The Rev. John Henry Scott should be familiar to the folks of East Carroll Parish, La. He has lived on East Carroll's rich Delta cotton land all of his life—an amiable, chatty man who leads a church founded by his great-grandfather. But seven times in the past ten years, he has been unable to prove his identity. The county voting registrar requires vouches of identification from two registered voters. But all the registered voters were white, and Scott, like 61% of East Carroll's 14,443 residents, is a Negro. A friend once said hopefully, "I have some white friends, and we're all Christians." Scott answered: "Nobody's a Christian when it come down to identifying you."
Last week Scott at last found a Christian. Federal District Judge Edwin F. Hunter Jr. signed registration cards for him and 25 other East Carroll Negroes. It was the first time a federal judge has used the 1960 Civil Rights Act to break through a "pattern of discrimination" by registering voters himself.
Back 100 Years. As the all-important primaries start around the South this week, registration of 26 Negroes in the lonely northeast corner of Louisiana is a typical milestone in the tedious, undramatic campaign for Negro voting rights. While the White House alternately butters up and bemoans the powerful Southern Democrats in Congress, another part of Administration policy is to regard voting—and the political leverage that goes with it—as the key to all Negro rights in the South. Justice Department lawyers are prosecuting 30 voting cases, painstakingly gathering evidence for 70 more. With Justice Department prodding and some healthy foundation grants, four Negro civil rights organizations have joined in a Voter Education Project, administered by the respected Southern Regional Council and designed to thicken registration rolls through mass action.
Voter registration often means months of legal action against constant evasion, miles of doorbell-ringing arguments against fear and apathy—but it is beginning to pay off. White and colored students working in Raleigh, N.C.—where an 8,000-vote Negro bloc has been the deciding factor in the last two municipal elections—cruised through Negro neighborhoods with a Negro registrar in their bus and station wagon, registered 1,300 new voters at the curbside in six weeks. In Terrell County, Ga., a federal injunction two years ago finally resulted in the registration of 51 of the county's 8,209 Negroes. Last week New York Times Correspondent Claude Sitton was on hand when the Terrell County sheriff and an ominous crowd of whites tried to stop a new drive to get Negroes to register. Sheriff Z. T. Mathews had not expected to find outside reporters present when, on a hot summer evening, he confronted the Negroes at a registration rally in a small church. But, taking over the meeting, he apparently thought he could produce the right answers: "Are any of you disturbed?"
(After a little hesitation): "Yes."
"Can you vote if you are qualified?"
"No."
"Do you need people to come down and tell you what to do?"
"Yes."
"Haven't you been getting along well for 100 years?"
"No."