Mr. President. we are today beginning a civil rights battle to vindicate the Constitution. sustain and implement the 15th amendment. and secure the voting rights of thousands of Americans disenfranchised by abuse of literacy tests in certain Southern States. It is sad and yet symbolic that we must do so under the pall of another sad chapter in race relations in our countr. The current campaign of the White Citizens Council of New Orleans to cast away destitute Negroes from their native States to other cities will surely go down in history as a shocking and shameful act. I have undertaken a study of the legislative means that may be necessary to deal with the extralegal aspects of this situation. But in the meantime and quite apart from the requirements of law. New Yorkers have already shown that they will receive innocent instruments of domestic injustice in the same way they have received the oppressed and the exploited throughout modern timesin the same way they have received refugees from czarist Russia. from Nazi Germany. and from Hungary. Poland. Cuba. and other places.
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refugees literacy tests