AS THE CROW FLIES
Meyer, Ernest L.
As the Crow Files By ERNEST L. MEYER THE anti-lynchlng bill, Mark Sullivan reports in the New York Herald Tribune, is merely a device to win the Negro vole. There is no need for it, he says,...
...In some of these states the poll tax is cumulative, and persons in arrears often find it impossible to catch up...
...Of the 12 most important standing committees of the house, chairmen in six, or 50 per cent, come from the poll tax states...
...Thus we find the eight poll tax states furnishing the present congress with 28 per cent of the committee chairmen in the house and 3.1 per cent ol the committee chairmen in the senate...
...Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi...
...There were only three episodes officially characterized as lynehings in the country in 1939...
...Representative Lee E. Geyer, California, sponsor of the bill, has said...
...Representatives of the poll tax states who come to congress year .after year are responsible only to the financial oligarchy which elects them to office...
...The poll lax system in eight states subverts the democracy of our entire nation...
...Even more Important than the passing of the anti-lynchlng bill would be the passing of the Geyer bill which would prohibit the use of the poll tax as a requirement for voting in federal elections...
...Mr...
...Sullivan is also wide of the mark when he describes the anti-lynching bill as a mere device to buy the Negro vote...
...Ranking places on the committees which do the main work of the congress go by seniority right...
...Sullivan says in his column that the issue involved in the anti-lynching bill is one of "states' rights...
...yet if the evidence is correct they most certainly belong in that category...
...Sullivan Is technically correct...
...and a number of unsolved murders believed the work of night-riders At the moment, for example, there 'is an investigation under way into a wave of floggings and torture in the Atlanta area...
...Four admitted members of the Ku Klux Klan are suspected of complicity in the killing of a young couple near Atlanta six weeks ago...
...It adds its part to the growing danger of anti-democratic oppression and persecution...
...The diseniranchiscment of the common people in those stales has had tragic consequences for the common people of the forty 'free' states...
...These rights would seem to include the right to substitute the noose and the bullet for equality and the ballot...
...Length of service is a key to power in the congress...
...Poll tax states supply 45 per cent of the chairmen of the 11 leading standing committees of the senate...
...These deaths have not been described as lynehings...
...The existence of the poll tax as a requirement for voting in eight states is a national, and not a regional, evil...
...These states historically are in the lynch belt...
...Because in the very states which would normally be must affected by the bill, the Negroes—or most of them—can't vote anyhow...
...The long terms of service of the representatives from the poll tax states bear witness to the fidelity with which they obey their masters...
...But there were scores of near-Iynchings...
...So long as they carry out the will of these political and economic overloads they enjoy an almost uncontested lien on their scats in the house and the senate...
...Thus many Negroes in the belt are deprived, by terrorism, or equality before the law, and they are deprived, by a discriminatory tax, of equality at the ballot box...
...The payment of a poll tax as a requirement for voting is mandatory in eight Southern states, Georgia, Alabama...
...There is no need for it, he says, because lynehings have been diminishing in the last 70 years and last year there were only three cases in the whole United States Mr...
Vol. 10 • April 1940 • No. 14
