Stopping Whites From Ousting Negroes

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31864, 17 December 1968, Page 7

Stopping Whites From Ousting Negroes

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) x ’ ATLANTA, December 15. Negroes have been battling for public office in the white supremicist South for years and now that there are nearly 400 of them elected they are faced with a new struggle—how to prevent whites from removing them from power.

About 250 elected Negro officials from the 11 states that formed the confederacy met in Atlanta this month for four days to attend workshops and lectures on the duties of their offices. The meeting was sponsored by the Voter Education Project of the Southern Regional Council which for 25 years, has sought to assist Southern Negroes in politics. These efforts resulted in few black office holders until the Congress, in 1965, passed the Voting Rights Act, which made it easier for Negroes to register to vote by outlawing discriminatory literacy tests that prevented them from achieving any kind of political power. The number of elected Negro officials has since risen from nearly npne to about 400. Many of the new-elected Negroes, because they have been excluded from the entire political progress, do not understand the intricacies of their new jobs and the V.E.P. held the meeting to teach them. The V.E.P. is mindful of what happened after the end of the Civil War in 1865, when Negroes were emancipated from slavery and many were elected to public office. Southern whites employed terror, intimidation and legal technicalities to disenfranchise Negroes until, by 1900, there were few eligible to vote

in the South, let alone holt) public office. The V.E.P. feels Southern white segregationists would like nothing better than to be able to impeach Negroes from public office for falling to adhere to the rules of their jobs. It is not a case of a Negro elected official intentionally violating the rules, but his simply not knowing what the rules are, the V.E.P. says. “If a Negro office-holder makes a slip he is likely to be kicked out of office for it,” said Marvin Wall, V.E.P. research director, “whereas if a white office-holder makes a slip it is likely to be overlooked.” Vernon Jordan, the V.E.P. director, said the meeting showed the need to set up political service centres in the four Deep South states of A'abama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. These centres will be at Negro colleges where lawyers and political

science professors will be available to advise Negro office holders. The V.E.P. has already intervened in at least one case where there was an apparent attempt by white people to prevent a Negro woman from properly performing the duties of her office. This happened in Port Gibson, Mississippi, where Mrs Geneva Collins, a black teacher, was elected Chancery Clerk, a powerful local office. Her white predecessor refused to tell her anything about the duties of the office and the entire staff resigned. The V.E.P. sent a law student to assist Mrs Collins, who said: “Everything is all right now.” Mrs Collins, elected on January 1, 1968, said she would probably not seek reelection and hoped' a younger Negro would succeed her. “The difference is I’ll be here to show him or her what to do,” she added.