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Z 19 Z chapter 2 a CIvIL rIghTs dIvIsIOn In JusTICe The alumni of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division can now inZ dulge in nostalgia about our past. We print up TZshirts with the department seal. But before 1960 it was by no means certain there would be any deeds worth celebrating. The Civil Rights Division was formally created pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1957 by President Eisenhower’s second attorney general, WilZ liam P. Rogers.1 The United States Department of Justice is composed of ofZ fices and divisions, each with its own assistant attorney general and dealing with its own area of the law: for example, antitrust, civil, criminal, lands, tax. Their creation is no casual matter. The new division, however, could build upon a civil rights section established by Attorney General Frank Murphy in 1939 in the Criminal Division under the name Civil Liberties Unit.2 President Franklin Roosevelt had been overwhelmingly reelected in 1936 but had backed away from antiZlynching legislation, a severe disappointZ ment to America’s black citizens who had said “farewell to the party of LinZ coln” and joined Roosevelt’s coalition.3 However, the NAACP’s unsuccessZ ful antiZlynching campaign appeared to have some influence in the section’s creation, as had labor support from the powerful Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).4 Once in existence, the unit often seemed to be spinning its wheels, squabbling with the FBI over whether to implement the surviving ReconZ struction statutes of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.5 Enforcement was a probZ lem for the fledging section attempting to prosecute police brutality cases despite the hostility of juries, particularly in the Deep South. The lawyers also were lodged in an administrative environment of a diviZ sion that had other important priorities. And FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, whose hostility toward civil rights was well known, had little desire to enter a Civil rights division in Justice Z 20 Z situations in a way that would only harm the bureau’s highly cultivated reZ lationship with local police chiefs and sheriffs.6 While one may sympathize with the legal problems of civil rights enforcement before the 1957 Civil Rights Act, it is still shocking to observe the paper shuffling that went on as a substitute for law enforcement. Forrest County itself is a prime example. On May 13, 1952, the Criminal Division acknowledged receipt of the nine Forrest County affidavits from Thurgood Marshall.7 Over the next year memoranda strolled back and forth between the division, the FBI, and the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. Finally, the U.S. Attorney met with Luther Cox and Attorney M. M. Roberts, who asZ sured him “that all persons entitled to register would be registered” and that Cox would no longer require interpretations from those who could read.8 President Eisenhower’s first assistant attorney general of the CrimiZ nal Division, Warren Olney, then advised Thurgood Marshall that they reZ garded this assurance as “a satisfactory disposition of the matter, unless we receive valid complaints to the contrary in the future.”9 In less than two months Thurgood Marshall submitted twentyZfour adZ ditional affidavits on behalf of blacks rejected in February and March. Only three blacks had been registered. Leading the new affiants was teacher Addie Burger. Also included were the Reverend I. C. Peay, lead plaintiff in the 1950 litigation against Cox; teacher Iva Sandifer; Savannah Davis; local NAACP leaders Vernon Dahmer and B. F. Bourn; druggist Charles W. Smith; Alfonso Clark; and Milton Barnes, who ran the cleaning shop. Bourn, Smith, Clark, and Barnes had also been plaintiffs in Peay v. Cox. The case was reopened. d May 8, 1953: The New Orleans office of the Bureau advised that 27 vicZ tims had been interviewed. All had either been rejected by Cox personally or told by the female clerks in the office that they would have to see Cox. Almost a month later, Olney drew the obvious conclusion for the U.S. AtZ torney that Cox, “despite his promise, has deliberately refused to register Negro citizens because of their race.” d In midZJune, the U.S. Attorney, still not replaced by the new adminisZ tration, conceded that Cox “has not carried out the representations and promises made to me and to [Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Hauberg],” and asked what statute Cox had violated. In July he was instructed to seek a criminal indictment against Cox for violations...

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