Evening star., 1948-02-29
Dangerous Legislation

Favorable committee actlon IN the
Senate on bill to outlaw the. poll tax
and in the House on an antilynching bill
marks the first step in the process of
enacting the substance of the civil rights
program advocated by President Truman.
It is dangerous step, and if it should be
followed up by final enactment of the
program the stage will be set for develop
ments that can be extremely serious.
There is no valid excuse for the passage
of these bills, and If they become law
there will be ample justification for the
inference that the motivation behind en-
actment was on low political level.
The poll tax is on its way out in the
South. It is effective today only in seven
Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama.
: Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and
Texas. Initial steps have been taken to
give the people of Virginia opportunity to
vote on repeal of the poll tax, and there is
strong sentiment against it in Tennessee.
Much the same thing is true of lynch
ing. There were 231 lynchings in 1892.
But the total has been going down steadily,
with the result that there was one lynching
in 1945, six Gncluding the mass murder of
four Negroes in Georgia) in 1946, and again
only one in 1947. Thus, while other crimes
of violence, including murders not classed
as lynchings, have been increasing in num-
ber, the crime of lynching is approaching
the vanishing point.
One objection to these bills Is that, in
certain aspects at least, they probably are
unconstitutional. There are those who
are Indifferent to this, who think the
Constitution can and should be stretched
to cover almost any situation. But even
these people should hesitate bit and
reflect on the implications of the state
ment made by Senator Morse in connec-
ton with his lynch bill: II think we are
entering a field of constitutional law that
requires giving to the Constitution appli-
cations not previously given"
When the Constitution was adopted 1t
was supposed that only limited powers
were being conferred on the Federal Gov
ernment, and that all other powers were
reserved to the States. But over the years
the Congress by legislation and the courts
by tortured process of Interpretation
have been steadily enlarging the Federal
powers at the expense of the State powers.
The so-called civil rights program, if en-
acted and sustained would be another big
push in this direction.
Aside from the constitutional aspects
however, these bills are dangerous because
they would project an unsettling Federal
power into situation which is being well
handled, though not perfectly handled, by
the States. Even single lynching is one
too many. There is no reason to believe,
however, that enactment of a Federal
lynch law would end all lynchings, while
there is more than little chance that 1t
would aggravate rather than improve the
situation. And this most certainly would
be true of the Fair Employment Practices
Act if that proposal should become law.
The Southern States are making real
progress in the elimination of abuses of
civil rights. They have long way to go,
but that does not justify Federal inter-
vention which is of dubious constitution
ality and even more dubious wisdom. It
will be better If none of these measures
is passed