Mr. John M. Kelly, is a devout Catholic. He is elected by Protestant votes. And we have another Catholic judge, judge of another one of our courts. We are preponderantly Protestant but we have not any religious prejudice; and we elect Jews. There are about 5,000 Jews in the town of 300,000, or 230,000 people, and they are elected from the city at large to city office. We have not any prejudices down there and our Jews do not need any protection. They can take care of themselves everywhere in the world, nearly. They set up a nation in the teeth of the Mohammedan world and set the finest example of resolute, independent, and individual bravery that the world has witnessed in the last 50 years, and I do not think our Catholics and our Jews need any protection. We do not have any trouble with our colored folks. Fine citizens. I have been in the homes of some of them that own $10,000 homes. They are respectable, fine citizens. They sit on juries. I tried a case before a jury that had a fine, retired civil-service post office employee who had retired on account of physical disability. He was on that jury. I was glad to have him. He decided a lawsuit in my favor, along with others, too. I have had lots and lots of lawsuits before colored juries. We get along down there. We understand one another. I believe it would be a good idea for some of these busybodies to let us alone. Dr. GRIFFITH. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make it clear that my ideal for the future of the United States as soon as it can possibly be achieved, everywhere, is for every American to consider every other American as a human being possessed of all the rights, privileges, which belong to a human being because he is a human being. What I am objecting to in this law, and in the whole complex of laws of which this is a part, notably FEPC, is the attempt to do something which is, as an ideal, good, in such a way that it will first be done, I think, unconstitutionally, and secondly, in such a way as will prevent rather than advance the professed objective of the law. Now, sir, in answer to the question of the gentleman here about where I found that in the law, it is on page 2 of H. R. 4682, section 2 (b): The Congress, therefore, declares that it is its purpose to strengthen and secure the civil rights of the people of the United States under the Constitution, and that it is the national policy to protect the right of the individual to be free from discrimination based upon race, color, religion, or national origin. Now, those words sound noble. In effect, as I have tried to say, they are prohibitory of the free exercise of religion rather than in any sense guaranteeing it. Mr. DENTON. What in the act does that? On page 13, in two places-now, is that the preamble you are talking about there used to construe the other parts of the bill? Dr. GRIFFITH. That is what I was doing with it. The right of protection from Mr. DENTON. By reason of race, color, religion, or national origin. There is nothing in the Constitution to protect that right anywhere. Is that not within the power of Congress to protect that right in the Constitution? Dr. GRIFFITH. Person and property. But the first part of this act which is to be used to construe it does not make any such distinction at all; nor is any such distinction made in the FEPC legislation. It is all part of a whole process. Mr. DENTON. That is what I know. You are talking more about FEPC than anything else. Dr. GRIFFITH. I would not say so, sir. I could talk about that at considerable length and say many things which I have not said here. Mr. DENTON. Prohibited from discrimination on account of race,. religion, and so forth. The courts have upheld that right many times.. There are many cases on that, are there not? There are a good many cases by the courts upholding that right? Congress prohibited discrimination on interstate carriers, did it not? Dr. GRIFFITH. This, of course, would extend it to intrastate; that is one point on which I do not think it would be constitutional. Mr. KEATING. Where does it say that? Mr. FOLEY. The carrier? No. All persons-you read that section: 221. Dr. GRIFFITH. I am reading section 212. Mr. FOLEY. You talk about public carriers. Mr. DENTON. It is on page 17. Mr. FOLEY. The title to it is, "Prohibition Against Discrimination or Segregation in Interstate Transportation." Dr. GRIFFITH. If you look on page 15, you will find that it does apply intrastate. Mr. KEATING. Transportation? Mr. FOLEY. That treats of voting in Federal elections on page 15. Mr. JENNING. Well, do not the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments pretty well take care of the right of a citizen without any regard to color, whether he is affiliated with some church or just belongs to the Big Church-no church-I never could understand how anybody would get mad about their religion because I never saw anybody. Yet I have seen a few that were thoroughly saturated with it, but I never saw anybody with enough of it to hurt him. They have not been saturated with it. But it seems to me that as against State encroachment, the fourteenth amendment takes care of the citizen. You cannot be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law by the State. And the Federal Government is forbidden to deprive the citizen of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. In other words, those first 10 amendments, and the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, were adopted to take care of the freed former slaves, cover the citizen all over with the law, with the armor of the law with respect to his property rights, life, and his liberty. I never have been able to bring myself to the point of view to say that the Federal Government or any other government is clothed with the right or onerated with the duty of seeing that somebody shall hire me as a lawyer instead of Mr. Denton over there, if he was my neighbor. I might have a neighbor who might say, I would rather have Mr. Denton. I don't like Jennings anyhow, but I like Denton and I think he is a better lawyer. Now, what right have I got to go into court and say, here, I am not being treated fairly. I am not getting the business I think I ought to have. The fact of the matter is that I have never seen anybody, white or yellow or any other color, who was industrious and competent and trustworthy, that was discriminated against because of their color, religion, or political affiliations, or anything else. If it gets out on the fellow that he is a good worker and to be trusted and is competent, people search him out-like the fellow who built the best mouse trap or chicken coop, or wrote the best book. If he builds his house in the middle of a forest, the world will make a beaten path to his door. That is my idea about seeing people get along. It is just a question of how good they are and how honest they are, and how industrious they are. People hunt them up. Dr. GRIFFITH. Because of what you have just stated, because it does reflect the basic philosophy which underlies our opposition to the bill, may I say this: That so long as we consider people as groups, or minorities, and not simply as individuals, as human beings, so long we are going to have the problems which legislation such a this tries to meet but which legislation never will meet. Mr. JENNINGS. How far would you get by enacting a statute, enacting into statute the Golden Rule, and the Sermon on the Mount? It would never have the appeal it has now. If you embodied them under a statute and undertook to enforce them, what appeal would they have? You cannot legislate good will into people's hearts. Dr. GRIFFITH. Some of this legislation would apparently make it mandatory to love they neighbor as thyself. That is a thought we ought to all have as Americans, but I do not think we ought to do so because the Federal Government tells us to. Mr. JENNINGS. Let me give you the finest example of good neighborliness, the Golden Rule in action. There was a man in west Tennessee named Emerson Etheridge, a marvelous orator. At the close of the Civil War, he was looked at askance and ostracized, in a way, by a lot of his fellow citizens because he was outstanding in his championship of the rights of the freed former slaves. He came up to the town where I lived in a section of east Tennessee where there were but few slaves and people all went in the Union Army except one great uncle, and he waited until a bunch of Rebels came along and he went with them because he soldiered with them in the Mexican War and wanted to fight alongside the Southerners; all the brothers were in the Union Army. This man Etheridge came up there, this great orator, to make an oration at the laying of the cornerstone of the courthouse. The old courthouse was burned. And he referred to the fact that he had been ostracized, so to speak, by many of his fellow citizens down there in the section of Tennessee where he lived. He said in reply to that, reference to his championship of the rights of the colored people, "When God Almighty stamped in the face of a fellow human being the image of immortality, I hale him as a brother." Now, with that spirit among all races, you will get that spirit of good will, that spirit of the Golden Rule, that philosophy of human life expressed in the greatest sermon ever preached that would ameliorate these conditions and then through the processes of education, applied Christianity and evolution, you will get away from these embitterments and strife that a lot of people thrive on, make a living out of it, just like the witches that stood around the cauldron in Macbeth-want to raise hell, and brew a broth that will raise hell on earth. That is my idea about it; I may be wrong. Just my homemade philosophy on how to get along with your fellow man. Dr. GRIFFITH. You have said much better than I was able to say what was in my own heart. I think that legislation such as this will defeat that purpose, and I think that the only way it can be achieved is by the infection of the attitude that you have expressed, which I wish were shared by every American. Mr. BYRNE. We thank you, Dr. Griffith. Mr. KEATING. May I ask one question to be sure that I understand the position of the witness? Do I understand that you dispute the language in lines 10 to 12 of page 3, that it is the national policy to protect the right of the individual to be free from discrimination based upon race, color, religion, or national origin? Dr. GRIFFITH. Yes, sir; for the reasons stated in my prepared statement, and please do not draw your conclusion as to the validity of what I say to you now without having read it. Mr. BYRNE. That is all right. Is there anyone else now that wishes to testify at this time? (The following statements were submitted for the record:) STATEMENT OF REPRESENTATIVE HELEN GAHAGAN DOUGLAS ON ANTILYNCHING BILL H. R. 795 AND OTHER BILLS PERTAINING TO ANTILYNCHING Mr. Chairman, I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before this committee to speak in favor of a strong antilynch bill. In the last few years, with the number of lynchings diminishing—whether through the threat of Federal legislation or the increasing public disapproval and abhorrence-we have been lulled into a false sense of security. That sense of security must have been rudely shaken by what happened in Birmingham, Ala., during this very month in which this committee has been holding hearings on antilynching legislation. In the last 3 weeks, the newspapers all over the country have been filled with headlines that cause one's hair to stand on end: "Hooded Men Slug Woman, Burn Crosses"; "Masked Mob Beats Miner in Fourth Alabama Attack"; "Hooded Mob Prowls in Alabama"; "Hocds Flogged Them, Women Say"; "Five Alabama Investigators Join Search for Men Who Hit Birmingham Woman"; "Alabama Mother of Five Told Klan Is Coming to See You." Now, mind you, this is mob violence not against a minority because of dark skin-in most cases the victims happened to be white. It is not against men alone-women, including a grandmother, were flogged and intimidated. It is not against strong able-bodied persons-a crippled miner was dragged from his home. This is mob violence against any person or persons, any minority who happens to offend the majority for any reason whatever. It is an attempt on the part of the majority to inflict its will on a minority through the weapon of intimidation. That is the ever-increasing danger to our democracy. The increase in Klan activity in the last few months has grown to such proportions that the Washington Times-Herald on June 2, 1949, was moved to write one of the strongest editorials on lynching that I have read-"It's Murder": "Lynchers are worse murderers than anyone they ever shoot, burn, drown, or hang-because they not only murder a man, they murder the law, without which none of us can live together in peace. * "So far, southerners have fought successfully to prevent Federal anti-lynch and civil-rights measures from being passed. They have some reason on their side, and there are many nonsoutherners who agree with them that the Central Government should be kept out of State affairs as much as possible. "But this country-North and West and good citizens of the South, too-will not forever stand for the murder called lynching." I would like, at this point, to include my testimony of last year. "Where a society permits private and arbitrary violence to be done to its members, its own integrity is inevitably corrupted. It cannot permit human beings to be imprisoned or killed in the absence of due process of law without degrading its entire fabric." (From the report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights.) I hope this committee will report favorably legislation to strengthen the hand of the Federal Government in the protection of civil liberties. The President, in his statement accompanying his Executive order, December 5, 1946, stated: "The preservation of civil liberties is a duty of every government-State, Federal, and local. Wherever the law-enforcement measures and the authority of Federal, State, and local governments are inadequate to discharge this primary function of government, these measures and this authority should be strengthened and improved. "The constitutional guaranties of individual liberties and of equal protection under the laws clearly place on the Federal Government the duty to act when State or local authorities abridge or fail to protect these constitutional rights. "Yet in its discharge of the obligations placed on it by the Constitution, the Federal Government is hampered by inadequate civil-rights statutes. tection of our democratic institutions and the enjoyment by the people of their rights under the Constitution require that these weak and inadequate statutes should be expanded and improved. We must provide the Department of Justice with the tools to do the job." The pro In the Seventy-ninth Congress, I introduced a Federal antilynching bill. On May 26, 1947, I introduced H. R. 3618, a Federal antilynching bill. On January 5, 1949, I introduced H. R. 795, which, if passed, will permit the Federal Government to aid the States in the complete suppression of mob violence. The principal provisions of my bill are briefly these: 1. The right to be free of lynching is declared to be a right of American citizenship. 2. Lynching is any violence to person or property by a mob (an assemblage of two or more persons), (a) because of the race, color, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, or language of the victim, or because (b) the victim was suspected, accused, or convicted of a criminal offense. 3. Any violence by a lynch mob shall constitute a lynching. The victim does not have to die in order to be "lynched" within the meaning of the bill. Any injury is sufficient. 4. Members of the lynch mob, or any person who aids or incites the mob, are made punishable by a maximum imprisonment of 20 years or a maximum fine of $10,000, or both. 5. Dereliction on the part of State officers charged with responsibility of protecting the victim or apprehending the lynchers is made punishable by a maximum imprisonment of 5 years or a maximum fine of $5,000 or both. 6. Every governmental subdivision of the State which willfully or negligently permits an individual to be seized, abducted, and lynched is made liable to the lynched, if he lives, for monetary compensation for injury of $2,000 to $10,000, or, if he is killed, to his next of kin. 7 All criminal prosecutions under the act would be brought in a Federal district court. Since 1882, there have been 4,718 known lynchings. Persons have been lynched for nearly every reason. The offense of victims has ranged from the alleged commission of criminal acts to the failure to call another "mister." Persons have been lynched for no reason other than they were members of unpopular races, or held or advocated beliefs or creeds unpopular in the immediate community. The bodies of these hapless victims have been subjected to every conceivable kind and manner of torture and mutilation. Lynching is usually associated exclusively with the Negro and thought of as occurring only in Southern States. This is not the case. There have been lynchings of the white man as well as the Negro. |