The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-12-30
REAPP0RT|ONMENT
 HEARINGS STARTED
 BEFORE COMMITTEE
Negro Society in Efforts to Cut South'S Representation in Congress Has First
 Inning
By Associated Press

Washington, December 29. -Representa- tivest of the Society for the Advance ment of Colored People asked Congress today to cut down the representation from the south in the House on the al- legcd ground that southern election laws are so administered as to prevent negroes voting
 Appearing before the House committee considering congressional reapportion- ment, they declared the laws of the southern states were SC worded as to comply with the federal constitution anu the fourteenth and fifteenth amend ments, but ii their administration ue- Fgrocs wcrs i;ePt from the ballot box. { Southern members of Congress denied these statements and dcclarcr Iaws were made and administered in the south with out regard te race. cooi or previous conditions of sery1tude' h those cases iif-aslhich tiaere were complaints they said. the negroes should take the all legged discrlminations to the courts and rot to Congress. A whole people should not be punished, they asserted. because perhaps in one or two Instances there were complaints.
 TEXAN ANGERED
 Representative Bee democrat. Texas, declared he was tired of being "in- sulted' on "hearsay" reports, and that the courts. and not Congress, were the proper place for this matter Repre- sentative Aswell, Louisiana, declared no discrimination was practiced in the south, and Representative Larsen, democrat, Georgia sad 1885 negroes were regis farA h, h l. republican state ticket in the November election in Georgia. he said
 One spectator during the testimony of William Pic'lens, field secretary of the National Association for the Advance ment of Colored People, insisted on get ting into the discussion and was finally told by Representative Siegel republican, New York. Hartman of the committee, that he woull have to sit down and Keep quiet or leave the room Pickens had stated that one white man in Virginia had been the subject of discrimination because he was a republican" but on being pr sssed for the name of the man and the town by Chairman Siegel Rd- mitted his statement was based on hear say" reports.
 KU-FLUX INJECTED \
 Negro women in Columbia, s. C.. were denied the right to register and some of them were disqualified under the edl caticnal clause of the state constitution, pickens told the committee. Thrty-two of these women have begun hearings against the registration officials in the courts, he said
 Walter r. White, assistant secretary of the assocation, charged that several thousand negroes had been prevented voting In Jacksonville, Fla. although they were qualified He declared that l,oo0 members of 'the Ku-Klux Kan had paraded inc streets there on the Sat urday night preceding the election in an attempt to terrify the negroes and keeI them away rom the polls He cited othef instances of alleged discrimination h Florida and said they had been reported to the department of justice.
 Southern members of the committee asked the witnesses why they had not made investigations into the situation in the northern states also, Instead of con flning themselves to the south.
 The hearings will be resumed to- morrow.