(2 of 2)
That approach failing, Mathews ordered a deputy to take down the names of all present in the church, so that he would know who in Terrell County was not happy. Afterward, as the Negroes walked out into the hot Southern night, Sitton heard a deputy remark: "We're going to get some of you." Said Sheriff Mathews: "We don't need no outside agitators in here. We want our colored people to stay just like they have been for the last 100 years—peaceful and happy. If they want to register to vote and they can't qualify, that's their tough luck."
The methods of making sure that their luck will be tough are unchanging: economic and physical intimidation; registrars who are chronically unsatisfied with the way a Negro interprets the state constitution or completes a registration blank. A registrar in Forrest County, Miss., found five college graduates illiterate. In Plaquemines Parish, La., the Civil Rights Commission was told that finding the registrar was "like a game of hide and seek." In 13 Southern counties Negroes constitute a majority of the population—and not one vote. In 35 other counties, 3% or less of the qualified Negroes are registered.
Choice Between Evils. But in bigger cities, and in the border areas, the Negroes have made considerable progress, and already are a political force to be taken into account. In Texas—where Negro registration has increased from 33,000 to 300,000 in 20 years—the race issue is dead in statewide elections, and in this onetime Confederate state both candidates for governor this fall are taking a moderate line on civil rights. In Atlanta, Savannah and Macon, Ga., tightly organized Negro voters' leagues form a powerful coalition with moderate "uptown whites."
Facing a newly significant Negro vote, politicians are suddenly careful not to alienate it. In Memphis, where a huge Negro vote was created by the late Boss Crump for. his own political uses, incumbent Congressman Clifford Davis anxiously dubs as "very vicious" any criticism of his 19th century voting record on civil rights, has abandoned his campaign custom of telling a Negro dialect joke here and there. Five years ago, when Atlanta Businessman Ivan Allen Jr. was sounding out the all-powerful white rural vote for support in the governor's race, he backed an outlandish plan for resettlement of Negroes. Last summer, campaigning for mayor of Atlanta in a city with registration 31% Negro, he found the city's school integration "a beacon light to our willingness and readiness to move forward." He won without a majority of the white vote.
Even so, most candidates in the cities still run as segregationists. "In many cases," says A. T. Walden, head of the Negro Voters League, "it's a choice between evils." Often Negro leaders—happy enough to be bargained with at all—fail to get firm promises for the choice they make. Says Southern Regional Council Executive Director Leslie Dunbar: "They just haven't learned to cash in on their power yet. It doesn't make any sense in cities like Atlanta, where Negroes have strategic power, to wait until 1962 till Negro policemen can arrest whites." But at least there are Negroes on Atlanta's police force—and the Negro's vote put them there.