By the end of the s all major baseball teams in the USA had at least one African American player in their team. Advances in the s Political advances African Americans began to make progress in politics in the s. During his time in Congress, Powell was responsible for a number of measures: The desegregation of dining rooms and other facilities which African American Congressmen had been forbidden from using.
The admittance of African American journalists into the press gallery in Congress. Customs 7 U. Defense Department 2 U. Department of Justice 24 U. Equal Opportunity Commission 1 U. Immigration and Naturalization Service 1 U. Post Office 20 U. Public Health Services 1 U. State Department 5 U. Contact Us. Thereupon the lynchers returned and removed the two women from the car.
Three volleys of shots were fired as if by a squad of professional executioners. The coroner's report said that at least 66 bullets were found in the scarcely recognizable bodies. Harrison consistently denied that he could identify any of the unmasked murderers. State and federal grand juries reviewed the evidence in the case, but no person has yet been indicted for the crime. Later that summer, in Minden, Louisiana, a young Negro named John Jones was arrested on suspicion of housebreaking.
Another Negro youth, Albert Harris, was arrested at about the same time, and beaten in an effort to implicate Jones. He was then released, only to be rearrested after a few days. On August 6th, early in the evening, and before there had been any trial of the charges against them, Jones and Harris were released by a deputy sheriff. Waiting in the jail yard was a group of white men. There was evidence that, with the aid of the deputy sheriff, the young men were put into a car. They were then driven into the country.
Jones was beaten to death. Harris, left for dead, revived and escaped. Five persons, including two deputy sheriffs, were indicted and brought to trial in a federal court for this crime. All were acquitted. These are two of the less brutal lynchings of the past years. The victims in these cases were not mutilated or burned. The record for is incomplete. There has been one lynching, one case in which the victim escaped, and other instances where mobs have been unable to accomplish their purpose.
On February 17, I, a Negro youth named Willie Earle, accused of fatally stabbing a taxi driver in the small city of Greenville, South Carolina, was removed from jail by a mob, viciously beaten and finally shot to death.
In an unusual and impressive instance of state prosecution, 31 men were tried for this crime. All were acquitted on the evening of May 21, Early the next morning, in Jackson, North Carolina, another Negro youth, Godwin Bush, arrested on a charge of approaching a white woman, was removed from a local jail by a mob, after having been exhibited through the town by the sheriff.
Bush succeeded in escaping from his abductors, and, after hiding for two days in nearby woods, was able to surrender himself safely into the custody of FBI agents and officers of the state. The Committee finds it encouraging to note that the Governor of North Carolina has made vigorous efforts to bring to justice those responsible for this attempted lynching. While available statistics show that, decade by decade, lynchings have decreased, this Committee has found that in the year lynching remains one of the most serious threats to the civil rights of Americans.
It is still possible for a mob to abduct and murder a person in some sections of the country with almost certain assurance of escaping punishment for the crime.
The decade from through saw at least 43 lynchings. No person received the death penalty, and the majority of the guilty persons were not even prosecuted. The communities in which lynchings occur tend to condone the crime. Punishment of lynchers is not accepted as the responsibility of state or local governments in these communities. Frequently, state officials participate in the crime, actively or passively. Federal efforts to punish the crime are resisted.
Condonation of lynching is indicated by the failure of some local law enforcement officials to make adequate efforts to break up a mob. It is further shown by failure in most cases to make any real effort to apprehend or try those guilty. If the federal government enters a case, local officials sometimes actively resist the federal investigation. Local citizens often. The large number of attempted lynchings highlights, even more than those which have succeeded, the widespread readiness of many communities to resort to mob violence.
Thus, for seven of the years from to for which statistics are reported, the conservative estimates of the Tuskegee Institute show that persons were rescued from threatened lynching. Over of these were Negroes. Most rescues from lynchings are made by local officials. There is heartening evidence that an ever-increasing number of these officers have the will and the courage to defend their prisoners against mob action. But this reflects only partial progress toward adequate law enforcement.
In some instances lynchers are dissuaded by promises that the desired result will be accomplished "legally" and the machinery of justice is sometimes sensitive to the demands of such implied bargains. In some communities there is more official zeal to avoid mob violence which will injure the reputation of the community than there is to protect innocent persons. The devastating consequences of lynchings go far beyond what is shown by counting the victims.
When a person is lynched and the lynchers go unpunished, thousands wonder where the evil will appear again and what mischance may produce another victim. And every time lynchers go unpunished, Negroes have learned to expect other forms of violence at the hands of private citizens or public officials. In describing the thwarted efforts of the Department of Justice to identify those responsible for one lynching, J. Edgar Hoover stated to the Committee: "The arrogance of most of the white population of that county was unbelievable, and the fear of the Negroes was almost unbelievable.
The almost complete immunity from punishment enjoyed by lynchers is merely a striking form of the broad and general immunity from punishment enjoyed by whites in many communities for less extreme offenses against Negroes. Moreover, lynching is the ultimate threat by which his inferior status is driven home to the Negro. As a terrorist device, it reinforces all the other disabilities placed upon him.
We have reported the failure of some public officials to fulfill their most elementary duty -- the protection of persons against mob violence. We must also report more widespread and varied forms of official misconduct. These include violent physical attacks by police officers on members of minority groups, the use of third degree methods to extort confessions, and brutality against prisoners.
Civil rights violations of this kind are by no means universal and many law enforcement agencies have gone far in recent years toward stamping out these evils.
In various localities, scattered throughout the country, unprofessional or undisciplined police, while avoiding brutality, fail to recognize and to safeguard the civil rights of the citizenry. Insensitive to the necessary limits of police authority, untrained officers frequently overstep the bounds of their proper duties. At times this appears in unwarranted arrests, unduly prolonged detention before arraignment, and abuse of the search and seizure power.
Cases involving these breaches of civil rights constantly come before the courts. The frequency with which such cases arise is proof that improper police conduct is still widespread, for it must be assumed that there are many instances of the abuse of police power which do not reach the courts.
Most of the victims of such abuses are ignorant, friendless persons, unaware of their rights, and without the means of challenging those who have violated those rights.
Where lawless police forces exist, their activities may impair the civil rights of any citizen. In one place the brunt of illegal police activity may fall on suspected vagrants, in another on union organizers, and in another on unpopular racial or religious minorities, such as Negroes, Mexicans, or Jehovah's Witnesses.
But wherever unfettered police lawlessness exists, civil rights may be vulnerable to the prejudices of the region or of dominant local groups, and to the caprice of individual policemen.
Unpopular, weak, or defenseless groups are most apt to suffer. Considerable evidence in the files of the Department of Justice supports this assertion. For example, in one case in a group of white juvenile offenders made an abortive effort to escape from a midwestern prison.
The attempt was quickly and fairly easily subdued. In the course of the attempt a trusty was injured. The prison officials, after rounding up the boys, allowed other trusties to vent their anger at the injury to their comrade by physically attacking the defenseless prisoners.
After this had occurred the boys were then severely beaten, one by one, by the prison officials. Much of the illegal official action which has been brought to the attention of the Committee is centered in the South.
There is evidence of lawless police action against whites and Negroes alike, but the dominant pattern is that of race prejudice. Edgar Hoover referred, in his testimony before the Committee, to a particular jail where "it was seldom that a Negro man or women was incarcerated who was not given a severe beating, which started off with a pistol whipping and ended with a rubber hose.
The files of the Department abound with evidence of illegal official action in southern states. In one case, the victim was arrested on a charge of stealing a tire, taken to the courthouse, beaten by three officers with a blackjack until his head was a bloody pulp, and then dragged unconscious through the streets to the jail where he was thrown, dying, onto the floor.
In another case, a constable arrested a Negro, against whom he bore a personal grudge, beat him brutally with a bullwhip and then forced his victim, in spite of his protestations of being unable to swim, to jump into a river where he drowned. In a third case, there was evidence that officers arrested a Negro maid on a charge of stealing jewelry from her employer, took her to jail and severely beat and whipped her in an unsuccessful effort to extort a confession.
All of these cases occurred within the last five years. There are other cases in the files of the Department of Justice of officers who seem to be "trigger-happy" where weak or poor persons are concerned. In a number of instances, Negroes have been shot, supposedly in self-defense, under circumstances indicating, at best, unsatisfactory police work in the handling of criminals, and, at worst, a callous willingness to kill.
Toward the end of the work of this Committee a particularly shocking instance of this occurred. On July 11, , eight Negro prisoners in the State highway prison camp in Glynn County, Georgia, were killed by their white guards as they allegedly attempted to escape. The Glynn County grand jury exonerated the warden of the camp and four guards of all charges.
At later hearings on the highway prison camp system held by the State Board of Corrections, conflicting evidence was presented. But one witness testified that there was no evidence that the prisoners were trying to escape.
In any case, he said it was not necessary to use guns on them in the circumstances. I saw the Negroes where they fell. Two were killed where they crawled under the bunkhouse and two others as they ran under their cells. The only thing they were trying to escape was death. Only one tried to get over the fence. It is difficult to accept at face value police claims in cases of this type that action has been taken against prisoners in "self defense" or to "prevent escape.
Other officers in other places seem able to enforce the law and to guard prisoners without resort to violent means. The total picture -- adding the connivance of some police officials in lynchings to their record of brutality against Negroes in other situations -- is, in the opinion of this Committee, a serious reflection on American justice.
We know that Americans everywhere deplore this violence. We recognize further that there are many law enforcement officers in the South and the North who do not commit violent acts against Negroes or other friendless culprits. We are convinced, however, that the incidence of police brutality against Negroes is disturbingly high.
In addition to the treatment experienced by the weak and friendless person at the hands of police officers, he sometimes finds that. This may appear in unfair and perfunctory trials, or in fines and prison sentences that are heavier than those imposed on other members of the community guilty of the same offenses. In part, the inability of the Negro, Mexican, or Indian to obtain equal justice may be attributed to extrajudicial factors. The low income of a member of any one of these minorities may prevent him from securing competent counsel to defend his rights.
It may prevent him from posting bail or bond to secure his release from jail during trial. It may predetermine his choice, upon conviction, of paying a fine or going to jail. But these facts should not obscure or condone the extent to which the judicial system itself is responsible for the less-than-equal justice meted out to members of certain minority groups.
The United States Supreme Court in a number of recent decisions has censured state courts for accepting evidence procured by third-degree methods, for failing to provide accused persons with adequate legal counsel, and for excluding Negroes from jury lists. For example, in one of these cases, Chambers v. Florida, the Supreme Court, in , set aside the conviction by the state court of four young Negroes on the ground that it should have rejected confessions extorted from the accused by the use of third degree methods.
The Court referred to the basic principle that "all people must stand on an equality before the bar of justice in each American court.
Today, as in ages past, we are not without tragic proof that the exalted power of some governments to punish manufactured crime dictatorially is the handmaid of tyranny. Under our constitutional system, courts stand against any winds that blow as havens of refuge for those who might otherwise suffer because they are helpless, weak, outnumbered, or because they are nonconforming victims of prejudice and public excitement.
Due process of law, preserved for all by our Constitution, commands that no such practice as that disclosed by this record shall send any accused to his death. No higher duty, no more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court, than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution -- of whatever race, creed, or persuasion.
It is particularly unfortunate that the jury system has not always served to protect the right of the minority member to a fair trial. All too frequently trial by a jury of one's peers has no meaning for these persons because of the complete absence of people of their own kind from jury lists. While the Supreme Court and other appellate tribunals have reversed convictions made by juries selected from lists from which whole minority groups have been excluded, techniques of exclusion continue to be employed.
In an estimated 50 counties where the Latin American population ranges from 15 to 40 percent, persons of Mexican descent have never been known to be called for jury service, even in the trial of civil suits. The use of the fee system in many communities -- where court officials are paid in whole or in part from the fines levied -- also sometimes stimulates arbitrary arrests and encourages unjust convictions.
It is the unpopular minorities again that suffer most from this system, since it is relatively easy for unscrupulous, fee-seeking officers to "railroad" such persons to jail. The existence of the fee system and the frontier conditions in certain areas of Alaska contribute to discrimination against Indians and Eskimos in the administration of justice there.
The situation is such that federal officials are seriously considering a proposal made by the Governor of Alaska to appoint a public defender for those groups. The different standards of justice which we have allowed to exist in our country have had further repercussions. In certain states, the white population can threaten and do violence to the minority member with little or no fear of legal reprisal. Minority groups are sometimes convinced that they cannot expect fair treatment from the legal machinery.
Because of this belief they may harbor and protect any of their members accused of crime. Their experience does not lead them to look upon the courts as "havens of refuge" for the victims of prejudice and public excitement. Slavery was abolished in this country nearly a century ago, and in its traditional form has disappeared. But the temptation to force poor and defenseless persons, by one device or another, into a condition of virtual slavery, still exists. As recently as , in the case of Pollock.
Williams , the Supreme Court struck down as a violation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution an Alabama statute which enabled employers to force employees, in debt on account of advanced wage payments, to continue to work for them under threat of criminal punishment. This is one of the more subtle devices for securing forced labor. More direct is the practice whereby sheriffs in some areas free prisoners into the custody of local entrepreneurs who pay fines or post bonds.
The prisoners then work for their "benefactors" under threat of returning to jail. Sometimes the original charge against the prisoners is trumped up for the purpose of securing labor by this means. In still other instances persons have been held in peonage by sheer force or by threats of prosecution for debt.
Since the Civil Rights Section was established in , a widespread decline in peonage and involuntary servitude has occurred. However, the threat has not entirely disappeared. In , the Department of Justice prosecuted a case in which a Negro woman and her ten year old son had been held in captivity by a Mississippi farmer. Forced to work on a farm by day, they were locked in a crude, windowless, chimneyless cabin by night.
The mother had made three unsuccessful efforts to escape before federal authorities were informed of the situation. And as recently as , an involuntary servitude case was successfully prosecuted by the federal government in California. Where large numbers of people are frightened, uneducated, and underprivileged, the dangers of involuntary servitude remain. If economic conditions deteriorate, a more general recurrence of peonage may be anticipated.
The most striking mass interference since slavery with the right to physical freedom was the evacuation and exclusion of persons of Japanese descent from the West Coast during the past war. The evacuation of , men, women and children, two-thirds of whom were United States citizens, was made without a trial or any sort of hearing, at a time when the courts were functioning.
These people were ordered out of a large section of the country and detained in "relocation centers. The ground given for the evacuation was that the military security of the nation demanded the exclusion of potentially disloyal people from the West Coast. We have not felt that it would be proper or feasible for this Committee to try to review all of the facts of the evacuation program.
We remember well the doubts and fears of the early months of the war and we recognize that the evacuation policy seemed a necessary precaution to many at the time: But we are disturbed by the implications of this episode so far as the future of American civil rights is concerned. Fundamental to our whole system of law is the belief that guilt is personal and not a matter of heredity or association.
Yet in this instance no specific evacuees were charged with disloyalty, espionage or sedition. The evacuation, in short, was not a criminal proceeding involving individuals, but a sort of mass quarantine measure. This Committee believes that further study should be given to this problem. Admittedly in time of modern total warfare much discretion must be given to the military to act in situations where civilian rights are concerned.
Yet the Committee believes that ways and means can be found of safeguarding people against mass accusations and discriminatory treatment. Finally it should be noted that hundreds of evacuees suffered serious property and business losses because of governmental action and through no fault of their own.
The War Relocation Authority, charged with the. Also disturbing, though less spectacular, was the issuance by military authority during the recent war of individual orders of exclusion against citizens scattered widely throughout the "defense zones" established by the Army. These orders rested on the same Executive Order as did the mass evacuation of Japanese Americans.
In the. He was not imprisoned, for he could go to any inland area. He was not accused of criminal or subversive conduct. He was merely held to be an "unsafe" person to have around. Fortunately these violations of civil rights were not very numerous. Moreover, the Army lost confidence in the exclusion orders as effective security measures and abandoned them but not until more than citizens had moved under military compulsion.
The status of citizenship is basic to the enjoyment of many of the rights discussed in this report. First of all one must be a citizen in order to participate fully in the political process of the United States. Only citizens of the United States are accorded the right to vote.
Only citizens may hold public office. Only citizens, for these reasons, have an effective voice in our nation's affairs. Second, those barred from citizenship are thereby barred from many avenues of economic and social advancement open to American citizens. All persons born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
These are the words of the Constitution. They set an ideal of native citizenship by which all persons born in this country are citizens without regard to race, color, creed, or ancestry. They also describe our practice, for we have in fact followed the ideal very closely. American-born children of aliens have encountered no barriers to citizenship. In granting citizenship by naturalization, a democracy may establish reasonable tests of the individual alien's eligibility for citizenship.
But some of the standards of eligibility in our naturalization laws have nothing to do with a person's fitness to become a citizen. These standards are based solely on race or national origin, and penalize some residents who may otherwise have all the attributes necessary for American citizenship.
The largest group of American residents presently subject to this discrimination are those born in Japan. Residents of Korean origin, as well as persons born in certain other Asiatic countries and Pacific Island areas, are also denied citizenship status. Although many of these people have lived in this country for decades, will probably remain here until they die, have raised families of native-born American citizens, and are devoted to American principles, they are forbidden an opportunity to attain the citizenship status to which their children are born.
We have recently removed many of these citizenship barriers. Until World War II, the Chinese had been specifically barred from immigration and from naturalization by the Chinese exclusion laws. Other groups, such as the Filipinos, Western Hemisphere Indians, and people indigenous to India, were denied citizenship through interpretation of the naturalization laws which limited eligibility to "whites" or "persons of African nativity or descent.
In addition to the disabilities suffered by ineligible aliens at the hands of private persons -- in employment, housing, etc. California also forbids ineligible aliens to engage in commercial fishing and excludes them from equal benefits of old age pensions and other state relief.
Many states admit only citizens to the bar and to the medical, teaching, and other professions, which means that the ineligible alien is permanently barred from these fields. The bar to land holding -- the "alien land law" -- most seriously impairs the alien's economic opportunities.
The first of the alien land laws, enacted by California in , made it illegal for aliens ineligible for citizenship either to buy agricultural land or to lease it for a period exceeding three years. Other western states passed similar laws. However, the alien land laws were not rigidly enforced, partly because it was often advantageous to lease or sell land to the Japanese and partly because of loopholes in the laws.
During the second World War the California laws were made much more stringent. California is now vigorously enforcing its amended alien land law. This law goes much further than to forbid ineligible aliens to own land.
In effect, it forbids American citizens of Japanese ancestry to support their ineligible alien parents with money derived from the beneficial use of land. It has put in jeopardy the legal title of land purchased for American-born children by alien Japanese parents. Two examples of the effects of this law were cited before the Committee by a Japanese American veteran.
In one instance, Japanese American soldiers killed overseas made battlefield wills deeding their land to their parents. The parents could not, under the law, receive the land.
Accordingly, it escheated to the state. The other involved two Japanese American brothers who returned from overseas service to find that California had attacked the validity of the title of land purchased for them as children by their parents, and which they had cultivated as their own before entering the service.
These land laws and other manifestations of discrimination against ineligible aliens have been made possible by the discriminatory provisions of our naturalization laws.
The moral impact of this situation is indicated by the words of the Japanese American veteran already referred to:. I know my mother sent five of her sons. Every one volunteered for combat. One was killed. The rest of us were wounded. We have over thirty individual decorations and medals among us. Well, my mother wants to become a citizen. It is for people like my mother and for a lot of Americans of good will throughout the United States who have a lot of confidence in us and our loyalty that we did the job we did.
The peoples of Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands are American citizens, either by birth or by naturalization, as are people in the 48 states.
But the 35, inhabitants of Guam and American Samoa are in the anomalous position of being neither citizens nor aliens, but nationals of the United States.
They have none of the rights of citizenship, yet owe allegiance to the United States. They do not have an organic act establishing a local government and guaranteeing. At the request of the President, the present Congress is considering legislation giving citizenship to these people, providing them with a local government guaranteeing basic civil rights, and transferring the administration of the islands from the Navy to a civilian agency. The right of all qualified citizens to vote is today considered axiomatic by most Americans.
To achieve universal adult suffrage we have carried on vigorous political crusades since the earliest days of the Republic. In theory the aim has been achieved, but in fact there are many backwaters in our political life where the right to vote is not assured to every qualified citizen.
The franchise is barred to some citizens because of race; to others by institutions or procedures which impede free access to the polls. Still other Americans are in substance disfranchised whenever electoral irregularities or corrupt practices dissipate their votes or distort their intended purpose.
Some citizens -- permanent residents of the District of Columbia -- are excluded from political representation and the right to vote as a result of outmoded national traditions. As a result of such restrictions, all of these citizens are limited, in varying degrees, in their opportunities to seek office and to influence the conduct of government on an equal plane with other American citizens.
The denial of the suffrage on account of race is the most serious present interference with the right to vote. Until very recently, American Negro citizens in most southern states found it difficult to vote. Some Negroes have voted in parts of the upper South for the last twenty years.
In recent years the situation in the deep South has changed to the point where it can be said that Negroes are beginning to exercise the political rights of free Americans. In the light of history, this represents progress, limited and precarious, but nevertheless progress.
This report cannot adequately describe the history of Negro disfranchisement. At different times, different methods have been employed. As legal devices for disfranchising the Negro have been held. Intimidation and the threat of intimidation have always loomed behind these legal devices to make sure that the desired result is achieved.
Until , the white primary, by which participation in the Democratic primary is limited to white citizens, was used in Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi as the most effective modern "legal" device for disfranchising Negroes. While some southern Negroes succeeded in spite of various obstacles in voting in general elections, almost none voted in the Democratic primaries. Since the Democratic primary is the only election of any significance, the device of the white primary resulted in exclusion of Negroes from government in these states.
Over a period of time, advocates of white supremacy had refined this device to the point where it seemed to be constitutionally foolproof. The command of the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting states from abridging suffrage because of race or color, was circumvented by purporting to vest the power to exclude Negroes in the political party rather than in the state. Allwright overruled an earlier decision and held the Texas white primary illegal. It declared that the exclusion rules of the Texas Democratic Party were in effect the rules of the state and were therefore forbidden by the Fifteenth Amendment.
Some states adapted their primary laws to the Supreme Court ruling, others resisted, first, by refusing to open white primaries to Negroes until further litigation made the Texas ruling applicable to them, then, by devising other methods of depriving Negroes of the ballot. Today the effort to preserve the pure white electoral system in these states is continuing. Two states, Louisiana and Texas, repealed white primary provisions immediately after the Supreme Court decision; Florida, Alabama, and Georgia were forced to do so by further court rulings.
South Carolina called a special session of the state legislature at which all state laws in any way regulating primaries were repealed.
The theory governing this action was that by placing the primaries entirely outside the law and the structure of government the ruling in Smith v.
In a message to the special session of the general assembly, the Governor of the State said:. After these statutes are repealed, in my opinion, we will have done everything within our power to guarantee white supremacy in our primaries of our State insofar as legislation is concerned. Should this prove inadequate, we South Carolinians will use the necessary methods to retain white supremacy in our primaries and to safeguard the homes and happiness of our people.
In its opinion the Court said:. Racial distinctions cannot exist in the machinery that selects the officers and lawmakers of the United States; and all citizens of this State and Country are entitled to cast a free and untrammeled ballot in our elections, and if the only material and realistic elections are clothed with the name "primary", they are equally entitled to vote there. Alabama took a different course from South Carolina.
Instead of repealing the primary laws it sought to continue disfranchisement by establishing "qualifications" standards under which Negroes could be barred by administrative action.
The "Boswell amendment" adopted by this state in November, , set up a provision under which voters would be required "to understand and explain" provisions of the state constitution. Exclusion by this kind of device is a familiar southern phenomenon. The tradition is to ignore such tests with respect to white voters but to apply them to Negroes -- literally, where there is any possibility of eliminating them under the test; fraudulently, where they meet the test.
In a recent case in the Department of justice files, a Negro school teacher was disqualified under a North Carolina provision requiring an ability to read and interpret the Constitution. The registrar refused to register him on the ground that he had not read the federal Constitution in a satisfactory manner.
However, in a statement to. The poll tax -- another important legal obstacle to full suffrage in some southern states -- limits white as well as Negro suffrage.
The poll tax has frequently had an unequal racial effect, since, like the "understand and explain" clauses, it has been administered in a discriminatory manner.
It has been very effective as an anti-Negro device. A poll tax simply places the payment of a fee between the voter and the ballot box. In some states it is cumulative; taxes not paid in years when the voter does not go to the polls pile up and he must pay more than one year's tax before he can vote.
The poll tax has curtailed the size of the entire electorate, white and Negro. Since four other states have abandoned the poll tax.
In the Presidential elections of ,10 percent of the potential voters voted in the seven poll-tax states, as against 49 percent in the free-vote states. In the congressional elections of , the figures are 5 percent for the poll-tax states as compared with 33 percent for the free-voting states. It has frequently been pointed out that the congressional representation of poll tax states is based on proportionately fewer voters than the representation of other jurisdictions.
It has also been urged that the poll tax is in reality a tax levied by the state upon the citizen's federal right to vote for members of Congress.
In recent years there has been a strong drive for federal legislation forbidding the requirement of a poll tax as a prerequisite to voting in federal elections. The House of Representatives passed an anti-poll tax bill for the fourth time in July of
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