MONEY AND MISSISSIPPI

...Hood said he could not recall conversations in which he was reported to have told Negroes they would "get in trouble" and perhaps lose their surplus food allotmens if they tried to register...

...Using an expression typical of his style, the governor has advised Mississippi's critics to "get off our back and get on our side...

...Would you please make a reasonable interpretation of it for the Commission...

...We were for giving ourselves to causes that were actually examples of disloyalty to the law...

...But it would be naive to suggest that the millenium is approaching for Mississippi...

...These problems are more important to the future than the shocking recitation of midnight whippings, floggings, bombings, and burnings which have been the lot of the Negro in Mississippi...

...I asked you to interpret it...

...Such a dismal recital of factual cases throughout Mississippi provides ample excuse for holding a skeptical view of the state's present efforts to change its "image...

...And in surely one of the most exquisitely ironic cases of all, a dark-skinned political science professor from Pakistan told of how a group of white men beat him until someone realized he was a foreigner and shouted: "Stop beating him, he's not an American...

...Mr...

...Nearly all of the testimony was incriminating for the state of Mississippi, for the Dillon and Hood cases were anything but isolated examples...

...He immediately accused Dillon of lying and setting the dynamite sticks himself...

...Sheriffs, in particular, operate under an antiquated system of receiving their pay by the collection of fees and taxes...

...A common thread of their testimony was the practice of being asked to "interpret" sections of the state constitution...

...Dean Farley also spoke of the "tremendous change in attitudes' taking place in Mississippi these last few months," and added: "We have been under the domination of an organization that is largely discredited and which hasn't accomplished anything but grief, and the public is beginning to realize it...

...One year ago they would never have heard such expressions uttered in a public forum...

...Although change is now occurring, the lawless frontier which has existed in Mississippi helps to explain why many Negroes still live with terror in their hearts...

...Governor Johnson, in a number of statements, has sounded the theme for his state...

...These economic facts, and the state's awareness of them, are the most tangible evidence that Mississippi is finally trying to lift itself out of the darkness...

...The contrast between Mississippi and Alabama today is striking—and ironic...

...Some of the other witnesses merely re-emphasized that situation...

...Soon the sheriff of Pike County, Robert R. Warren, came to the scene to investigate the bombing...

...The motives behind the outward symptoms of change are complex, but one factor dominates all the others— money...

...The voice of moderate leadership is, at last, being heard publicly in the state...

...The registrar paused again, and finally handed back the paper, refusing to answer...

...There has been virtually no communication between the races...

...The Commission hearings revealed clearly that Mississippi has been in the grip of a lawless society whose power has been wielded and perpetuated by officially-sanctioned terror...

...From a window he could see that his front yard was filled with smoke...

...We are beginning to get out from under it...

...In Mississippi, the operative word, from the governor on down to the county registrar, is "change...

...Civil Rights Commission heard from Mississippi's leading lawyers, businessmen, and clergy...

...When he took the stand, Hood was questioned sharply about these practices...

...would try so soon to break the patterns of the past...

...that past shortcomings must be acknowledged in public before the people...

...As Mississippi is learning, the price of discrimination and violence is high— a lesson George Wallace and Alabama apparently have yet to learn...

...For they underscore the attitudes which have created and permitted those acts of terror to occur...

...But that is what has happened...

...Another prominent Mississippian, Le Roy Percy from Greenville, said: "We in Mississippi are in the process of realizing that this doctrine of massive resistance and inflexibility is no longer possible...

...The expressions given during a televised session were forthright: "We can't go on and teach disrespect in one area and respect in another and hope to achieve any kind of effective government," said Robert Farley, dean emeritus of the University of Mississippi Law School...

...The registrar glared at the paper in silence for a full minute...

...Then he began to read: "The power to tax corporations and their property shall never be surrendered or . . ." Griswold cut in quickly, "I didn't ask you to read it...

...Dillon had put the light there because the Negro section at that time was in a state of near panic as a result of a number of attacks at night...

...As the testimony unfolded in Jackson, two cases symbolized what has been the basic problem confronting Negroes in Mississippi—the problem of justice...

...That change is being spurred by essentially selfish motives is not the- vital point...

...We want a change, and we're going to get it...

...Even fewer would have believed that Governor Paul B. Johnson would demonstrate more political wisdom than Governor George C. Wallace...

...at worst, it breeds corruption...

...As Winter pointed out, sound economic development "requires a state which is attractive to outside investment...

...Another example of the administration of justice in Mississippi toward a Negro was revealed when G. H. Hood, the circuit clerk of Humphreys County, testified...

...A sheriff told of going to a Ku Klux Klan rally, and of how impressed he had been by the "upstanding people" there...

...Erwin N. Griswold, the dean of the Harvard University Law School and a member of the Commission, asked the sheriff, "What evidence was there that would lead a fair-minded law enforcement officer to conclude that Mr...

...These problems are difficult enough without the added inflammatory state of emotion common to the Deep South about race...

...The Commission hearings were so thorough and detailed that they presented what might well stand as a definitive picture of the climate of intimidation and oppression which has afflicted Mississippi for generations...

...Dillon was not given the opportunity to be represented by a lawyer...

...Someone had tried to dynamite his home...

...Dillon, a slender Negro with black skin and a gentle manner, still seemed rather bewildered by what had happened to him last summer during what Commission investigators called a period of "vigilante violence" that had swept across the state...

...Without a pause, the sheriff blithely replied: "In Mississippi we think if a man is under a shade tree working on a car to fix it, he is considered to be conducting a garage...

...The recent public hearings of the United States Civil Rights Commission in Jackson demonstrated vividly the depth of the problems in the state...

...Money and Mississippi by HAYNES JOHNSON While its neighbor to the east has been foundering in a morass of political miscalculation and a Wallace-imposed condition approaching anarchy, Mississippi has taken a turn in the opposite direction toward relative moderation and responsibility...

...So Willie Dillon, a man who always tried to mind his own business, went to jail while those who tried to bomb his home went free...

...On the first charge, the justice of the peace sentenced him to three months in jail and a fine of $100...

...For Mississippi to make any effort at reconciliation is an event of obvious importance to the nation, and particularly to the South...

...About two and one-half hours later Willie Dillon was taken in the sheriff's car to a justice of the peace...

...The county itself is depressingly typical of Mississippi: it has a population of 19,000, two-thirds of whom are Negroes, but no Negroes are registered to vote there...

...In its hearings, the Commission concentrated on two specific areas—voting and law enforcement—and it explored a number of general problems which form a common pattern throughout the state...

...Passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, with its provision for cutting off Federal aid to any state or local program practicing discrimination, forcefully drove home the lesson to Mississippi leaders...

...Invariably, the Negroes failed to interpret the sections correctly...

...His hands shook, and his face was flushed...

...The Commission had heard witness after Negro witness testify without exception to examples of harassment, including vicious beatings, when they tried to register and vote...

...The sheriff, when investigating, had observed a spotlight in a tree with a line running to the main electric cable in the street...

...As he said in a low voice from the witness stand, "I wasn't involved in anything...

...Murder and terror are not conducive to the improvement of business, a fact inescapable to virtually all responsible leaders, and a principal motivation behind all the formal statements...

...Not the least is the subtle but significant realization within the state's power structure that change must take place...

...The hearings, a result of three years of staff work, spread on the public record a devastating indictment of events and attitudes of the past two years...

...A number of Negro spectators in the crowded hearing room broke into spontaneous applause at Percy's words...

...He was under arrest for what members of the Commission called trumped up charges...

...Until Mississippi officials find some way to alleviate these problems, freedom will continue to be only an abstraction for the Negro in Mississippi...

...He has been joined in this wish by a plethora of influential community and statewide groups, each of whom has issued strong statements urging compliance with law, impartial administration of voting regulations and procedures, and greater communication between the races...

...He is the author of two books: "The Bay of Pigs" and "Dusk at the Mountain," a study of Negroes in Washington, D.C...

...Dillon was conducting a garage...

...Among the groups are the Mississippi Economic Council, the Mississippi Association of Supervisors, the Circuit Clerks' Association, the Southern Baptist Press Association, and individual city groups...

...And that, in turn, requires "responsible government leadership" and a "capacity of people to adjust to change and freedom from internal strife and tension...

...We want to be in the mainstream of America, not the backwater...

...Dillon was charged with two offenses —larceny by tampering with an electric meter and operating a garage without a permit...

...In addition, community leaders have failed to take effective steps, not only to see that racial relations improve, but even that existing law itself is observed...

...Hood," he said, "I hand you a copy of Section 182 of the Mississippi Constitution...

...The stark testimony made clear how far Mississippi has yet to go...

...Mississippi has learned that it cannot afford defiance...

...After similar questioning, Dean Griswold walked toward Hood carrying a piece of paper...

...A year ago few people thought that Mississippi, rather than Alabama, HAYNES JOHNSON is national affairs reporter for The Washington Star...

...Willie Dillon had never even tried to register and vote...

...At best, such a system leads to lack of efficient or aggressive law enforcement...

...Another obviously critical problem in Mississippi is the low caliber of law enforcement officials...

...Hood, a white man, is also the voting registrar in that county...

...Suddenly, he heard a loud explosion...

...A white graduate student from Yale University told of being shot at and driven off the road by white men while he tried to help Negroes register and vote, and of how he himself was threatened later by a police chief when he reported one of the incidents...

...On the second, he was sentenced to six months in prison and a $500 fine...

...The first case involved a Negro named Willie Dillon, who, as he said, had never participated in the civil rights movement in his home town of McComb...

...William Winter, the state treasurer, candidly and revealingly warned a civic club in Jackson earlier this year that Mississippi would be forced to raise $140 million a year in new taxes if it had to replace Federal aid which now goes into the state budget...

...Asked if he were refusing on the grounds that it might incriminate him, he blurted out: "That's right...

...Later, his wife was turned away when she tried to see him in the jail...

...Yet change undeniably is occurring...

...The sheriff also noticed, in Dillon's back yard, a car which Dillon had been repairing for a friend...

...At the conclusion of its hearings, the U.S...

...Mississippi, the poorest state in the Union, cannot afford such an added burden...

...There remains a great distance between words and deeds, promise and fulfillment, hope and fear...

...His ordeal began on the night of August 28, just as he was about to step into his bathtub...

...In all too many cases, the sheriff or police chief has had little training for his job...

...Also invariably, the whites did and were placed on the voting rolls...

...In a situation of divided responsibility, law enforcement inevitably takes second place to the gathering-in of money...

...that Mississippi at last has to look within itself for the source of its trouble...

...As the Commission sketched the picture, a vast gulf of misunderstanding exists between whites and Negroes in the state...