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University Daily Kansan
Monday, May 18, 1964
Answering Charges
Civil Rights Bill
By Robert S. Boyd
The civil rights bill now grinding through Congress has given rise to widespread fears and misunderstandings.
Congressional mail shows that many whites-Northern as well as Southern-believe the bill will take away some of their rights for the benefit of Negroes.
An intensive publicity campaign by anti-civil rights forces, partly aimed at earlier, more drastic versions of the bill now in the Senate, has added to these fears.
The questions that follow are among the most common in the minds of many citizens.
Each question is based on a charge made in a newspaper ad, brochure or statement put out by opponents of the bill, notably the co-ordinating committee for fundamental American freedoms and its legal expert, Mississippi lawyer John Satterfield, a former president of the American Bar Association. The committee gets most of its money from Mississippi.
The replies represent the position of the Department of Justice.
The explanatory material that follows is based on interviews with Satterfield and civil rights experts in the Justice Department.
Q. Will the civil rights bill destroy your right to sell or rent your home to whom you please?
A. No. The bill will have no effect on discrimination in private housing.
Explanation. The President apparently already has the power to ban racial discrimination in housing by executive order.
By such a "stroke of the pen," President John F. Kennedy 18 months ago forbade discrimination by apartment house owners and real estate developers who get Federal financing. This order has not yet been tested in the courts.
President Johnson might, if he wished, extend the order to cover private homes with FHA or VA insured mortgages.
The Justice Department says the civil rights bill adds nothing to this existing Presidential power. In fact, a sentence in the bill specifically denies that it applies to Government-insured home loans.
Opponents of the bill admit it has no direct effect on private housing. But they argue it would indirectly uphold the President's claim of authority to issue executive orders in this field.
Q. Will the bill cost you your job, your seniority or your promotion to make way for a Negro?
A. With one exception, no.
The bill forbids racial discrimination on the job, but grants Negroes no special privileges.
Explanation: White fears of being displaced by Negroes stem from the "equal employment opportunity" section of the bill.
This section requires companies and unions to treat workers of both races on the same basis.
But no "preference" is granted either race. There is no requirement that a company or a union take on a certain number of Negroes to achieve a racial "mix" or "balance."
All that is required is that an employer, or a union, not turn down an otherwise qualified man because he is a Negro.
Passing over a white man to give preference to a Negro is banned, just as is the reverse.
The exception arises in the ease of seniority—where separate white and Negro unions or separate seniority lists have been maintained.
During the process of merging the locals, a worker who was No. 75 on the all-white list, for example, might find himself No. 82 on the combined list.
Q. Will the bill permit you to be sent to jail without a trial by jury?
A. Yes, if you disobey a Federal court order directing you to comply with the law.
Explanation: With minor exceptions, the civil rights bill creates no new crimes for which you can be fined or jailed.
But it does set forth certain discriminatory acts for which a Federal judge-after a trial—can order you to cease.
Then, if you don't cease, the judge can slap you in jail without a trial by jury.
Your "crime" would not be violating the Civil Rights Act. It would be contempt of court.
But the result is the same— you're in jail.
The Justice Department points out that there never has been a right of trial by jury for criminal contempt of court. So the bill is not taking away any right you already have.
In fact, certain new safeguards are added. If you defy a court order enforcing the voting rights or public accommodations sections of the bill, you can't be jailed for more than 45 days or fined more than $300 without a jury trial.
For disobeying a court order involving the other parts of the bill, such as the fair employment section, you can be jailed indefinitely for contempt.
Q. Will the bill let you be questioned, in a secret "star chamber" proceeding, with a jail sentence hanging over you if you reveal what happened?
If the commission thinks the testimony might embarrass or incriminate someone, it can hold the hearing behind closed doors. Unauthorized disclosure of the proceedings can be punished by a $1000 fine or a year in jail.
Explanation: The bill authorizes the Civil Rights Commission to hold hearings to investigate complaints of discrimination.
A. Yes, but it's not as bad as it sounds.
The Justice Department says
this provision is not meant to hurt anybody—just to protect people from premature or unfair disclosure of unsubstantiated charges.
The secret hearings are only to gather information, since the commission has no power to make anybody do anything.
Congressional investigating committees hold such closeddoor hearings frequently.
Q. Will the bill force doctors, lawyers, barbers and small businessmen to serve Negroes even if they aren't engaged in "interstate commerce?"
A. It depends where your business is located. Sometimes the answer is yes; sometimes no.
Explanation: If you live in a community where there is a local law actually on the book requiring racial segregation, the new Federal law will apply to every business and professional man. If you serve white people in such a town, you will have to serve Negroes too.
In other communities, the rules are different.
You will have to serve all races if your place of business is located "on the premises" of an establishment, such as a hotel or theater, covered by the bill.
You will also be covered if your place of business, such as a department store, contains a restaurant or lunch counter covered by the bill.
But you are not required to serve Negroes just because your store or office is located in the same building, or the same shopping center, with a covered establishment.
A doctor or lawyer could have an office in a hotel, or upstairs over a restaurant, without coming under the law.
Q. Will the bill permit discrimination against you if you don't believe in God?
A. Yes.
Explanation: An amendment added by the House permits an employer to refuse to hire an atheist—even if he is otherwise qualified.
This amendment was added over the objections of the bill's sponsors. A Justice Department spokesman called it "foolish."
Q. Will the bill control the selection of members and guests of private clubs?
Explanation: Bona fide private clubs do not come under the provisions of this bill. There are two exceptions:
A. In most cases, no.
If the club is not really "private" but allows anybody to join for payment of a small fee, such as the Playboy clubs, it cannot discriminate against Negroes.
If a private club is located on the premises of a covered business, such as a country club connected to a public hotel, and offers its facilities to white guests of the hotel, it must also serve Negro guests.
Baltimore Sun
DIDM HERBLOCK
THE WASHINGTON FIRM
"Please Stop Please Let Me Up"
Ode to Caps and Gowns Trouping Down Th' Hill
Gimme that degree, I wanna go, go, go! Fed up with teachers, bleachers, class notes, campus votes, test tubes, classroom rubes, final exams, fine art hams, text books, book nooks, and faculty schnooks.
Wanna go to work, wife, mother or dog; gimme a paycheck, uniform, get me out of this smog. Through with learning. Wanna do, did, does, get it done. Wanna earn, not learn.
Enough o' these ideas. Wanna put me down to some practice, pleeuz.
Gotta get me out to meet 'em and greet 'em. And tell 'em and sell 'em. They don't care 'bout Pliny and Winnie. They want pounds and gallons and lumber feet. Know how to build and pave a street. Thought and told are through; bought and sold are new.
Thinkers are out; computers are in. Figure the wage with a new kind of gauge, forget the trends, intellectual bends. Run, don't walk, down the venerable Hill. Too many bennies, late-study pills.
Think? Becomes a sphinx. Egypt is done; drive is our fun. Books we'll condense and let 'em be, propped in a row above the TV. Why books when we got TV? And a degree.
Let them fix the plot, follow it through. Ugh, heap Injun, he's a schmoo. Operas of course, but soap and horse.
Culture? Well, sure, but not a big dose. Time's short; we've got to cut close.
Maybe at sixty, think and reflect. And decide on the ways that better all men. Service to men? Customers first.
India, China, spots on the sun. No import now; life has begun
India, China, spots on the sun! Does the other matter? Darn tootin' it does. It matters as much as a good home and love. Free choice is the arrow; the intellect the bow. to be used as best and as right as we know.
Got to think, chug-a-lug, think, chug-a-lug, think, chug-a-lug, to serve ourselves and the guy next doors and the Guy up above.
Kansan Editorial of May 25,1953
Dailij Hänsan
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