Senator DOUGLAS. We have had quite a number. I am not defending that primarily.

Senator ERVIN. I just want to say, Senator, in these 4 years there have been probably 6,000 crimes of violence in Chicago.

Senator DOUGLAS. Oh, no. There is an article

Senator ERVIN. You think the estimate is too high?

Senator DOUGLAS. There is an article in the Wall Street Journal which is a very conservative paper which I just put into the record a few minutes ago indicating the tremendous improvement which has occurred in Chicago under Mayor Daley and under the superintendent of police. Now, it is perfectly true that we have had and still have more crime than we would like. Part of it comes out of the very slum conditions which we are trying to remedy, because the program of reducing crime is not merely one of repression or of sentencing. also trying to eliminate the moral and economic cesspools from which criminals are made. I will say this, Mr. Chairman. If you will submit a list of murders in Chicago, I will submit a list of crimes, civil right crimes in the South. I have refrained from doing that. But if we get into a challenge of comparative instances, I will match it. Senator ERVIN. Senator, I am not trying to cast any aspersions on Chicago.

Senator DOUGLAS. Well, I thought that to be the import of what you said.

Senator ERVIN. I will frankly concede that in that Garden of Eden known as North Carolina that there were far more than 500 cases of crimes of violence between January 8, 1961, and May 1965. Now there is a provision in this bill that would apply the Federal FEPC to State officials, particularly those concerned with the administration of justice. How would you go about telling the people of the State whom they had to have for public officials, especially those charged with the administration of justice?

Senator DOUGLAS. Not every official is elected. They have bailiffs, judges have bailiffs, clerks of courts.

Senator ERVIN. Yes, sir; but all the bailiff does is to cry and pray for the court, and all the clerks do is record his records.

Senator DOUGLAS. They can do a great deal in setting the

Senator ERVIN. The people who administer justice are the judges. Senator DOUGLAS. I notice very gentlemanly young men arranged behind you and I am sure they add greatly to the dignity and genteel bearing of this committee room. The same is true with the bailiffs and clerks.

Senator ERVIN. Well, these young men who sit behind me are more handsome than most bailiffs and clerks that I have seen, but the administration of justice is fundamentally

Senator DOUGLAS. And what about police officers?

Senator ERVIN (continuing). Through the judges.

Senator DOUGLAS. What about police officers? They are appointed, not elected. Very frequently they are biased.

Senator ERVIN. Police officers do not administer justice. They try to enforce and keep peace and arrest people for violating the law. I would just like to know as a practical matter how you can make it work.

Senator DOUGLAS. They are informal agents of justice. I want to come back, however, to a point you made. I think you have given

very eloquent testimony really in favor of my measure. You spoke of murders in Chicago. We have laws against murders in Chicago. They don't work perfectly but they work much better than if we did not have laws. You have racial violence in the South but you don't have effective laws against this, so if we have laws against murders we should also have laws against violence in civil rights matters. I want to thank you for the very eloquent argument you have made in defense of my measure.

Senator ERVIN. We have laws against racial violence already so far as that is concerned but I would say there are no laws in any area of the country which operate perfectly. There are many crimes that go unpunished, many of them in all areas. But I am intrigued by this suggestion about a Federal FEPC to control the officials who administer justice in the States. How can that be done without destroying the States as effective entities of government, if the Federal Government is going to tell them who their officials are going to be. Senator DOUGLAS. What we are trying to do is to prevent the nonelected officials from being too heavily weighted against civil rights workers and participants. If you have satisfactory language to clear up any of the structural defects, I would welcome it. I don't pretend that I am a perfect draftsman.

Senator ERVIN. I believe, as Chief Justice Chase said in Teras v. White, that the Constitution in all its provisions looks toward an indestructible union composed of indestructible States and when the Federal Government sets up an FEPC commission to tell the States who their officials who administer justice are to be, you are destroying the States, and I am not willing to draft language that would accomplish that.

Senator DOUGLAS. I was primarily speaking of police officials, Bull Connor, Jim Clark.

Senator ERVIN. I believe Bull Connor was voted out by the people of Birmingham.

Senator DOUGLAS. Yes, that was fine, that is fine, but there are others who are not. Yes, I welcome the defeat of Bull Connor. Also, I hope for the defeat of Jim Clark. I am afraid what I say will support both of them politically.

Senator ERVIN. I notice that S. 2923 proposes to establish civil indemnification awards?

Senator DOUGLAS. Yes. This is a pioneer proposal.

Senator ERVIN. But the bill does not propose to allow those rewards to be made in courts of justice, but it proposes to set up some kind of a board comparable to the Commission on Civil Rights. Senator DOUGLAS. If you would accept this provision I would accept an amendment to provide that the amount should be determined in the courts. May we get your acceptance of that proposal?

Senator ERVIN. No, sir; I do not accept that because I don't believe in inflicting the sins of the guilty upon the innocent, and that is exactly what this civil indemnification would do. I believe in punishing the guilty and not the innocent.

Senator DOUGLAS. Oh, well, this would not punish the innocent. Senator ERVIN. Oh, yes.

Senator DOUGLAS. This would help to indemnify

Senator ERVIN. The innocent taxpayers would pay the damage.

Senator DOUGLAS. Oh, I see.

Senator ERVIN. They could all be at home praying on their knees that there never be another act of violence done in the history of the world, and some twisted brain could commit a crime, and then they would have to pay for the crime.

Senator DOUGLAS. Well, you know, Mr. Chairman

Senator ERVIN. Even if they are doing as they did down in Mississippi where they had deputy sheriffs around trying to protect a man. Senator DOUGLAS. Particularly after the atrocities committed by Hitler, who burned to death, or gassed to death 6 or 7 million people, predominantly Jews, but also slaves. I have talked to a great many Germans on my trips to Germany, and they all denied knowing anything about it, but I think they are guilty of the crime of indifference, and I have come to believe that indifference and not being concerned about the evils that go on about them is a crime and that we do bear some responsibility, even if we are not active participants in injustice, the fact that we allow injustice to continue without protesting against it makes us liable in a sense.

And I think it is this feeling which accounts for a great many people who have not themselves been offended by anti-Negro, antiracial acts, feeling that they owed it to society to protest. Now a great many people say they are just troublemakers, but I think in the majority of instances, they have stirring in them the feeling that they cannot be indifferent to what is going on, that we are our brother's keeper, as Jesus said, and I think we bear some responsibility for what happens to innocent people, an innocent advocate of civil rights who is beaten up or killed and leaving his family destitute. I do not think that even enough justice is done by punishing his murderer, although even that is very difficult now.

But this underlies all problems, Mr. Chairman. It is not peculiar to civil rights. This is a pioneer proposal. If it is too far in advance of the times, it can be stricken. But it is something I think that society must face.

Senator ERVIN. Well, it certainly visits the sins of the guilty upon the innocent. There is no way to erase that proposition.

Now in those cases tried in Federal courts under the provisions of S. 2923, who do you contemplate is going to prosecute?

Senator DOUGLAS. In the Federal court I would think the U.S. attorney.

Senator ERVIN. The U.S. attorney?

Senator DOUGLAS. I would think so.

Oh, wait a minute, you might prosecute against the person who committed the attack upon a civil rights worker. You mean where the civil rights worker himself was being accused. I think in those cases, though I am not an expert in legal procedure, that probably the local State's attorney or county attorney should have the right to prosecute.

Senator ERVIN. It seems to me sometimes that the cure is worse than the disease. You can cure a man's headache by shooting him through the head with a high-powered revolver. That will cure the headache, but destroy the man.

How can a State exist if it is deprived of the capacity to prosecute its own citizens for crimes against it in its own courts?

Senator DOUGLAS. It should not be if those courts are fair. I have tried to avoid inflammatory language, Mr. Chairman.

Let me say that I have friends who have examined cases very thoroughly involving capital offenses. I think this is true, that I have never found a case where a white man has been executed for murdering a Negro in the South. Where a Negro murders a white man, the judgment is almost invariably guilt. When a Negro murders a Negro, this is generally regarded as something outside the law which the legal authorities can more or less disregard. But if you can produce any case where a white man murdering a Negro has been condemned and executed, I will be very grateful. I have not found

any.

Senator ERVIN. Senator, I would have have to take issue on one part of your statement as far as North Carolina is concerned. I have spent about 30-odd years in the administration of justice in North Carolina as a practicing lawyer or as a judge, and I would say very few Negroes are sentenced to death or die for killing white

men.

Senator DOUGLAS. Have you ever known a white man convicted or executed for killing a Negro?

Senator ERVIN. As a matter of fact

Senator SMATHERS. I have known several in our State.
Senator DOUGLAS. I said convicted and executed.

Senator SMATHERS. But who have been sentenced to life imprisonment and have served life imprisonment.

Senator DOUGLAS. Nearly always the sentences imposed upon whites for offenses against Negroes are much less severe than the sentences imposed upon Negroes for offenses committed against whites. We know that. We can support that.

Senator SMATHERS. I do not believe that is supportable by the facts in the last 10 years. That was the case 25 years ago.

Senator DOUGLAS. Let me say this: Due to the agitation of those. of us in Congress and elsewhere who favor civil rights, there has been a big improvement in the South in the last 10 years, and in the North

too.

Let me also say to my good friend from North Carolina that we have always regarded North Carolina as the best State in the South. Senator ERVIN. Well, thank you.

Senator DOUGLAS. We regard North Carolina as the Wisconsin or Illinois of the South. We commend you. May you improve this virtue.

Senator SMATHERS. I am not going to object to that because I come from North Carolina originally.

Senator ERVIN. I thank you for paying that tribute to North Carolina, but I am not going to concede that you and others who advocate civil rights are responsible for all the improvements going on in North Carolina.

Senator DOUGLAS. No, not for all. You know the proddings of the North have helped the conscience of the South.

Senator ERVIN. Well, is it not like looking after another man's conscience?

Senator DOUGLAS. Oh, yes, that is true. It is much easier to take care of others. This is really an attempt, you know, on our part to reform our practices, and I really thought you would join in this. is much more applicable to the North than to the South.

This

I have been accused of serving political ends in advocating civil rights in the South. Believe me, this is not a political advantage to me in the North, Mr. Chairman, in the slightest bit. But we would like to reform too. Do not deny us the beneficent things which we have done for the South.

Senator ERVIN. Well, Senator, I sort of envy people who worry about the South from a long distance, because I wish I worried about the sins of Chicago rather than those around me.

Senator DOUGLAS. That is exactly what I thought you were doing, worrying more about Chicago than the South. I am worrying about

them both.

Senator ERVIN. Now I noticed in the State of Mississippi a short time ago an all-white jury convicted a white Mississippian for the rape of a 15-year-old Negro girl and sentenced him to the penitentiary for life.

Senator DOUGLAS. What if a Negro had done that to a white girl? What would have happened? Would he have been sentenced to life or would he have been executed?

Senator ERVIN. I would have to wait and see.

Senator DOUGLAS. What would have happened, there would have been a sentence of death.

Senator SMATHERS. I am beginning to worry about what happens under that kind of a situation in the District of Columbia, when a colored boy rapes a white girl. It seems to me that we do not see the equal application in vigor in bringing about justice in such a situation. It has gotten to the point that if you happen to be a minority group that perpetrates this kind of an act in certain areas of the country, you do not have the same vigor of prosecution as though you were a white Protestant or something like that.

Senator DOUGLAS. May I say I happen to be a white Protestant myself. Let me say that I am not asking that special privileges be given to the Negro race or to the Latin Americans in our country, but that equal justice be granted to them. That is all.

If a Negro commits an offense, he should be punished, although we should realize the circumstances behind it. Very frequently people you know go in the wrong direction because of lack of advantages and because of circumstances under which they were brought up. It is not wholly their fault. I think all this means that we should introduce a certain amount of compassion in our judgments.

Senator ERVIN. The Chair is glad to have Senator Smathers with us. today. This is the first day he has sat as a member of this subcommittee since he was assigned to membership on it.

Do you have any questions of the Senator at this time?
Senator SMATHERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I merely want to ask one question.

On page 12, Senator Douglas, you state:

Let it be understood the adoption of fair renting or home selling does not mean the tenants or purchasers must be accepted merely because they are members of the minority race.

Senator DOUGLAS. That is correct.

Senator SMATHERS (continuing):

If they are of bad moral character their applications for renting or purchasing a house or apartment may be rejected, just as firms may refuse to hire incompetent