have prepared either. I think it should be given a lot of thought by the committee.

Mr. MICHENER. Of course, in the incident I related, the pickets insisted they were entitled to the protection of the law, in engaging in what they called lawful picketing and the local officers did not give it to them. Others insisted they were entitled to run their own community without outside strikers coming in and closing their factories, and that they did not get proper protection from the officers in doing what they were entitled to do under the Constitution and the law. The CHAIRMAN. Are there any other questions?

(No response.)

The CHAIRMAN. I believe Mr. Hand from New Jersey is here. If you have a brief statement you would like to file, we would be glad to hear from you.

STATEMENT OF HON. T. MILLET HAND, REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

Mr. HAND. I will try to make it very brief, Mr. Chairman, because an extended statement is not necessary. My position on legislation of this character is reasonably well known. I represent the Second Congressional District of New Jersey, which contains very large groups of minorities, so that all of my life I have been concerned with what I conceive to be the necessity for strentghening laws generally with respect to the civil rights of minorities."

It goes without saying that I am strongly in favor of the so-called antilynching bill. I comment that it is a strange thing in our state of civilization that the Congressmen of this country should have to be giving consideration to the adequacy of laws and their enforcement against the crime of murder.

I suppose the only objection that can possibly be made is the technical objection that there may be some question of the constitutionality of legislation of this character because of its invasion of the rights of the States, which rights we all ought to be very zealous to enforce, of course. That goes without saying. I would not be prepared to argue this extensively but it seems to me that the bill is a constitutional exercise of the powers of the Federal Government.

I think I should also say that the sponsor of the bill, my distinguished friend and colleague of New Jersey, is a lawyer of excellent judgment and ability and I doubt he would have drawn the bill unless he were convinced of the constitutionality.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. HAND. I hope this bill will be passed by this committee and passed by Congress and will be the forerunner of other bills which appear to me to be equally necessary. For example, the anti-poll-tax bill, anti-poll-tax legislation pending and the Fair Employment Practices Commission legislation, and in general all of the matters cited by the President in his address in connection with the report of the President's Committee on Civil Rights.

It is always a pleasure for me as a Republican to agree with the President of the United States, which I do in this case.

I ask for your permission to revise my remarks if it is necessary. The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. CRAVENS. Have you ever had a lynching in New Jersey? Mr. HAND. No, sir; I am glad to say we have not. But we do have problems in connection with civil rights of minorities, and particularly in our district.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Hand. We will now hear from Mr. Clason.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES R. CLASON, REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS

Mr. CLASON. Mr. Chairman and members of the Judiciary Committee, I am appreciative of the opportunity to appear before the great Committee on the Judiciary in support of my bill, H. R. 57, to provide better assurance of the protection of persons within the several States from mob violence and lynching, and for other purposes. The title of my bill expresses its purpose as clearly as any statement at length might do.

Like other bills which I have offered in the past, it provides that three or more persons, who attempt to exercise by physical violence, and without authority of law, any power of correction or punishment over any citizen in the custody of an officer, shall constitute a mob. Any violence by such a mob, causing serious injury to the victim, shall constitute lynching. In such a case, any officer of a State failing to act diligently to protect the victim or to apprehend members of the mob shall be guilty of a felony. The Federal Government, through the Attorney General, shall also investigate. Liability for damages to the victim or his next of kin is also provided.

I am happy to note that there has been a substantial decrease in the number of such crimes in the last few years. However, I feel that such crimes are so greatly abhorred by the vast majority of the American people that legislation such as is contained in H. R. 57 should be upon the Federal statute books. It would act as a further deterrent against any group of men who might otherwise feel that they could flout the law because of known local conditions.

Iwish to assure the members of your committee that I shall support and vote for any adequate measure reported favorably by you.

The CHAIRMAN. May I say at this time I cannot help but note with appreciation the presence of my old subcommittee chairman, Mr. Gwynne, of Iowa, whose interest in this subject is well known to all of us.

I should also like to say, supplementing the remarks that Chairman Michener made a few moments ago, that this subject has been of great interest to the members of this committee for a long time, and that action was not taken on it before this time by this committee because it was hoped we could have it passed first by the Senate and then acted upon quickly by the House.

At the beginning of this session, when it was learned that the Senate leadership planned to push the bill for action in that body, machinery was immediately started for prompt consideration of the legislation in the House, and the chairman authorized this subcommittee to make arrangements as quickly as possible for the hearings.

If there are any other Members of the House who would like to file statements, the committee would be very glad to include them in the record at the conclusion of the hearings today.

And I ask the clerk to let Members of Congress sponsoring bills know that they have that privilege.

The committee will now be very glad indeed to hear from Mr. Walter White, who is the executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

STATEMENT OF WALTER WHITE, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Chairman, my name is Walter White. I am executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

I want to express my appreciation to the committee for the privilege of appearing before it.

This is the first time, as far as I know, in a great many years that the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives has granted a hearing on antilynching legislation, previous members or chairmen of the committee having declined to grant hearings, necessitating the use of the discharge petition in order to bring antilynching legislation to the floor of the House.

We are delighted that we are able through proper procedure of the Congress to present testimony and be given the opportunity to be heard.

I shall make my remarks very brief, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, because as has has been said by Mrs. Douglas, what we need now is not speeches, but action.

Everybody knows about the crime of lynching.

I want to address myself very briefly, therefore, to one or two observations. First I would like to take up the question that has been raised by some critics of antilynching legislation who contend that lynching is nothing but murder and should be punished by the States themselves because it is a State responsibility and not a Federal one.

It is our contention that lynching is murder and more than murder; because when a lynching mob goes out to take vengeance on a person of different color, race, creed, or place of birth, he not only takes upon himself vengeance in the way of mob murder but also arrogates to himself the functions of judge, jury, and executioner.

So, in so doing, he lynches the law itself.

Second, there is the contention by some opponents of this legislation that such a law is no longer necessary because of the decrease in the number of lynchings.

I believe that to be very fallacious reasoning. As long as there is a single lynching anywhere in the United States, the whole system of Government on which our whole civilization is based is thereby endangered.

Lynchings have diminished primarily because of the continuing campaign for Federal legislation against the crime, and therefore there is a fear of the Federal Government, which has caused this diminution in the number of lynchings.

It is my measured conviction that if there were not this possible passing of Federal antilynching legislation, we should see immediately an increase in the number of mob murders, particularly if the present spiral of inflation bursts forth into a depression and creates a keen competition for jobs.

There is this statement I should like to make: That the publicity that has been given to the crime of lynching-the growing condemnation of that evil, not only in the North but in the South as well, has resulted in lynchings going on underground.

During 1946, for example, there were numerous cases which are now under investigation-some by the FBI and some by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and some by other organizations of killing of individuals, particularly in the South, where little publicity was given to the murders but where there is considerable reason for belief that they were lynchings which were deliberately kept out of the press so there would be no condemnation of the communities in which they took place.

We also saw immediately after the end of the war a determination on the part of certain people in the South to utilize terrorism of the lynching mob to intimidate Negro veterans returning from overseas, in order to convince them that the fight they had helped make for the democratic process must not under any circumstances be construed as changing their status as inferior persons.

Mr. CRAVENS. Where did that occur?

Mr. WHITE. I am just about to give you some instances of that, sir.

I would like to call attention to the date, August 18, 1946, in Minden, La., when John C. Jones, an honorably discharged Negro veteran of the European theater of operations, who had risen to the rank of corporal and returned to his home and family in Minden, La.

There was a dispute between him and a local white man who wanted a war souvenir which Jones had brought back. This led to feeling in the community and the story began to be spread that Jones was now a difficult and dangerous character because he refused to give up this war souvenir.

Jones and his 17-year-old nephew, who was called Sonny Boy Harris, were charged with having been seen in the late evening in the back yard of a white woman resident of Minden. They were arrested and put into jail.

The white woman in the case refused to place any charges, and said that neither Jones nor his nephew, Sonny Boy Harris, had been seen in the neighborhood; that she had no complaint against them whatsoever.

They were kept in jail for several days and then one night they were told after darkness had fallen that they were now free and could go.

Jones was suspicious at their releasing him at that late hour of the night and refused to leave the jail until the following morning; whereupon certain officers of the law forced him out of the jail into the hands of a lynching mob, which took him and his 17-year-old cousin to an isolated spot, beat Jones so unmercifully that he died and his eyes "popped" from his head. Then they burned his face and hands with a blowtorch to the extent that whereas Jones' skin

was light in color, it was jet black, having been charred by the blowtorch.

The 17-year-old boy, Sonny Boy Harris, was left for dead. They thought they had killed him, but fortunately he had survived. He made his way to his father's house, who immediately got him out of the community because he knew the boy would be immediately killed if the mob discovered he was alive.

We were requested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice to locate Sonny Boy Harris; which we did. I personally brought this boy down to Washington and turned him over to the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice did everything within its power to obtain indictments and to secure convictions, but such is the weakness of the present law that despite all of the efforts the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation put forth they were unable to obtain convictions, which is ample proof in my opinion of the necessity of the Federal antilynching law, like H. R. 3488.

Mr. CRAVENS. What evidence would they have had if they had the law?

Mr. WHITE. They would have had more law from which they could have drawn a jury from a greater area and had the greater authority of the Federal Government as provided in the Case bill.

Mr. CRAVENS. Well, you said you had the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice working on it and they were unable to make a case.

Mr. WHITE. No; it was not that they were unable to make a case. The Federal Bureau of Investigation got the evidence. Then because of the weakness of the present Federal laws the Department of Justice was unable to obtain convictions.

Mr. CRAVENS. You mean if they had this antilynching law they could have secured convictions?

Mr. WHITE. They could have, in my opinion.

Another instance similar to this is that of Maceo Snipes, veteran, on July 2, 1946, who was lynched by a mob because he dared to vote-his constitutional right which he sought to exercise.

Or again the case of George Dorsey, one of the victims of the quadruple lynching in Walton County, Ga.

Mr. CRAVENS. Where was the one you just referred to about the vote?

Mr. WHITE. Taylor County, Ga. July 20, 1946.
Mr. CRAVENS. And the other was Minden, La.?
Mr. WHITE. Yes.

One of the four victims of a quadruple lynching in Walton County, Ga., July 25, 1946, was George Dorsey, also a Negro veteran, who was lynched because he resented the unwelcome attentions paid to his wife by a local white man. In that instance the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Governor Arnall and Major Spence, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as Department of Justice, did a most excellent and thorough job of investigating the lynchings, as well as the NAACP.

The lynchers are known. They are walking free throughout Walton County, Ga., today but because of the weakness of the law they were unable to get indictments of these men and the State courts were unwilling and unable to do what they should have done.