clear of the Citizens Councils, scoffed at the notion of state "nullification" of federal law, spoke out against violence, and invited the FBI into his state to investigate racial murder. In 1960, he was one of the few Deep South leaders to support John Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination. In 1963 this record cost him the gubernatorial election.

Attack & Defense. Last month President Johnson nominated Coleman to fill a vacancy on the nine-member Federal Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Mississippi, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, and handles much civil rights litigation. Mississippi is the only state not currently represented on the court. Custom dictated that Johnson pick a Mississippian, and ironbound Senate tradition demanded that his choice be approved by the state's Senators--James Eastland, who happens to be chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and John Stennis. Given all the circumstances, Coleman seemed to be the best available.

Civil rights groups lined up before a Judiciary subcommittee last week to demand his rejection. Representative John Conyers, a Negro member of the House Judiciary Committee, summed up: "Throughout his public statements runs a consistent theme. He is the only person with the legal experience and skill to consistently outmaneuver the federal courts, Congress and the Executive. He is the thinking man's segregationist." Star witness for the Administration was Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who argued that Coleman's steady defense of law and order in the hostile atmosphere of Mississippi was "worth a hundred campaign speeches." And, like President Johnson, Coleman himself admitted past "mistakes," said he now believed that "separation of individuals by reason of color and color alone is dead in this country and it is finished."

Approval Ahead. It was a foregone conclusion that the three-man subcommittee, consisting of Eastland, Sam Ervin of North Carolina and Roman Hruska of Nebraska, would act favorably on the nomination. It did. Liberal members of the parent committee forced a delay of a vote by the full committee until this week, but there seemed to be little doubt that it would recommend Senate approval.

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