VOTER POWER:

Alabama Justice

By Norman Siegel

Hadnott v. Amos is a story of how the constitutional system was made to work. It is a story which could have been another "in vogue" example of how the system doesn't work; but some folks — black and white, young and old, poor and even poorer — refused to quit and refused to lose. Instead they developed a "radical" plan — radical in that it went to the roots of the constitutional system. It called for, basically, much hard work. Simplistic? Very.

Hadnott v. Amos is a story of how the people took their power, not by the barrel of a shotgun, but by political organizing, voting and extensive court action.

On Jan. 12, 1968, a predominately black political party, the National Democratic Party of Alabama, was incorporated. Many of its members and supporters were the civil rights activists of the fifties and sixties, the blacks and whites who had participated in some of the historic movements of our country; the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, the freedom rides of 1961, and the Selma-Montgomery marches.

First Fights

Naturally such a coalition and plan was bound to run into opposition, and it did immediately. Within five days of its incorporation the NDPA was unsuccessfully challenged over the use of the word "Democratic" in its name and successfully challenged over the use of the donkey as its emblem. These first fights were symbolic in more ways than one.

The NDPA decided to run candidates for state, local and national offices in the 1968 elections. It held statewide meetings, conducted mass meetings on May 7 throughout the state, and held its convention on July 20 in Birmingham. On Sept. 5, the NDPA filed its forms, setting forth the 91 candidates it had nominated to run in the November election.

Five days later the NDPA learned from press accounts that all but two of the party nominees had been denied the right to have their names placcd on the general election ballot for alleged campaign infractions.

The ACLU'S Southern Rcgional Office, based in Atlanta, responded on Sept. 13 by filing a complaint with a three-judge District Court in Montgomery, seeking, to require the Secretary of State of Alabama and county election officials to include the names of NDPA's nominees on the ballot.

TRO Granted

A temporary restraining order was issued on Sept. 18 in favor of the 89 candidates. A hearing on the merits was held in Montgomery on Sept. 30.

On Oct. 11, the District Court filed its opinion, deciding in the main against us.

I immediately left Atlanta for Montgomery to start the proceedings for the appeal. Charles Morgan. Jr. and Reber F. Boult, Jr. began preparing an application for temporary relief which we were going to file with Justice Black in the Supreme Court.

I will always remember walking into the District Court on that Friday afternoon, just before closing time, and seeing Mrs. Jane Gordon, a deputy clerk, getting ready to leave for the day. I told her that we were going to appeal the decision and that we needed to have the record in order to file it in the Supreme Court with our jurisdictional statement. The record, of course, had not yet been prepared. Mrs. Gordon stood quiet for a couple of seconds. It was then that I realized that if she said no, our plans to have the appeal docketed in the Supreme Court by Monday were dead. Mrs. Gordon kicked off her shoes, put on a pair of pink slippers, and went to work preparing the record. She worked for approximately three hours without dinner, until about 8 p.m. I returned to Atlanta about midnight.

That night Chuck, Reber and I finished preparing an application to Justice Black to restore the temporary restraining order. Saturday morning I was off again, this time for Washington, to file the motion in the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court

Saturday and Sunday, Chuck and Reber prepared the jurisdictional statement and brief on the merits. On Monday, by the time the Court went into session (10 a.m.), our papers had already been filed. The appeal was docketed.

On that Monday, Justice Black recused himself. The remaining eight justices ordered temporary restoration of the NDPA to the ballot, pending special hearing before the court on Friday the 18th. (The Court normally does not hear argument on Fridays.) The next day, the Court entered an order continuing the temporary relief pending a decision on the merits.

The result of the orders of Oct. 14 and 19 was that the NDPA nominees would be on the November ballot —  even though the Court hadn't finally decided that issue.

The candidates had won the battle to get on the ballot, and now they wanted to win the election. They campaigned extensively, handing out literature, making appearances around the county, speaking at church meetings, organizing and attending political rallies and speaking on radio. They worked hard. Though many were novices, their work paid off. Seventeen NDPA candidates were elected to various local offices — justice of the peace, constable, school board members. However, in Greene County, the six local NDPA candidates were left off the ballot by Probate Judge J. Dennis Herndon, who was locally responsible for preparing the ballot. The NDPA took enough straight ticket votes in Greene County — 81 per cent black — to have elected those six nominees — and to take a majority of the Board of Education and County Commission.

Contempt

The Southern Regional Office reacted by filing a motion asking the U.S. Supreme Court to keep the Greene County white candidates from taking office, to hold Judge Herndon in contempt, and to require a new election.

Only once had the Supreme Court held someone in contempt for not carrying out its order. In 1909, a sheriff in Hamilton County, Tenn. made no preparation to prevent a black prisoner's lynching by a mob, even though the Court had entered an order staying all proceedings pending an appeal.

On Nov. 20, the United States joined the NDPA's constitutional claims amicus curiae and as a party by special leave in the District Court. It obtained an injunction from the District Court enjoining Greene County's white candidates from taking office.

The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction on Dec. 16. Briefs were due Jan. 3, and the hearing was scheduled for 10 a.m., Jan. 21, the day after the Nixon inauguration. It would be the first case the Supreme Court would hear during the Nixon Administration.

On March 25 the word came. We won. The Court reversed and remanded the case with directions to the District Court to issue an appropriate order requiring the prevailing 17 NDPA candidates to be treated as duly elected, and require a new election in Greene County with NDPA candidates on the ballot.

The motion to hold Judge Herndon in contempt was disposed of in a separate opinion postponing judgment and remanding the question to the District Court.

On June 12, the U.S. District Court in Montgomery ordered a new election in Greene County to be held July 29, in accordance with the order of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The NDPA and Greene County were attracting national attention. Greene County became the focal point of a struggle for power. If the blacks could turn out the vote, they could win a majority on the County Commission and Board of Education. The stakes were indeed high.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 had a great effect on the political make-up of the county. Prior to the Act's passage, there were 275 (5.5 per cent) non-whites of voting age population registered, as compared to 2,305 whites (100-plus per cent). After the Act's passage, figures showed 3,953 (79 per cent) non-whites of voting age population registered, as compared to 2,057 whites (124.7 per cent). Time was catching up with Greene County.

Election Campaign

The NDPA geared its activities during the summer of 1969 for the July 29 special election. It received support and assistance from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Ralph Abernathy, Julian Bond, Coretta King were just a few of the many who assisted the NDPA in Greene County.

On the evening of July 29, Chuck got a phone call. It was from the NDPA members in Greene County. They were rallying in a Greene County church, singing "We Shall Overcome." The results of the special election were in. Frenchie Burton, Vassie Knott, Harry C. Means and Levi Morrow, Sr. were county commissioners. Robert Hines and J. A. Posey, Sr., were members of the Board of Education.

Winning was getting to be a habit for the NDPA in Greene County.

The election results created an atmosphere of hope, determination, pride, confidence. A strange thought entered my mind: Perhaps it would take a place like Greene County — with the median number of school years completed being 5.8 for men and boys and 7.2 for women and girls and a median annual income of $918 for males, $443 for females — to show the rest of the country the constitutional system could be made to work. That night, anyway, there were few non-believers.

People Govern

For the remainder of '69 the NDPA took stock. It had now elected 23 candidates to local and county positions. The officials started to carry out their duties. The people were making the decisions that affected their own lives and their own communities.

Before the 1970 elections, the NDPA again conducted mass meetings throughout the state. It held its convention on Aug. 1 at Flowers Lake in Montgomery.

The convention met in an open sunny field surrounded by trees, overlooking a lake. Dr. John Cashin, chairman of the NDPA and Alabama's first black nominee for governor, spoke; Julian Bond gave the keynote address. There must have been more than 400 people there. As Chuck was talking to the convention, I took a look at the gathering. The largest single group was, of course, black. But there were also a sizable number of whites. There were excellent representations of all age groups, and many women were present. The group was remarkably integrated in every sense.

Most of the forms for the 176 NDPA candidates who would run in 1970 were filed on Sept. 1. We saw to it that the problems of 1968 were not to be repeated. They weren't. The problems of 1970 were new ones.

Eagle

Emblem Victory

On Oct. 3, the Court issued an order, holding that the Secretary of State "violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment... by filing and accepting the party emblems of the Alabama Independent Party and the Alabama Conservative Party [they being]...  so like the emblem... of the National Democratic Party of Alabama as to be likely to mislead voters."

The Court withheld decision on the durational residency questions. But on Oct. 3, the District Court issued an order setting a hearing for Dec. 14 for J. Dennis Herndon "to appear and show cause, if any he has, why he should not be adjudged in contempt of court." As the Supreme Court had directed on March 25, 1969, the District Court was going to decide whether Judge Herndon was in contempt of court when he failed to list the NDPA candidates on the Greene County ballot in 1968.

Then, on Oct. 19, the District Court issued its opinion declaring the pre-registration voter residency requirement unconstitutional, finding the candidate not to be a resident of Greene County, and holding constitutional the pre-clection residency requirement of circuit judgeships.

We filed our notice of appeal immediately and were granted a stay by the District Court for 10 days. During that period we docketed in the Supreme Court our jurisdictional statement and brief on the merits. Our motion to continue the stay was denied by the Supreme Court.

The case is presently in the Supreme Court awaiting decision on whether or not jurisdiction will be noted. And the state has cross-appealed on the voter residency requirement.

While we worked on these legal matters, the NDPA candidates campaigned. Election day brought victory to 12 blacks, including Alabama's first black probate judge.

We continued our research on contempt for the Dec. 14 Herndon hearing. But two days before Thanksgiving we were informed that election challenges were being filed in the Circuit Court of Greene County against the probate judge, the Rev. William McKinley Branch, and Mrs. Wadine V. Williams (circuit court clerk-elect). The alleged ground against Branch was that he had been convicted, prior to the election, of false pretense, a crime involving moral turpitude. (He had written an overdraft in the amount of $8.74 at a local food center.) Consequently, it was alleged, he was ineligible, to run for and hold public office. The alleged ground against Mrs. Williams was that she was not a qualified elector and consequently was ineligible to hold public office.

Herndon Hearing

Chuck and I immediately went to Birmingham to get the facts. We spent part of Thanksgiving weekend at A.G. Gaston's Motel in Birmingham preparing for the Hcrndon hearing and the Branch and Williams contests.

The Southern Regional Office worked around the clock most of the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

On Dec. 11, at about 11 p.m., Chuck left for Montgomery. The next day he and George Dean filed removal petitions in Branch and Williams in the District Court.

And the next day we were all together again in the Albert Pick Motel in Montgomery to prepare for the opening of the Herndon hearing in the morning.

The Herndon hearing began on Monday, Dec. 14, at 9:30 a.m. We and the United States both rested at approximately 5 p.m. On Tuesday morning at 9:00 the Court reconvened. About noon that day, the defendant rested.

The Court asked both sides to submit memoranda of law by Dcc. 28 (good-bye Christmas) and recessed until Jan. 7.

The next day we got a call from Mr. Branch and Mrs. Williams telling us that the complainants had filed motions to dismiss the cases challenging their election. A week later the District Court entered an order dismissing the cases.

Judge Must Pay

On Thursday, Jan. 7, we returned to the District Court in Montgomery. The Court was once again packed with people from Greene County. The courtroom was silent as the three judges entered. One of the judges read the verdict from the bench. James Dennis Herndon was found guilty of both civil and criminal contempt.

With regard to civil contempt Herndon was ordered to pay $5,452. With regard to the criminal contempt Herndon was fined $300 and put on a year's probation.

Hadnott demonstrates that the constitutional system can be made to work. What has happened in Greene County — what has happened in Alabama — must and can occur in New York, Indianapolis, San Diego, the North, the Midwest — all over the country. And we can make it happen. We can make it happen not only for blacks, but for all the "powerless" folks of this country — Chicanos, the young, the poor, women and others. Hadnott, I hope, is but a beginning.