She stated she asked for their names because she wished to prosecute them, but Chief Tuggle answered her question by saying, "See your solicitor."

During my conversation with Mrs. Bickerton I advised her to contact County Solicitor Alton M. Blanton in Jasper. She had done that before I left Jasper yesterday.

Upon leaving Mrs. Bickerton's home I went to see Parrish Police Chief A. T. Tuggle. He verified Mrs. Bickerton's statement that three teen-age boys had confessed the cross burning to him, but he would not release their names.

Since that report has been written, gentlemen, I have talked and worked with the circuit court solicitor, Will Hunter, in Walker County, and with the Assistant Attorney General for the State of Alabama, Mr. Barden, and I have found out several things and have a list of names, but would prefer not to give them unless you especially want them.

Mr. BYRNE. No. We do not want any embarrassment.

Mr. TRAWICK. I would also like to say that one very informative and very enlightening bit of evidence has been uncovered, and I think you will hear about it in the Birmingham newspapers within the next week.

Mr. BYRNE. We are very thankful to you. You have made a very forthright, commendable, and highly independent statement. Gentlemen, is there any cross-examination?

Mr. FRAZIER. You received a subpena to appear here, did you not? Mr. TRAWICK. Yes, sir; I did; and I have it in my pocket if you would like to see it.

Mr. BYRNE. We have no intention of calling any other witness at this time. We have a resolution that we will ask Judge Jennings to read.

Mr. KEATING. Do you have any recommendations to make to this committee regarding either the civil-rights legislation or any antilynching bills which are before us?

Mr. TRAWICK. No, sir; no recommendations. But, being a newspaper editor, I have some opinions on that, if you will permit me to take a minute.

On this civil-rights legislation-that and giving aid or assistance in this mob violence-I would like to ask you to give us a chance to settle it at home. I think we can do it.

Mr. JENNINGS. You have made a very commendabe and intelligent witness.

Mr. TRAWICK. Thank you.

Mr. JENNINGS. There will be no enforcement of law, either Federal or State, unless public opinion and good citizens back it up.

Mr. TRAWICK. That is right.

Mr. KEATING. I want to commend you and your newspaper for the campaign you have conducted to try to stamp out violence down there. Mr. TRAWICK. Thank you.

Mr. LANE. You are satisfied that the State officials can handle this matter?

Mr. TRAWICK. Yes, sir; I certainly am, if we just give them half a chance and the cooperation they deserve.

Mr. LANE. They are working on it day and night, you say?

Mr. TRAWICK. Yes.

Mr. FRAZIER. Are you satisfied with what the sheriff is doing in this county?

Mr. TRAWICK. No, sir; I am not.

Mr. KEATING. But you think the people of the locality will be aroused to elect to public office men who will do their duty if the ones in office do not do it, do you?

Mr. TRAWICK. Yes, sir. With a man in the sheriff's situation, I can see his point. He is pitifully understaffed, especially to cope with any activity such as the present one which has been prevalent in Walker County the last 3 weeks.

Mr. LANE. How much of a staff has he?

Mr. TRAWICK. I do not know exactly. I believe it varies from 12 to 15 deputies, and Walker County is a county of approximately 15,000 population.

Mr. JENNINGS. Would you say the great majority of the people down there object to these violations of law and are opposed to them? Mr. TRAWICK. I certainly would, sir. I do believe that the people are all violently opposed to this mob violence, with the exception of an infinitesimal minority which constitutes the group.

Mr. JENNINGS. A bunch of lawbreakers?

Mr. TRAWICK. Yes, sir.

Mr. BYRNE. Who are conceited enough to believe they can handle things and nobody else can?

Mr. TRAWICK. Yes, sir.

Mr. BYRNE. That is correct, is it not?

Mr. TRAWICK. That is right.

Mr. BYRNE. Now Judge Jennings has a resolution to offer.

Mr. JENNINGS. I offer a resolution for the consideration of Subcommittee No. 3:

Be it resolved, That a subpena issue from this committee and be served on each of the witnesses Clarke Stallworth, Jr., Clancy Lake, and Paul Trawick to appear before and testify before Subcommittee No. 3 of the House Judiciary Committee on the issues pertaining to H. R. 4682 and other pending House resolutions of similar import.

(The resolution was adopted.)

Mr. BYRNE. The resolution is unanimously adopted and made a part of the record, and the subpenas will be issued according to the resolution.

We have no further witnesses at this time, and we will adjourn to meet subject to the call of the Chair.

STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. BENNETT, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA

Mr. BENNETT. My name is Charles E. Bennett. I am Congressman from the Second Congressional District of Florida.

I oppose the enactment of the proposed so-called antilynching bills for a variety of reasons. First of all, I think that the bills are unconstitutional as a violation of the tenth amendment of the Constitution. The Constitution would probably never have been enacted if it had not been for the inclusion of the tenth amendment which is part of the Bill of Rights. It provides that when governmental are not given specifically to the Federal Government, they shall re

powers

main with the people or the States into which these people may organize themselves or have organized themselves.

Along that same line, I oppose this type of legislation because I feel that it is projecting still further the Federal Government into local government which trend in government in late years I feel to be a mistake and a very dangerous mistake. When our country was founded, it was founded through experience. The colonists had experienced a remote governmental control and they desired to return to what they had experienced somewhat when they were in Europe which was more of a local control; plus that they desired to add to the grass-roots control that they anticipated being able to have in this country. In other words, they rebelled against being controlled remotely from England and they wanted to get even a heartier participation in local government than they found possible in England itself when they were actually living in that country or whatever country they happened to live in in Europe.

Their reasons for that were very very sound. They felt that local matters could be best controlled by local people and that government from afar was a dangerous procedure to enter upon. Also it may be borne in mind that the Constitution was more or less of a contract between various peoples. If it had not been for the provisions of the tenth amendment, it is very likely that our country would never have been founded. The first ten amendments were all necessary for the founding of our country and therefore play a part in the contractual obligations which still carry on down through the Constitution until the present difficulty, until such time as they shall be abridged by constitutional amendment.

No one would come here and take up for lynching, and I say that lynching should be a thing that we should not have. Certainly a person who engages in a lynching mob is a person who should have put upon his or her shoulders the responsibility of meeting a charge of crime and being convicted of it if guilty. The State laws, however, in every State of the Union are adequate to cover the question of lynching, and particularly they are in the South. We have murder laws in every State in the Union, and lynching is murder. A person can be and should be convicted of murder when he participates in a lynch job.

Mr. KEATING. Is there not a serious question, Mr. Bennett, whether or not those laws are being enforced?

Mr. BENNETT. I will get to that in just a minute, if I may.

The history of lynching is a very interesting one. Many people do not understand the background of what brought about lynchings. Of course, some lynchings occurred prior to the War Between the States. There were many lynchings after the War Between the States when the Federal Government, despite the provisions of the Federal Constitution, saw fit, by fire and sword, to force back into the Union the States which had decided and determined their desire to be out of the Union. When the Federal Government did that, it did not use the kindly hand of Abraham Lincoln, nor the somewhat faltering but kindly hand of Andrew Johnson, but the Senate and the House of Representatives ruled the South with an iron hand. They sent down people to control the government; they allowed and encouraged people to assume high office who were not capable of assuming those

offices. They overloked and countenanced great corruption which led to the demoralization of the Government.

With that picture before them, as heinous and as culpable as taking the life of another man is without a just and due trial, these people, some people in the South, at least, took upon themselves to try to gain some sort of order and some sort of government since the constituted government offered them no protection. Therefore, in the early days, there were reasons why lynchings were indulged in and reasons why many good people at least overlooked them.

As the years have gone on, however, and the South has at last been able to reign through its own government, through its own State governments as provided for in the Constitution in State matters, and has gained control of its courts again, there is now no justification for such mob violence, if there ever was any such justification.

The South deplores lynchings more than any other section of the country. There is nothing that makes a southerner more unhappy and more depressed than the occurence of a lynching—that is, the average southerner. There are people in our midst I may say a great many of them, in my opinion, are not true southerners, either by having lived in the South for long or being consistent with the southern principles-who do engage in mob violence occasionally.

The incidence of lynchings has fallen off so tremendously in a period of years that I am sure these figures have been brought out to you or will be brought out to you by other witnesses before you. Only a few years back there were quite a few lynchings. In 1898 there were 255 lynchings. Of those, 100 were white. The only lynchings that have ever occurred in any community where I have lived have been lynchings of white men. I think there have been two. But the incidence of lynchings of white people has decreased along with the lynchings of colored people until, at the present time, for the last 10 years, I do not believe there has been a single year where there have been more than six lynchings in the entire country. Last year I think there was one lynching. In 1949, just closed, I have heard that there were three lynchings announced."

You must also investigate the type of lynchings which were referred to or what is defined as a "lynching," because nowadays if two people shoot somebody else and they happen to be of a different race, they consider it a lynching, which is, of course, quite different from the lynchings that most people read about when they they read about the situation in the South. In other words, some lynchings which are called lynchings are truly nothing, completely nothing but ordinary types of murder. There is no mob violence in it. Somebody shoots somebody else and they happen to be of another race.

Now that sort of thing occurs in the North as well as the South. I think in the last few years, when I have been trying to read the newspaper on this subject, as I have tried to read the newapers on this subject, I have found about as many incidents pointed out in the North as there are in the South on the racial basis, about as many white people killing colored people under circumstances which, in the South would be called lynchings, because that is the popular propaganda way to refer to them when they occur in the South. When they occur in the North, they are "murders."

Mr. KEATING. Of course, Federal law would apply to not only the North but also the South.

Mr. BENNETT, I will try not to talk too long. Then I will yield myself to any questions that anybody would like to ask.

Now, I feel, therefore, that not only is this law unconstitutional, but I feel furthermore that the incidence of lynching has been so greatly on the decline that presently it is almost like the dodo bird, something entirely out of the practical realm of modern-day activity. And the few cases that do occur, most of them are not what most people think about when they think of lynchings. They are just murder.

Since the incidence is so slight, and since the law, therefore, would have such a small coverage as far as the actual number of crimes that would be involved, let us think a little bit more about what would be the value and what would be the difficulties about any such law. I am going to illustrate a little bit out of my own experience.

I have a little difficulty as an individual in getting about physically and I have a little difficulty when I drive a car. But now if the Government was to tell me that since I do have a little difficulty driving a car, even with the hand controls which I have, that they were going to put a State policeman with me or a Federal officer to see that I drove that car accurately, it would certainly be a considerable blow to my personal pride. Everybody always talks about southern pride when they talk about legislation of this kind. As a matter of fact, there is some southern pride in it, but here is where the pride lays: The southern pride consists of the fact that our pride is injured when lynchings do occur. That is one place where our southern pride is hurt. It hurts us a great deal. There is no popular support for lynchings in the South at all. If they could be apprehended, they would get quick and short justice.

The Federal Government now proposes to say that the State governments are not sufficient and the Federal Government should come along and lend a helping hand. The ways in which this tender of assistance is offered is important with regard to the reaction that people will have to this legislation. Southern pride is hurt because the South believes it can take care of its own government. It resents the implication that the South is not able to handle its own affairs. It resents the propaganda which is given out with regard to lynching. I remember when I was overseas in New Guinea I read in Time magazine, I believe it was, that there was about 100 lynchings a year on the average. It came back with an apology in a footnote in a letter to the editor saying that there were only three during the average years to which it had been referring. But that is typical of the sort of propaganda that is issued.

We in Congress have a responsibility to look at the facts. We are here to be statesmen, not politicians. When you approach this question with regard to the South, what you are really interested in is trying to decrease the number of lynchings, I think it is quite probable that the enactment of a law of this kind will not decrease the incidence of lynching-it might increase the incidence of lynching because it will be a slap at a person. Just like a crippled person-if you tell him he has to have somebody to look after him there, he is going to resent it and he is perhaps going to take chances he should not take in driving a car, or something of that kind. In other words, the injury which is coming to the southern pride with regard to lynching is first the fact that it does exist, even though in a small number of cases, and