Speech #870172979

That illustrates the thought that some people think that truth is immaterial in questions of fact and that they can contract the powers of the States through the utterance of preambles and whereases regardless of whether the statements be true or false. Incidentally. the proponents of the bill would have us believe that these provisions are either in harmony with all the State literacy tests or that the provisions do not affect in a drastic manner State literacy tests. As a matter of fact. if newspaper accounts of the testimony of witnesses given before the House Judiciary Committee on the companion bill are to be relied on. assertions to that effect have been made by witnesses before that committee. They are reported to have said that there is no substantial difference between the State literacy tests which it undertakes to nullify and the previsions of the bill. Yet it is very interesting that there are. as nearly as I can determine. 21 States in the United States which prescribe a literacy test. In the case of 20 of these States ones literacy is to be determined by his capacity to read the English language. In another. the State of Hawaii. the literacy of the person is to be determined by his capacity to speak. read. and write either the English or Hawaiian language. while in a 22d State. Nebraska. the voter is required to sign his name when registering. Yet. under the bill any citizen of the United States. which includes everyone born within the jurisdiction of the United States. who has completed the sixth grade in school. would be allowed to register and vote in any one of the 21 States having literacy tests. This would permit anyone. who. for example. had completed the sixth grade in Puerto Rico and understands Spanish only to register and vote in any of 20 States having literacy tests even though he could not speak or write or read a word of the language prescribed by the literacy tests. namely. English. This is also true of Hawaii. whose literacy test provides that a person shall be able to speak. read. and write either English or Hawaiian. In other words. it is an attempt to alter the literacy tests established by every State in the Union which has such tests. and they number 21. Incidentally. only 7 of the 21 States having literacy tests are below the MasonDixon line. the other 14 States are above the MasonDixon line.