Word: mississippi
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...dominant social patterns of that state, district judges are drawn from their own localities. The judges were approved by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, but he knew that all candidates, and especially those for the Southern bench, would have to be "traded out" with the Senate Judiciary Committee chaired by Mississippi's Segregationist James...
Even so, Kennedy may have thought he was doing well. His first district judge, for instance, Mississippi's William Harold Cox, took office in 1961 with the American Bar Association's highest endorsement of "exceptionally well-qualified." The tall, stern son of a County sheriff, Cox was a stickler for detail and had been a first-rate trial lawyer in Jackson. Other Kennedy appointees seemed equally qualified, and the Administration heaved a sigh of relief...
...measure of the result is that last week Mississippi's Judge Cox coolly tried to jail not only U.S. Attorney Robert E. Hauberg in Jackson but also his boss, Acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach...
...strange contempt proceeding that threatened Negro voting throughout Mississippi, but it should have been no surprise. Once on the bench in a state where only 5% of adult Negroes are registered to vote, Judge Cox, 63, has consistently refused to find any pattern of discrimination. Moreover, he has filled trial transcripts in rights cases with gratuitous obiter dicta. At a hearing last March, he referred to a Negro voting registration drive as "grandstanding"; he repeatedly described 200 applicants as "a bunch of niggers" and called them "chimpapzees" who "ought to be in the movies rather than being registered to vote...
...insignificant slip of memory. But Cox persisted, and last fall the Negroes were indicted by a state grand jury. The Government countered by arguing that states cannot prosecute alleged federal perjurers. Cox tried a new tack when a federal grand jury began looking into civil rights violations throughout Mississippi. Somehow that jury was persuaded to see things Cox's way. It indicted the Negroes, and then Cox ordered U.S. Attorney Robert E. Hauberg to prepare and sign the indictment...