The Augusta Courier

STRICTLY PERSONAL
By ROY V. HARRIS

It is about time that somebody called the hand of the federal courts. In other words, it is time for a showdown. It is time for a test to determine whether we have States or not. It is time to determine once and for all whether we have sovereign States, as contemplated by the Constitution of the United States, or whether we have puppet governments in the state capitals that must take orders and directions from federal judges acting as supervisors.

The recent decision of a three-judge federal court in Atlanta ordering the legislature to reapportion itself before January 1, 1963, is the straw that has broken the camel's back.

We can expect no help from the courts themselves. It will do no good to appeal this decision to the Supreme Court of the United States because the Supreme Court of the United States started this business of usurping power which it did not have.

It was the Supreme Court of the United States which began reversing all the law that we have known in this country for one hundred fifty years and holding that the federal courts had a right to interfere with the internal affairs of the States and to direct how they should handle local affairs.

It was the Supreme Court of the United States which began the business of re-writing the Constitution of the United States so that today it doesn't mean what it said and what it meant when it was written in 1787.

It was the Supreme Court of the United States which reversed every court in the land and every decision of every State and federal court for more than one hundred and fifty years when they had held that every State could run its school as it saw fit.

I have special reference to the decision of May 17, 1954 which outlawed racial segregation in the public schools.

Yet, segregation had been legal ever since the Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts, in 1848, held that the City of Boston had a right to segregate the Negroes and the whites in its schools.

From that day until May 17, 1954 every State court and every federal court in the land followed this decision of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.

The decision of 1848 was based upon the fact that the federal government is a government of delegated powers and nowhere in the Constitution was control of education delegated to the federal government.

Now, in 1954, the Supreme Court changed all this law, changed all the customs of a people and said that the Constitution under changing conditions of today means something that it didn't mean in 1787.

From day to day, Congress has been sitting idly by and permitting the federal courts to usurp more and greater power and to re-write the Constitution in accordance with the modern-day political philosophy of the political hacks who occupy the federal bench.

It looks like Congress must have a radical shock treatment in order to make it wake up and curb the powers of the runaway courts.

In my opinion, now is the time to shock Congress into action.

But you may say that Congress is beyond the point where it can be affected by any kind of shock treatment. That may be true, but it is time to find out where we stand.

It is time to put Congress on the spot and see what the Congress will do.

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There will never be a better time for the experiment than now.
There will never be a better opportunity than that afforded the people of Georgia today to make this test.
In Georgia, the Democratic Primary nomination is equivalent to election to public office, with the exception of one or two mountain counties which usually vote Republican.
We are in the midst of a campaign for the Democrats to nominate their candidates on September 12th.
The entries are closed and everybody is now running from United States Senator and Governor down to the members of the Legislature.
On September 12th, two hundred and five members of the House will be named and at least two hundred and three of these two hundred and five will be elected. On September 12th, fifty-four members of the Senate will be named and all fifty-four of them will be elected in November.
The Constitution of Georgia provides that the members of each House shall meet and organize and each House is the sole judge of its own membership.
So, if the legislature should ignore the federal courts, go ahead and be elected in November under the present system, meet and organize in January and seat each member elected in November, what could the federal courts do?
Only the legislature can canvass the returns, declare the results and install a new Governor and new statehouse officers.
Just suppose this new legislature ignores the court decision and simply does this. What could the court do?
The court might try to enjoin the Governor and the statehouse officials from spending any state money. If they did, that would produce chaos in the State and shut down every school, every institution and produce turmoil and chaos in the State government.
In effect, it would turn every prisoner out of the penitentiary system, turn out all of the mental patients from the State hospital, all the tubercular patients from Battey Hospital and all of the other people we have in all the other hospitals over the State.
It would close the doors in the faces of approximately one million school children and in the faces of approximately forty thousand college students in the State.
Would the federal courts dare take this responsibility on their shoulders?
Then, could the federal courts take over the Government of the State of Georgia and appoint a receiver, or a dictator, to operate the State?
This would be the shock treatment needed to force Congress to take action.
If such conditions were threatened by the court, it seems to me that it would be the finest thing that could happen to this country for one State to simply put the issue up to the Congress.
I will admit that it could be rough medicine, but I believe it would quickly curb the unbridled usurpation of power by a runaway federal court.
I firmly believe that under these circumstances the Congress would quickly curb the unbridled usurpation of power by a runaway federal court.
Frankly, I would like to see the State of Georgia make the issue and see what Congress can or will do.

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It doesn't seem possible that the federal court could put two hundred and fifty-nine members of the legislature in jail because they refused to vote as the court says they should vote.

The thing that I am talking about may happen by accident and not by design.

The Governor says that he is going to call a session of the legislature to meet sometime between the date of the September 12th Primary and the General Election to be held on the 6th day of November.

It isn't going to be a harmonious session of the legislature. There will be lines of cleavage drawn. There will be a definite line drawn between the House and the Senate, for instance. There are those advocating today that the House be reapportioned so that every county will have one member of the legislature so that representation in the House will be on a geographical basis and that the Senate be reorganized on a population basis.

There are others who propose that the Senate be allowed to stand as it is so that the members of the Senate will represent geographical areas and that the House be reapportioned on a population basis.

These conflicts may be so intense until the legislature could meet and finally adjourn without taking any action whatsoever.

If this should happen, then, of course, the test would be made.

It is going to be difficult for the legislature to do an intelligent job under this kind of pressure and as quickly as it will be necessary for them to act in a special session coming between September 12th and November 6th.

Whatever they do will undoubtedly require that either the two hundred and five practically-elected members of the House, or the fifty-four members of the Senate, run again in November in a General Election open to Republicans, independents, crackpots and everybody else.

Of course, it is possible that such action could be taken to require the two hundred and fifty-nine members of both Houses to run again in November under these circumstances.

This fact alone is going to create a lot of intense pressure and the kind of conditions under which no group should be required to reapportion membership in the two Houses.

It would have been much simpler for the court to have required the next legislature to reapportion, instead of the present legislature, because conditions would have been entirely different and they would have had plenty of time to make a study and plenty of time to carefully consider the welfare of the State.

Under the present order of the court there will be a hurried scramble, confusion and chaos.

No good can come out of legislation passed under these conditions.

Why is the federal court in such a hurry to bring about these changes?

The agitation for all this change is comparatively recent and most of it has been within the past six months.

Yet, these conditions which they seek to correct have been in existence for nearly fifty years.

I am not arguing that there shouldn't be some reapportionment. I appeared before the reapportionment study committee last year and advocated a reapportionment and submitted a definite plan. But, at the time, there hadn't been sufficient agitation and discussion in Georgia to sell the people upon the necessity and it is only recently that the people have realized the necessity for some change.

Since these conditions have persisted for fifty years that is fair evidence of the fact that the State hasn't suffered under them. On the contrary, the State has made wonderful progress.

We have had a growing and expanding State for fifty years. In recent years, we have re-built most of our institutions and financed them at home. We are now in the midst of a great roadbuilding program.

The State is developing new industry and new sources of wealth. We are growing and expanding by leaps and bounds.

So, why the great hurry on the part of the federal courts? Why this rushing to ram something down the throats of the people at the most inconvenient and inauspicious time?

Why undertake it during a political year and a political campaign?

Why not give the legislature an opportunity to reapportion during an off year in politics?

What harm would it do to operate under the traditional system for another two years?

All of these things, and many more that we could mention, added together, point to the fact that now is the time to make this issue.

You can see your Senator and your House member in the present legislature and tell them how you feel.

The present legislature is the legislature which will have this opportunity. They can make the issue if they like and they can also make the issue if they fail to agree.

Now, for you to live under the same conditions which we have in Mississippi, where two diverse ethnic groups exist in such large numbers, I think it is safe to say that the white people of Minnesota would have to increase 1,411,560.

the Negro population in Minnesota would develop some kind of segregated system not dissimilar from ours.

On the basis of experience wherever