Round 3

The fruits of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, avowed Lyndon Johnson, are "already impressively apparent." But, the President pointed out, discriminatory practices "still exist in many American communities. They deny the Negro his rights as a citizen. They must be ended." With that injunction, the President last week sent Congress his third civil rights bill in as many years.

Life for a Life. The 1966 bill, going even beyond its predecessors, would make the murder of a civil rights worker, or the slaying, for racial reasons, of anyone else exercising certain fundamental rights, such as voting or seeking to attend school, a federal crime with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. At present, the most that a defendant in such cases can get in a federal court is ten years.

This year's proposed law would also authorize the U.S. Attorney General to take independent legal action to force desegregation of schools and other public facilities without waiting, as he must now, to receive a formal complaint. The measure would also institute procedures for eliminating racial discrimination in federal juries, and would empower federal and state courts to halt trials in state courts where there is evidence of juror discrimination.

"Profound Hypocrisy." Johnson's boldest proposal was an eloquent plea for "a national policy against racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing." Said he: "Negro ghettos indict our cities North and South. As long as the color of a man's skin determines his choice of housing, no investment in the physical rebuilding of our cities will free the men and women living there." Noting that "Negro Americans comprise 22% of the enlisted men in our Army combat units in Viet Nam--and 22% of those who have lost their lives in battle there," the President declared: "We fall victim to a profound hypocrisy when we say that they cannot buy or rent dwellings among citizens they fight to save."

Johnson's bill would outlaw discrimination on either racial or religious grounds in the "purchase, rental, lease, financing, use and occupancy" of all housing. Violation would not be a criminal offense, but victims of discrimination could seek a court order forcing the owner to rent or sell--and collect up to $500 from him "for humiliation and mental pain."

For more than two hours before releasing the bill, the President, together with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, went over it with a group of Negro leaders. Among them was Martin Luther King, who left shortly afterward for a barnstorming tour of Alabama, where he urged Negroes to vote as a bloc in this week's Democratic primary--in which, thanks to the 1964 and 1965 civil rights bills, their ballots had become a major factor.

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