Speech #870192936

The amendment also includes what we call the operative section. That permits Congress to take appropriate action to enforce that amendment. I thought Dean Griswold made it quite clear when he said: Both the propriety and need for congressional action rest upon a finding. wellstated in the MansfieldDirksen bill. that many persons have been subjected to arbitrary and unreasonable voting restrictions on account of their race or color and that literacy tests and other performance examinations have been used extensively to effect arbitrary and unreasonable denials of the right to vote. If this finding were unsubstantiated. there would be real basis for questioning the propriety and validity of the proposed legislation. But. unfortunately. both for the Negro citizens who have been victims and for the integrity of our democratic process. there is ample evidence that literacy and similar performance tests have been widely employed as a device for racial disfranchisement. It is a fact that if there is a literacy test. as there is in some 20 States. which is equally applied to everyone. without discrimination. then in that respect the State law is supreme. The 15th amendment could not possibly apply unless that State law were based upon discrimination against a person because of race or color or previous condition of servitude. There is not a State law that provides that an Indian or a Negro or a Mexican or a Norwegian cannot vote because of his race.