Speech #870194887

I thank the Senator. I turn now to a consideration of what happened. At the request of the Attorney General of the United States. the President asked the leadership to take up and attempt to pass a relatively minor civil rights bill. a bill which would have substituted. for existing provisions in the laws of some eight Southern States which provide for literacy tests as a qualification for voting a Federal law providing that anyone who has a sixthgrade education shall not be subjected to any literacy test. but. insofar as that particular qualification is concerned. shall be entitled to vote. The report of the Civil Rights Commission had made it abundantly clear that in 100 counties in 8 Southern States literacy tests were being abused so as to disfranchise citizens of the United States because of their race or color. The Attorney General was quite right. I think. in desiring that Congress should pass Federal legislation. as the President recommended. to overcome that defect.