THE SOUTH: A Wall in Alabama

The year-old, slow-starting federal Civil Rights Commission ran up against its first Southern-built stone wall last week in Macon County, Ala., where Negroes outnumber whites 6-1, but white voters outnumber Negro voters 2-1. Assigned to gather evidence on complaints that the county board of registrars discriminated against Negroes in registering voters, two CRC agents went to the board’s office in Tuskegee, asked to look at registration records. The board’s Chairman Emmett P. Livingston telephoned Alabama’s Attorney General John Patterson in Montgomery. Registration records are not public documents, ruled Patterson, who will be elected Governor in November. On Patterson’s advice to “show them nothing,” Livingston flatly refused to open his books.

The investigators left quietly. But in Washington, the CRC met and unanimously voted to hold hearings in Montgomery next month on voting discrimination in various Alabama counties, not just Macon. Since CRC’s six members include a Virginian, a Texan and a Floridian, the unanimity was striking. Between the lines of its announcement, CRC hinted that it might, if necessary, use its statutory subpoena power to make balky registrars open up their files.