Word: ervin
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Among them was North Carolina Democrat Sam Ervin, a former member of his state's Supreme Court, now a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the outset of hearings before the committee, Ervin took on Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach for a full seven hours...
...Flung Net. Ervin noted that the bill provides for federal voting registrars to be sent into states and counties where there are literacy tests and where 50% of the citizens of eligible age and residence either were not registered as of Nov. 1, 1964, or did not vote in the 1964 elections. This farflung net would catch a good many states and counties where hardly anyone pretends that discrimination exists: a county in Maine, for instance, and the entire state of Alaska...
...Ervin also wanted to know: Why did only 44% of those old enough to vote in 1964 go to the polls in Lyndon Johnson's own Texas? Snapped Katzenbach: "Poll tax." Why did barely more than 50% vote in New York City, where a "literacy test is not administered by sinful Southerners?" Said Katzenbach: "It's an English language test," and it keeps thousands of Puerto Ricans from registering...
...Ervin obviously was smarting because the formula would include 34 counties in North Carolina, a relatively forward Southern state on civil rights. He got Katzenbach to admit that the Justice Department had evidence of discrimination in only one of those 34 counties...
...Boom!" Said Ervin: "I think this constitutes a bill of attainder because it deprives states and counties of certain powers vested in them without a judicial trial." No, said Katzenbach. Even though a state or political subdivision falls under the 50% formula, if it alleges that it has not discriminated and the Federal Government can present no evidence of discrimination, then, "Boom! Summary judgment for the state. That's all there...