Voting Victory

While school integration has dominated the race relations arena for nearly a year, another crucial question--federal policy on voting rights for blacks --has been quietly moving toward a climax. At issue is whether the 1965 statute that allowed some 800,000 Southern blacks to exercise the franchise will survive intact. Last week defenders of the Voting Rights Act won a significant victory in the Senate.

One of the most successful pieces of civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s, the law expires August 6. Black leaders and congressional liberals wanted to extend the provisions that now affect seven Southern states.* Literacy tests would continue to be banned. The Justice Department would retain the right to have federal registrars and examiners at the polls. Most important, the states and counties covered would continue to be prohibited from changing election laws and procedures without Justice Department approval. Case-by-case enforcement via the courts could be avoided, as at present.

Review Right. Last summer the Administration proposed a new law which was passed by the House in December. It would spur voter registration in the North by suspending literacy tests nationwide and relaxing residency requirements for presidential elections. But by allowing the 1965 law to expire, the measure would also eliminate the Justice Department's right to review voting laws, forcing it back to the old case-by-case method of implementation and slowing black registration in the South.

The President's bill never had a chance in the Senate. Republican Leader Hugh Scott, a longtime civil rights advocate with a liberal Pennsylvania constituency, found the President's proposal unacceptable. So did Michigan's Philip Hart, chief Democratic sponsor of recent civil rights measures. Joining them were eight members of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee. Resentful over Chairman James Eastland's action in reporting out the Nixon bill without a committee vote, they issued a 28-page position paper supporting an alternative bill. The substitute abolishes both literacy tests and residency requirements for federal elections, as Nixon had requested. But it also extends the 1965 act for five years.

On a preliminary test vote last week, a bipartisan coalition upheld the Scott-Hart bill 47 to 32. Final passage in the Senate and concurrence by the House now seems likely.

Bitter Disappointment. Scott's was not the only voice raised against Administration civil rights policy last week. Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Robert Finch announced the replacement of Leon Panetta, the ousted Office of Civil Rights chief, with J. Stanley Pottinger, 30, a lawyer in HEW's San Francisco regional office. The appointment did nothing to soothe the anger of those who had supported Panetta. Two OCR officials resigned, 125 staff members sent the President a 1etter expressing "bitter disappointment" with the Administration's performance on civil rights, and' 1,800 departmental employees signed a petition, titled "Bring Us Together," asking Finch for clarification of HEW's position on civil rights.

Such clarification may be forthcoming from the President himself before too long. Insisting that he was speaking for himself and not Mr. Nixon, John Ehrlichman, the President's chief aide for domestic affairs, told reporters that he was opposed to changes in the racial makeup of the schools for "a purely social end" like integration. He also indicated that Nixon, who said in his education message that he believes desegregation necessary to good education, plans to issue another statement spelling out his views on school integration. Nixon met with 35 black officials last week, seeking guidance on the shape of a major public pronouncement. In the light of Presidential Aide Daniel Patrick Moynihan's recent call for a period of "benign neglect" on race (see ESSAY), such a statement is needed.

* The 1965 law applied to any state that used literacy tests and where less than 50% of the voting-age population were registered in the 1964 election. Its major impact was felt in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Virginia, and parts of North Carolina.

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