THE SOUTH: The Two Judges

The two men had much in common. Each was a native Alabaman. Each worked his way through school. They met and became friends at the University of Alabama law school in the early 1940s. Each served in World War II and came home with decorations. Each became a judge. And it was in that capacity, somehow symbolic of the stresses under which the law has come in the South, that U.S. District Judge Frank Minis Johnson Jr. in Montgomery last week ordered Alabama Circuit Judge George Corley Wallace to show cause “if any there be” why he should not be punished for contempt of court.

For weeks Judge Wallace, 39, a onetime state Golden Gloves featherweight champion (“The Barbour Bantam”) and a defeated Democratic gubernatorial candidate last year, had been fighting efforts of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission to examine the voting records of two counties in his circuit. From his bench in Montgomery, he threatened to throw any “federal police” who came around into jail. Even after Federal Judge Johnson,directly ordered him to permit examination of the voting records. Wallace refused, instead turned them over to county grand juries he had hurriedly called. (The grand juries, in turn, later bowed before the Johnson order to make the records available to the Civil Rights Commission.) “I have no apologies for any action,” Wallace said. “I am ready to face any consequences I may have to bear.”

Those consequences may be considerable. U.S. Judge Johnson, 40, a Republican, inherited the nickname “Straight Edge” from his great-grandfather, Fayette County’s first Republican sheriff and a man widely known for his directness and his sharp cutting edge. Frank Johnson, appointed to the federal bench by President Eisenhower in 1955, inherits the traits as well as the name. Says one Alabama lawyer: “If you have a good case, you don’t have to worry. The judge will rule with you. If you don’t have a case, you don’t have to worry either. He’ll throw it out before you unpack your briefcase.”

Such is the judge George Wallace must face late this month—and in Alabama’s troubled times, Frank Johnson may have to punish his old friend with a fine of up to $1,000 and a jail sentence of up to six months.