What It Is & Where It Stands
Convening in January, the U.S. Congress appeared certain to pass the first major civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. As late as March the Eisenhower Administration's civil rights bill seemed headed . for surprisingly smooth congressional sailing. But as Congressmen return from their Easter vacations, the civil rights package is in the deepest sort of trouble. The trouble is compounded of real fears about the principles of the bill and of shrewd Southern maneuvering against it.
THE Administration's civil rights bill is the result of three years' intensive study by the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr. It is aimed less at making major substantive changes in the civil rights laws than at offering new methods of enforcing laws already on the books.
Since Reconstruction the U.S. has had criminal statutes providing fines of up to $5,000 and imprisonment of up to ten years for persons acting to deprive others of their rights to equal protection under the law—including the right to vote in federal elections. These laws have been generally ineffective for the simple reason that Southern juries would not vote for conviction. The U.S. also has civil statutes under which a private citizen can file suit to protect his own civil rights. But these too have been ineffective, mostly because of a requirement that the litigant go through the timeconsuming, vastly expensive machinery of local administrative agencies and state courts before reaching the federal courts.
New Power. The new bill would bypass the administrative agencies and state courts and give a civil rights plaintiff the right, generally denied him in the past by judicial ruling, to take his case directly to the federal courts. And in its most controversial provision it would empower the U.S.
Attorney General to file civil suits (obviously he already has the right to prosecute criminal violations) whenever "any persons have engaged or there are reasonable grounds to believe that any persons are about to engage" in acts that would violate existing civil rights statutes.
An example of how the new system might work: a white man threatens to harm a Negro if the Negro votes. The Negro complains to the Justice Department but is himself afraid—or too poor—to file suit. The Attorney General, under the new law, would bring suit in the name of the U.S.
The white man's threat was not in itself a violation of the civil rights statutes. But it would probably be considered "reasonable grounds to believe" that he intended to deprive the Negro of his voting rights. The Attorney General could thus ask the courts for an injunction against the white man.
The burden of proof would be on the Government. The defendant would have the usual rights to cross-examine, present witnesses and appeal. If the injunction were issued and the white man ignored it by, say, continuing to threaten the Negro, he could be held in civil contempt. At his contempt hearing he would not have the right to a jury trial—a key point in the program. If found guilty, he could be jailed until he purged himself of the contempt by agreeing to obey the injunction.