That Changing Climate

The Deep South Congressman stood up in the House of Representatives to observe the 100th anniversary of the Ku Klux Klan. He asked: "Shall we permit faceless men, under cover of robes and darkness, to imperil the liberties of our people?" No, he answered, urging that the K.K.K. be investigated forthwith by the House Un-American Activities Committee. "Honest men may differ in the precise limitations of the word 'un-American,' but surely all agree that the activities which by force and violence seek to deprive others of rights guaranteed them by the Constitution are un-American!"

It has been a long while since a Dixie Democrat expressed such sentiments in the House of Representatives. The fact that Charles Longstreet Weltner, 37, a Representative from Georgia, did so last week was partly a testament to his integrity. Even more, it was a result of the South's changing political climate, in which the Negro vote is increasingly important. Weltner represents an Atlanta district, and its 105,000 Negroes--of whom 57,000 are registered voters--are the reason why he is in Congress.

Good Credentials. Weltner's predecessor was one James C. Davis, an eight-term Congressman who kept getting returned to Washington because of Georgia's unfair county-unit electoral system (which was loaded in favor of rural counties as against urban areas), his unflagging efforts to secure appropriations to fight hog cholera and water hyacinths, and his diehard segregationism. Then the county-unit system was overturned by the federal courts, the district was redrawn to include more of Atlanta and less of farm counties, and in 1962 along came Weltner to run against Davis. He had imposing Southern credentials. One of his great-grandfathers was Georgia's first chief justice, Joseph Henry Lumpkin. Another great-grandfather was Thomas Reade Rootes Cobb, a Confederate general who was killed at Fredericksburg. His father is a former chancellor of Georgia's university system and a onetime president of Oglethorpe University. Weltner himself attended Oglethorpe and got a law degree at Columbia University before settling down to an Atlanta practice.

Democrat Weltner defeated Democrat Davis, went to Washington and, after the fashion of Congressmen in what used to be the one-party South, settled down for a long stay. Last year came a test of conscience--and New South politics. In meeting it, Weltner became the only Deep South Democratic Representative to vote for final passage of the civil rights bill. Letters --more than 1,000 of them--poured in from outraged white constituents, and Weltner's political career was imperiled. "I caught hell," he recalls. Although Georgia went for Goldwater, Weltner was saved by Atlanta's Negro voters, who gave more than 90% of

their vote, considerably more than his

19,000 margin of victory.

Without Fault. Now Weltner has an audience far beyond his district--at Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Wellesley, the University of Michigan, and wherever else academic audiences crave to hear racism denounced in Southern drawls. Most of Weltner's Southern colleagues in Congress seem to understand his position. Says a North Carolina Congressman: "He gets along pretty well with us Southerners, but there is some little feeling that he plays up to the Negro vote." Then reflecting on the political changes taking place in the South, the Congressman added: "But you can't fault a man for representing his district."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.