(2 of 2)
Since post-Reconstruction days, Negroes have been excluded — for one reason or another — from Democratic primaries in Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas " and Georgia. During the past 17 years, usually with prodding by the N.A.A.C.P., the U.S. Supreme Court has passed on four cases designed to abolish "white supremacy" in Southern voting. Three times the determined South has been able to retain its white poll supremacy. In last week's ruling, the fourth, the Court said: Dr. Lonnie E. Smith, Negro dentist of Houston, must be allowed to vote in Texas' Democratic primaries. Hastily, the South's best legal minds went to work with the frank, unabashed intention of getting around the ruling.
The sober Dallas News suggested cautiously that Negroes might perhaps be given "their fair and just political and economic rights along with segregation. . . . The Court's ruling will have its profound effect. We might as well accept it as a warning."
But most Southern politicos were in no such sweetly reasonable, give-&-take mood. Louisiana's Governor Sam Jones said calmly: "We've always handled that question—and always will." Texas' Representative Nat Patton remarked evenly: "Texas will find some way to work out a Democratic primary for white folks."
Grey Future. Politically, the Court's decision was a time bomb with a steadily accelerating tick. The bomb may go off at any minute. Much depends on the general patience of the U.S. people. For soon the whole U.S. will have to listen to about as much Southern oratory on the race question as anyone can reasonably endure. For of all things, the first item of business scheduled to come up before the returning Congress is the Marcantonio anti-poll-tax bill.
The Southerners in Congress are already overheated by the long States' rights wrangling during the soldier-vote-bill debate. They have been brought to a boil by the Supreme Court decision. Now they face a bill authored by New York's Communistic Vito Marcantonio. They are ready to oppose it with 1,000 amendments, no less—and with weeks on weeks of unrestrained oratory, pro & con everything in sight.
By that time the whole U.S. may come to a boil.
Still on the Border
Democrats found out that last fortnight's Oklahoma election did not mean that Oklahoma is Democratic. Last week Tulsa's city administration, Democratic since 1928, was thrown out. The new mayor: Olney F. Flynn, 48, oilman, campaigned as an anti-New Dealer, Oklahoma is still a border state.