Word: pettigrew
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Thomas F. Pettigrew, associate professor of Social Psychology, called the literacy system "a serious handicap" to the would-be Negro voter. He predicted that "if the bill goes through, and is strictly enforced, we can expect a rise from 1.5 million to 3 million registered Negro voters in the South...
...Negro education was much lower. In 1950, Mississippi had a median of five years; at present the figure is between six and seven years, with the elderly Negro group holding the median down. Not greatly affected by the bill, this elderly group is an unimportant target anyway, explained Pettigrew, because "it is a product of the lynching period and not very disposed to vote...
...tremendous expansion in Southern Negro education which gives the Senate bill its potency is "a great irony to the South," according to Pettigrew. The South began serious attempts to educate Negroes in the late forties when Supreme Court investigations of the "separate but equal" doctrine threatened the segregation of the school system...
Conditions in Negro schools were vastly improved, noted Pettigrew, only to be followed in 1954 by the desegregation decision. And the South's belated efforts "have only given birth to the sit-in generation, and allowed the bulk of the voting-age Negroes to come under the proposed literacy qualification...
...Mansfield-Dirksen bill would be far more effective than the two Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, Pettigrew said. While the two acts, which provided for federal injunctive action where voting discrimination is spotted, have not had spectacular results, "a rise of "a million and a half among Negro voters if this bill is passed would be no pipe dream...