refusal to attempt it. I am confident that the federal district judges would exercise care and good judgment in passing on "cannot enforce" claims. The district judge could not lightly assume that the state court would shirk its responsibilities, and should remand the case to the state court unless it appeared by clear and convincing evidence that the allegations of an inability to enforce equal civil rights were true. Cf. Amsterdam, Criminal Prosecutions Affecting Federally Guaranteed Civil Rights: Federal Removal and Habeas Corpus Jurisdiction to Abort State Court Trial, 113 U. Pa. L. Rev. 793, 854-863, 911-912 (1965). A requirement that defendants seeking removal demonstrate a basis for "firm prediction" of inability to enforce equal civil rights in the state court is the only necessary consequence of the revision of 1875 which silently deleted the provision for post-trial removal from the statute. In this way, the legitimate interests of federalism which Rives sought to protect would be respected without emasculating this statute.

III.

The Court takes considerable comfort from the availability to defendants of numerous other federal remedies, such as direct review in this Court, federal habeas corpus, civil actions under 42 U. S. C. § 1983, and even federal criminal prosecutions. But it is relevant to note when these alternative remedies were conferred. The extension of the habeas corpus remedy to state prisoners was enacted in 1867 by the Thirty-ninth Congress, the same body which enacted the removal statute we here consider. 14 Stat. 385. The criminal statutes involved in our recent decisions in United States v. Price, 383 U. S. 787, and United States v. Guest, 383 U. S. 745, were first enacted in 1866 and 1870. 14 Stat. 27; 16 Stat. 141, 144. The civil remedy provided by 42 U. S. C. § 1983 was enacted in 1871. 17 Stat. 13. If any inference is to be

drawn from the existence of these coordinate remedies, it is that Congress was concerned, at the time this removal statute was passed, to protect from state court denial the equal civil rights of United States citizens. Rather than take comfort from the broad array of possible remedies, we should take instruction from it.

Moreover, the Court's many rhetorical questions respecting implementation of removal, if it were allowed, are answered in Tennessee v. Davis, 100 U. S. 257, 271– 272, a case decided the same day as Rives:

"The imaginary difficulties and incongruities supposed to be in the way of trying in the Circuit Court an indictment for an alleged offence against the peace and dignity of a State, if they were real, would be for the consideration of Congress. But they are unreal. While it is true that there is neither in sect. 643, nor in the act of which it is a re-enactment, any mode of procedure in the trial of a removed case prescribed, except that it is ordered [that] the cause when removed shall proceed as a cause originally commenced in that court, yet the mode of trial is sufficiently obvious. The circuit courts of the United States have all the appliances which are needed for the trial of any criminal case. They adopt and apply the laws of the State in criminal cases. They adopt and apply the laws of the State in civil cases, and there is no more difficulty in administering the State's criminal law. They are not foreign courts. The Constitution has made them courts within the States to administer the laws of the States in certain cases; and, so long as they keep within the jurisdiction assigned to them, their general powers are adequate to the trial of any case. The supposed anomaly of prosecuting offenders against the peace and dignity of a State, in tribunals of the general government, grows entirely out of the division of

powers between that government and the government of a State; that is, a division of sovereignty over certain matters. When this is understood (and it is time it should be), it will not appear strange that, even in cases of criminal prosecutions for alleged offences against a State, in which arises a defence under United States law, the general government should take cognizance of the case and try it in its own courts, according to its own forms of proceeding." (Emphasis added.)

IV.

The federal court in a removal case plainly must act with restraint. But to deny relief in the cases now before us is, in view of the allegations made, to aggravate a wrong by compelling these defendants to suffer the risk of an unwarranted trial and by allowing them to be held under improper charges and in prison, if the State desires, for an extended period pending trial. The risk that the state courts will not promptly dismiss the prosecutions was the congressional fear. The Court defeats that purpose by giving a narrow, cramped meaning to § 1443 (1). These defendants' federal civil rights may, of course, ultimately be vindicated if they persevere, live long enough, and have the patience and the funds to carry their cases for some years through the state courts to this Court. But it was precisely that burden that Congress undertook to take off the backs of this persecuted minority and all who espouse the cause of their equality.

APPENDIX XIII

STATEMENTS MADE BY THE HONORABLE HUBERT H. HUMPHREY, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, JUNE 4, 1964, PAGE 12291