Southerner Declares Key to Negro Rights Lies in Voting Reform

Real advancement in civil rights for the southern Negro will depend in large measure on the liberalizing of voting conditions, according to a member of the Advisory Committee to the United States Civil Rights Commission.

William Higgs, a graduate of Harvard Law School and a practicing lawyer in Mississippi, told a Harvard-Radcliffe Liberal Union audience yesterday that the Negro will need a political voice to gain equality under the law and in employment and education. He cited the example of Memphis, where, after the city's Negro vote proved a crucial factor in re-electing Senator Kefauver over a segregationist opponent, schools and recreational facilities began desegregation without court order and without violence.

Higgs pointed out that voting improvements are permanent and make themselves felt quickly. Predicting that there would be less violent resistance against this trend than against school integration, he noted, "Every Southerner gives at least lip service to the right of Negroes to vote."

"But it is unrealistic to suppose that Negro enfranchisement will ever evolve under present Southern voting laws," Higgs emphasized.

Questioned about the dangers of a rapid transfer of power to the hands of a relatively uniformed electorate, Higgs pointed to the "responsible and intelligent character of Negro leadership" in the fight for civil rights thus far. "Unless the Negro gets the vote," he added, "he will never have the opportunity to be other than 'uninformed.'"