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Freezing Formula. Johnson has long been the foremost champion of voting rights on the Southern bench—even though he was temporarily stymied in the early stages of U.S. v. Alabama, launched in 1959 as the first major test of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. In Macon County, 97% of eligible whites were registered to vote v. 8% of eligible Negroes—the familiar result of intimidation and tricky tests applied only to Negroes. To avoid giving the federal courts a target for injunction, the Macon registration board periodically resigned. The tactic worked; Johnson found that the 1957 rights law authorized suits only against "persons." When the registrars resigned, there were no persons left to act against. The Justice Department could not sue the Governor, since he does not exercise direct control of registrars; Johnson therefore had to refuse an injunction plea against "the registrars of Macon County."
As a direct result of this adverse ruling, the 1960 Civil Rights Act authorized voting suits against states and state governmental groups as well as persons. In 1961, Johnson duly rapped the Macon board's "puny excuses" and enjoined its assorted subterfuges. Most important, he ordered the board to register any Negro whose qualifications equaled those of the "least qualified white." Called the "freeze doctrine," that rule for righting imbalances became the Fifth Circuit's standard formula in voting cases, and was substantially incorporated into the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Reflex Anger. Before the passage of that act, militant civil rights leaders descended on the Dallas County city of Selma in March 1965. They delighted at the reflex anger of Dallas Sheriff Jim Clark and his mounted "posse men," his electric-shock cattle prods, and forced marches of Negro children. After the inevitable clash on Sunday, March 7, 1965, when 650 Negroes met tear gas and clubs, Judge Johnson enjoined both Governor George Wallace and Martin Luther King from further action. Then he pondered a tough issue—whether to let the Negroes cross Pettus Bridge, march on Route 80 to Montgomery, and petition Governor Wallace for their voting rights.
Johnson permitted the march in an opinion holding that "the right to assemble, demonstrate and march peaceably along the highways and streets in an orderly manner should be commensurate with the enormity of the wrongs that are being protested against. In this case, the wrongs are enormous."
He has also ruled in the other direction. In 1966, he refused jurisdiction in a school-desegregation case after finding that Negroes had assaulted the principal and become a "hysterical mob." Also rebuffed: 167 persons who disobeyed police while picketing the state capitol. As Johnson saw it, civil righteousness is no excuse for lawlessness.
Last-Ditch Verdict. Soon after Selma came Johnson's finest hour of putting down lawlessness: the trial of the three Klansmen for gunning down Detroit Housewife Viola Liuzzo on Route 80 after the march. A Lowndes County jury had acquitted Collie Leroy Wilkins, though an FBI informant testified that he saw Wilkins commit the murder.
The case then moved to Johnson's court. In a 30-page charge to the jury, Johnson painstakingly discussed the American trial system as "a beacon of hope and a last resort for