Wash. Post - 5/28/63 It is a testimonial to the forthrightness and efficacy with which the Civil Rights Commission has carried forward its different mission that there are those on Capitol Hill who would like to demolish it. They would also, for the most part, like to demolish civil rights. The Commission has operated in this area as an indefatigable jogger of the national conscience and as a trail blazer for those who would completely eradicate from American life every form of discrimination based upon race or ancestry. The Commission's lease on life comes to an end on September 30. It has been a short lease be cause Congress has been unwilling to grant it extensions for more than two years at a time since it was established in 1957. President Kennedy has now asked for an extension of at least four years. It is perfectly plain that the Commission will be needed for a great deal longer than this; it ought to be given permanent status to help it hold a staff together and do its work efficiently. Under extremely tough-minded and realistic Commissioners and a staff director, Berl Bernhard, of exceptional drive and devotion, the Civil Rights Commission has won the confidence of Negro leaders and has rendered invaluable public service in exposing the inequities to which Negroes are subjected. It has a vital job to perform in coordinating the civil rights efforts of all organizations, public and private, Federal and local, and in focusing attention on dangerous trouble spots. The most important work of this valuable agency lies ahead of it. GREENSBORO DAILY NEWS Published Every Day in the Year by Greensboro News Company H. W. KENDALL ........ Page 8, Sec. A C. O. JEFFRESS, President Associate Editor Editor MRS. MARY J. McLEAN ............ Secretary GEORGE W. LEMONS Advertising Director Executive Editor E. D. NICHOLS Circulation Manager THURSDAY, MAY 23, 1963 .... Prolong The Civil Rights Commission As expected, the U. S. Civil Rights Commission's April suggestion that President Kennedy consider withholding federal funds from Mississippi is being turned, in a Senate subcommittee hearing, against the Commission's very life. The commission, established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, expires this fall. Hearings on a bill to prolong its life four years (S-1117) opened this week in Senator Ervin's subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thus a North Carolina senator is a leading player in the drama. The first day's hearings witnessed an exchange between Senator Ervin, who called the commission's. April proposal "so unwise that it is almost beyond comprehension," and Senator Philip Hart of Michigan, who heartily approved of economic penalties for Mississippi. Senator Ervin would abolish the commission; Senator Hart would savor its every whim, however misguided. We think both positions are extreme and mistaken. Senator Ervin is certainly correct in saying that the Civil Rights Commission blundered when it sought economic reprisals for Mississippi. But it does not follow that a single lapse of decorum is any reason for abolishing what the senator calls "a life already too long." Senator Ervin, indeed, knows that all government agencies blunder occasionally; he knows, also, that the punishment should fit the crime. And we hope he realizes that abolition of the commission is not a fitting punishment. After all, it is not as if the Civil Rights Commission could penalize a stubborn state on its own motion. It has the power of recommendation and report alone; and the Mississippi recommendation, as a matter of fact, got very short shrift from both Mr. Kennedy and the Justice Department. Against April's windmill-tipping blunder, which was politically, economically and morally unthinkable, one must balance the service the commission renders through its state advisory committees. These committees have conscientiously laid bare the failures of the laws to protect citizens equally. Notable in this respect is the work of the North Carolina advisory group under Greensboro's McNeill Smith, which the assistant U. S. attorney general recently designated the best in any of the 50 states. In North Carolina, of all places, the Civil Rights Commission cannot be thought of as a loathesome abstraction, working at great distance from local affairs. It should be seen merely as the national publicity agent of a network of intensely local bodies, which in turn: work to reveal areas in which "equal protection of the laws" can be improved in and by the states themselves. It might be called, with no great stretch of the imagination, the best friend states' rights have. For it is showing those states which are open-minded enough to listen where they can themselves improve their administration of laws. If Senator Ervin and other Southerners in the Senate seize at straws to try to kill off the Civil Rights Commission, it will be a sad end to a good story. The good story is that states like North Carolina can and will take mature and searching looks at their own shortcomings in justice, and throw remedial light on those shortcomings. To tear down this apparatus when its work has barely begun will be a shortsighted confession that North Carolina (and the other Southern states) can't j stand the glare. We don't know about Mississippi and Alabama; but we do know this is not true of North Carolina. Mercy, senatorial executioners. N. Y. Times - 5/27/63 The Civil Rights Commission has served as "a national civil rights clearing house providing information, advice and technical assistance to. any requesting agency, private or public." The definition of its task is President Kennedy's. For more than five years the commission has fulfilled its statutory mandate: investigating * deprivations of voting rights and denials of equal protection of the laws in education, em-; ployment, housing and the administration of justice. Now the Administration asks that the commission's life be extended four years. We. agree with some Republicans who would make it a permanent agency. The Civil Rights Commission deserves a separate, and at least equal, standing in the Federal Government with the Civil Rights Division of i the Justice Department. One is engaged in major and continuing studies with valid powers of investigation and persuasion; the other is charged with enforcement of the law. Both can and should work hand-in-hand to carry out the decisions of the courts. Both are essential in the struggles-moral and legal-that still lie ahead in the field of civil rights. |